Championship betting tip: Reading FC- Hull City
Feb 08, 2020
Championship: Reading FC- Hull City
A few advantages for Hull here, in that they did not play in midweek along with extra time as the Royals did and that City are a point better off, but it all kind of ends there.
Ahead of the Tigers lunchtime game with Brentford last Saturday I spoke about how badly the transfer window had played out for them ............
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You know where we stand on Brentford, statistically they are the second best team in the Championship, with the best defence.
Today they play a Tigers team who sold both Kamil Grosicki and Jarrod Bown this week, two players who were as important to City offensively as any duo in any league and a few weeks back I noted ...........
Jarrod Bowen and Kamil Grosicki are continuing on their merry way. In early season I spoke about this .........
Hull City have started with a loss at Swansea and win at home to what looks a very weak Reading, both by the same 2-1 scoreline. The Tigers feel like another transition team and there are a lot of them in the Championship this season, they have continued to off load big earners and this has been a long two year process and new head coach Grant McCann who took over from Nigel Adkins in the summer, replaced them with what he knows and what the budget would allow, which was lower league players and some loanees. That doesn't have to be bad, but Adkins had done a good job in very difficult circumstances and he would have stayed at most clubs. City have a very young group and head coach with little Championship experience, they did keep Jarrod Bowen and Kamil Grosicki which was huge and the duo have already 2 goals and an assist between them, they had 31-16 combined last season and pose almost all of their attacking threat . Teams should know more about the duo now and the other main City contributors in Frazier Campbell and Evandro have left, so the threat is not exactly all over the pitch.
So Bowen and Grosicki had 31 goals and 16 assists last season, this time round they have 14 goals and 4 assists ( on course for 40 and 11.5 !)and have combined to create 23 chances for each other, next highest for any pair is 15 coming into this weekend, they do not get injured/suspended (neither has missed a game since September 2018) and pretty much play every minute (Bowen has done so, the 31 yo Grosicki is sometimes subbed late on), all a bit amazing and I am equally astounded that no one has come in for the 22yo Bowen. Anyway, City off level ball for me.
To update those numbers they had a combined 31 goals and 16 assists last season in a team which scored 66 , 23 goals and 10 assists this time round in a team which scored 41. They have fewer options to pick up the slack from elsewhere on the pitch this season as I highlighted above. Bowen was ever present both seasons, Grosicki missed just one start this campaign. Winger Josh Bowler has also picked up an injury and will be out for two months, he has played 26/29 games.
City have replaced their two star players with someone decent from a lower level who only joined yesterday and a Scottish striker and the pace of the game is MUCH different down South, whether either can play today I do not know, but ALL the advantages are with the Bees.
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It was boys against men, not in age terms, Brentford had the younger starting 11 and have the second youngest squad in the Championship, but it looked like City schoolboys against adults. Brentford gifted City a goal (all time "great" own goal) and that was pretty much all the Tigers managed, the Bees scored five and, with little exaggeration, it should have been ten and the television analyst twice said it looked like attack versus defence in a training ground exercise. Brentford had 66% possession it felt like about 80% of that was in the City third and likewise, almost all of the little that the Tigers had was again in their own third, the Bees had 19 attempts ITB and 12 on target, the other 19 teams who played that day in the Championship averaged 7.95 and 3.47 respectively.
I do not think City head coach Grant McGann (pictured) did his team any favours with pre match comments that his team were still in the heart of the promotion race after selling prize assets and being so far off the pace anyway and he looked very sheepish afterwards . Not sure where City go from that, McGann has had a week to work with his team and to come up with a way forward without Bowen and Grosicki, but it is still early for the two incomers (see above) and more importantly, he has to try and restore confidence in what is a young group, older than the Bees, but they had only one aged over 28 last week and a very youthful backline, once young heads drop, it is very difficult to lift them. Edit: one of the newcomers, James Scott, picked up a freak injury in training and will be out of contention for today at least and things are not going the Tigers way at present.
Reading played in midweek, but always have a big squad and used only four from the previously league game and got a result against a fellow Championship side on the road, so confidence from that. The Royals are "ok" midtable(ish), but this is more about opposing City and we have to do that until certain that they have regrouped.
2 units Reading -0.75 ball 2.40 asian line/Sportmarket.
Good Luck.
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