Reading 4-0 Cambridge United: Tactical Analysis

The Royals earned a hefty win thanks to goals from Sam Smith, Femi Azeez, Lewis Wing and Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan.

On the eve of the first international break of the 2023/24 season back in September, Reading fell victim to a 1-0 loss at the hands of Cambridge United, featuring Harlee Dean having the most shots for us, Caylan Vickers leading the line and, of course, starting midfielder Sam Hutchinson being booked.

Fejiri Okenabirhie hit home for the Us in the 83rd minute, embarrassing us live on Sky Sports, and really kicking off the start of a toxic time for Reading. Thankfully this time, we had the opposite fate, putting our visitors to the sword in a comprehensive 4-0 win.

Let’s take a look at what took us three points closer to League One safety on Saturday.

Cambridge are the second-lowest pressers in the league, and the way that Garry Monk made his side play did not help with that at all. 33-year-old Lyle Taylor (number 18) was the sole man up front for our opposition, and as seen in the positional graphic below (Cambridge are shooting from right to left), he was about as isolated as Ashley Cole in that Roma picture.

This made it relatively easy for Reading to move from a situation where a centre-back receives the ball on the six-yard box from a goal kick, to high up on the halfway line with Cambridge camped out in their own half.

We’ve seen Lewis Wing drop into that right-back spot a lot, but haven’t really seen it much yet with either Michael Craig or Charlie Savage when they’ve played. However, this changed on Saturday. Near the beginning of a brilliant 41-pass move, the Welsh midfielder joins Tyler Bindon and Amadou Mbengue in a back three in build-up.

After a few passes between himself and Wing, the latter rotates into that spot on the left, while Savage returns to his more natural position. It was very interesting to hear James Oliver-Pearce’s take on this on the TTE podcast, and he reiterated that even if it is very effective to play Wing or others out wide, it leaves us susceptible to counter-attacks, which is a problem we’ve suffered from before.

Oliver-Pearce also noted the importance of midfielders heading back into the middle to ensure against this, which is exactly what happens a few seconds later here.

Pep Guardiola’s “box midfield” is widely covered by budding football Twitter tacticians across the globe, but behold here, Ruben Selles’ “box in build-up”, which did wonders in making Taylor run from side to side, meaning the Us frontman not only didn’t make a tackle, but didn’t even have the chance to make one.

We were very flexible too though. While we always really use a back three, the left side of that tends to change. Whenever you see a player drive forward with the ball and lay it off, usually they join the front line, and in terms of a player you’d like to see do that, I’d prefer Savage over Jeriel Dorsett to be that man, thus here Selles moves the latter into the back three.

This requires Ben Elliott on the left wing to be slightly deeper, and the increased presence in midfield with Savage going more central requires Liam Bennett and Paul Digby to be further back. This is vital in allowing Wing to have loads of space in the middle, and he drives up and picks a pass to the left, which pins back the Cambridge defence even further to their own penalty box.

Further up the field, we managed to make much out of our throw-ins, again something mentioned by Oliver-Pearce on the podcast. Here, Mbengue has the throw, and while Wing looks a little uninterested walking away, Harvey Knibbs darts around the corner to provide an option, which distracts Wing’s marker too.

However, Wing spins around quickly to receive the ball and passes first time to Femi Azeez. Knibbs continues his run down the line, which is perfectly times with Azeez’ flick around the corner to release Knibbs with lots of green grass to run into.

As seen on the screenshot we have a man-to-man situation at the back post as we’ve seen in other matches before, and the cross into that area is poor, but the ball eventually falls to Wing who scores from the edge of the box.

Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan came on in the 77th minute, and aside from scoring a goal worthy of a feature on a Tony Yeboah goal compilation, he played a masterful role for Reading in the closing moments of the game. While Azeez is a touchline-hugger, Ehibhatiomhan dropped a lot deeper sometimes.

Here he receives the ball which draws in Digby, and runs further forward, and the ball is distributed to Dean on the right, leading James Brophy towards Wing in the right-back position. Now take a look at Knibbs further forward, whose two potential markers are now absent.

The ball is fizzed into his feet by Wing and, as seen here, the midfielder is in acres of space in the middle of the park. This just shows how good we are at manipulating the position of teams to progress the ball and create more attacks.

Obviously, Cambridge are one of the weakest teams we’ve seen at the SCL this season, so I doubt we’ll find many more teams this easy to break down. However, you can’t ask for much more than a 4-0 win, whoever the opponent. Improvement is all we can ask for as fans really, and we’ve certainly done that in leaps and bounds since the reverse fixture.

And of course, a win going into the international break is always good. A home tie with Northampton Town awaits after, and the Cobblers sit within touching distance of us if we keep up our good form, just eight points ahead in 14th.

In the meantime, let’s hope for some good news for Reading Football Club!