Roy talks – video

Here.

The squad

From the official.  So…  rumours are that we’ll see McBride and  Healy up top.    If you read between (or down) the lines you might well see a probable depth chart too.   So the defence is likely to be the first four names, the midfield same, and forwards same.  Or not, who knows?  But that would give us:

Keller – Stalteri – Hughes – Hangeland – Konchesky – Davies – Andreasen – Murphy – Bullard – McBride – Healy

Which really wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Beating Reading

Reading’s home defeats in yellow.   No real patterns there, although the key (unsurprisingly) seems to be to get a lot of shots in.  We don’t do that very much, so a shoot on sight policy might be fun.   Interestingly, Reading have won more corners than their opponents in their home defeats, but in other games it’s a bit closer.  Which mightn’t mean anything.

Dunno, we do just need to get some shots in by the looks of things.  Reading are far from invincible.

More Healy propaganda

This time from Simon “our only good player this season” Davies.  Christ I’m getting cynical.  But yes, nice to see a small Healy bandwagon emerging from within the club.

Healy should have played more this season, I really have no doubt about that.  He scored those early goals, which is probably why he’s never had the grief that most of Sanchez’s other signings have had to put up with, and surely would’ve found a few more if he’d had a run of games at any point.  But it’s been in/out/in/out all year.   Sometimes you have to stop focusing on what a player can’t do and try to see what he can.  Sure, he might not have scored 20 goals and kept us up, but you never know.

So, Roy to go with a  surprise 4-3-3?   I can see it happening, with Kamara on the left and Healy on the right, with McBride through the middle.

Mean

Why did this make me think of Zat Knight?

Poor fellow was often criticised, but he was better than folks gave him credit for and might have been useful this season.  Sure, the £4million we got for him was good business, but still.  He’s a decent Premiership squad player, which would’ve put him among our 2-3 best players this year.  Oh well.

Tomorrow, eh?  What to think?   Last week I was having strange hopeful bursts of idiocy.  This week, not so much.  I hope we put on a good show, but I fear that the final countdown may be every bit as painful as the troubles that preceded it.