Did Holloway and QPR do us a favour.

[FulhamStu]

I know Holloway gets a bit of stick from Fulham fans, but I think he did a job on us today.  An inferior team can beat us by closing us down and out running and out fighting us, especially v our defence,

We may have started to foreget the Reading play off games last season, and maybe we were starting to think we could handle that as we are now better, however QPR today, 2nd half, should have tought us that a team closing down so hard from the front as QPR did 2nd half will still stop our possession play and cause us real problems.

Slav and the coaches, need to figure out a way of overcoming this as you can bet any team we play in the playoffs will use this approach.     

We need to play longer and get players around Mitro, which our opponents will not expect.  If they don't do the QPR/Reading press fine, we can beat them as we normally do, however we must be better prepared than last season.

Call it a plan b if you want, but we have for the past 2 seasons struggled to overcome this fast pressing on our team, esp at the Cottage.   I do fear that Slav will want to overcome this by just doing the keep ball even better as I fear we are not Man City and need to find another way.

[JoelH5]

It's a difficult one. By playing keep ball when the other team are pressing, they will have to continuously be pressing and will obviously tire. Are we good enough to do it? Yes. Do we have the mentality and mental fortitude to do it all the time, no. I think this is one of the things that makes good players great.

Games in the championship aren't as predictable as in the prem for example and I think that's partly down to players in the championship and lower not always having as strong mental fortitude. We panicked today after making a few mistakes and then you could tell the players looked nervous. When that's happening we can't afford to play it at the back. The issue is, if we play long ball, it's not really our style.

I think with Mitro we can now switch to long ball football if we need but it's certainly not what we want to do.

Do we allow the other team to force us into playing a style we aren't as happy with or donwentry and risk it and keep passing it about. I personally don't know. Maybe somwthing in between. Keep on playing possession football but less so from the back if we're looking shaky.

[Lighthouse]

This isn't news. We have been vulnerable to high pressure and direct football since we played keep ball. What many of us thought was the days of being second best to average teams who employed these tactics were behind us. But today showed that they are not. Especially when the coach has an iffy day with tactics and subs and simply being unable to change things. It was back to the beginning of the season and some of last season. With more of a target player we at least have a get out now. Which is why I thought bringing on our physical battering ram to play alongside Mitro would have been a better bet than the ineffectual Fonte.

However we are where we are. With luck whatever happens in the playoffs we will have more about us than we did today. A bad day at the office would have been a more of a disaster in the past. We got a point we probably didn't deserve.

[colinwhite]

We are vulnerable to high pressure WHEN we have slow ball tempo in our passing game like yesterday, or when we play on a heavy pitch like at preston last week which also slows us down . When we play at a higher pace we also take more risks playing on smaller margins and therein lies our catch 22. If we play with a high tempo then the high press works in our favour (Sh utd at home being agood example). Yesterday so many players wanted 3 touches of the ball every time they had ball contact,which makes it much easier for teams ,poor or otherwise to shut down the space.Combine this with a general lack of Energy in the team and you have yesterdays performance.