The final score in football is always the most important
piece of information to come out of a game. The way in which the score is achieved
is quite irrelevant. As long as you get the right result, that is all you need.
Even West Ham fans with Sam Allardyce, perhaps the most contrasting manager to
an assumed historical ethos around right now, appreciate that.
But the problem with scorelines are that they can be
deceptive and misleading. A 1-0 win can come as a result of utter domination
from one team and putting away just the one chance or utter domination from
that same team and the opposition doing a “smash and grab”. That’s the thing
with numbers; they only tell you so much.
In theory and on paper, a 1-0 win is the perfect scoreline
for the victorious team. It would appear to indicate minimal effort expended to
get the advantage and the prevention of your opponents from achieving their
primary aim of scoring.
However, the now clichéd “football is played on grass not
paper” argument is the correct one here as anyone who has ever sat through a
1-0 win will attest. That slender advantage is under constant threat; every
time the ball gets even remotely close to your team’s penalty box your heart
beats increases and your bowels get that feeling usually reserved for that
split second between saying a chat-up line and finding out whether it landed or
not.
This might just be my in-built pessimism, developed over 15
years of supporting Reading, kicking in but even with a resolutely and proven
solid defence, a 1-0 win never looks secure until the final whistle. A team that’s
conceded just the one goal in the last seven games or so should be able to hold
on to the slenderest of leads as they’ve done it before.
Indeed, we have on the majority of the games in our recent
winning run which looks great, once the results have been secured. Sat watching
it, one can’t help but feel that the odds of probability mean the equaliser has
got to come soon, even with the best teams.
It’s commonly assumed that 1-0 wins that are ground out in
the middle of the season are what indicates a successful team on the march to
promotion or a title. But they sure as hell don’t feel that way when these wins
are being accumulated, even on a regular basis as Reading are doing right now.
Maybe just the Reading pessimism again, seeing as only in
THAT season have I ever approached Reading games with a lot of confidence in a
positive outcome, but I can’t shake the feeling we will get found out soon. I
said the same thing last season mind and Reading are an awful lot more well
rounded side than this time last year.
1-0 wins may well be the benchmark of a good team but you
just don’t know if the team is really that good, at Championship level anyway,
until the season is drawing to a close. Come the end of April, we may well be
saying that this period right now is where we won promotion but, right now,
each single goal lead still brings the same fear.
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