Reading demolished at Plymouth

Rubbish performance by a rubbish team on a rubbish pitch, on a rubbish day to end a rubbish year. I can`t wait to see the back of 2009….

Brian McDermott had raised hopes among Royals fans with two encouraging draws that saw us come from a goal down but on Monday afternoon at Plymouth, all the hope was extinguished and we have sunk as low as we have been all season, even lower than at Loftus Road in October.

I personally feel that fans chose to look more favourably on the two previous performances because McDermott was in charge, and would have felt very differently if Rodgers was still the manager. But not even the most positive Reading fan can find anything positive from this performance and the times has come for drastic action to be taken with an experienced manager put in charge until the end of the season and finally admit that we are deep in a relegation scrap.

McDermott made just one change from the draw with Swansea with Grzegorz Rasiak dropping to the bench to be replaced by the returning Simon Church. He need not have bothered playing any strikers because the service to them was nonexistent and the awful pitch meant we couldn`t play any kind of football.

The old saying though ‘is it`s the same for both sides` and the hosts took the lead when Ivar Ingimarsson took down Jamie Mackie in the area and conceded a clear penalty. Alan Judge converted and once again we had gone a goal behind. The Royals defence continued to look shaky and Ingimarsson was lucky not to score an own goal as our Icelandic captain continued to look a shadow of his former self.

Despite the half time introduction of Jimmy Kebe, for Marek Matejovsky, it was Plymouth who scored again on the hour when the unmarked Kari Arnason headed past Adam Federici with ease. The Royals did respond when McAnuff crossed for Gylfi Sigurdsson to score but any hopes of a comeback were shattered almost instantly.

A cross from the left was headed home again, this time from Judge after more poor defending from the Royals and they had a penalty shout straight soon after Mackie was pulled down but the fourth goal didn`t take long to arrive. One of the Pilgrims subs Ashley Barnes scored it with a simple finish and just fewer than 1000 travelling supporters were left to ponder another heavy defeat.