the tilehurst end 
01-03-2024 11:01
01-03-2024 11:01
In Defence Of David Button
Reading have been blessed with some tremendous goalkeepers in recent years. Ali Al-Habsi, Rafael and Emi Martinez all performed at vastly superior levels to the often pretty rubbish teams in which they played. Even Joe Lumley turned out to be a pretty decent player.
So we have been spoilt when it comes to keepers - and also in evaluating our current number one, David Button. It was certainly an auspicious start for him, even as the veteran of two EFL promotion campaigns and over 300 career appearances, a handful of which have come in the Premier League. There were torrid reviews from fans of former club West Bromwich Albion and a sense that Reading didn’t really need a new keeper, with Coniah Boyce-Clarke, Jokull Andresson and Joel Pereira all floating around the place.
I was a little surprised to see fans turn on Button so much after the defeat to Shrewsbury Town. The first goal was a deflecty-swervy b’stard of a shot which came through a crowd and caught Button out. The second saw Charlie Savage lose his runner and Tyler Bindon miss a tackle in the box, before a decent finish. The third was an absolute screamer. What’s more, this was Reading’s first home defeat in two-and-a-half months - so hardly the sort of afternoon you’d desperately need to find a scapegoat to explain.
And yet so many did, the prevailing sense of the wind being that Pereira ‘deserves a chance’. It’s clear that Ruben Selles won’t drop Button though and he wouldn’t be alone in not doing so, as managers generally speaking don’t like dropping ‘keepers and there’s a good reason for that.
Pereira’s career stats are frankly puny compared to Button’s and, penalty shootouts aside, he’s hardly set the world alight in the cups. For me, he’s destined to enter the Tennai Watson realm of Reading players urgently demanded by fans, despite the incumbent (in Watson’s case, Chris Gunter) being basically fine if unspectacular and certainly not the problem. For what it’s worth of the other possibilities, in my opinion Boyce-Clarke needs a loan and Andresson has done precious little with his move to Carlisle United.
The thing with Button is… he’s a mid-level League One goalkeeper. You look at his stats (Ross does this in-depth here in a TTE video here) and he’s up in some departments, down in others and mid-table in many of them.
Personally, goalkeeper stats are far from the whole picture because there are a million different contextual factors surrounding the shots which they face, such as the defence in front of them, that maybe aren’t applicable in more universally comparable moments such as a striker bearing down on goal.
Therefore the eye test plays a big role and, well, Button comes out pretty ‘League One’ to me. His reflexes are strong, his long kicking can occasionally be crap and he can be questionable at crosses.
But Reading were never going to get a Championship-level goalkeeper this season. The club has a transfer embargo and a billion other issues, so they trusted a highly experienced goalkeeper to deliver a minimum level of performance and have got exactly that. I was a doubter to begin with but it’s clear with the reaction to Button that we have inexorably high standards for our goalkeepers, thanks to the great players we’ve witnessed over the years.
I don’t think there are many Reading fans who realised quite the drop in quality League One would bring after our decades away. I certainly didn’t. While we’ve given the appropriate slack to several other areas of the pitch and players, it feels a little harsh to go after Button after a couple of recent slips.
With so few games left to play and so much on the line, I don’t think it’s beneficial for our goalkeeper, whoever he is, to feel anything less than total support from his fans as he trots over to start each game.
So we have been spoilt when it comes to keepers - and also in evaluating our current number one, David Button. It was certainly an auspicious start for him, even as the veteran of two EFL promotion campaigns and over 300 career appearances, a handful of which have come in the Premier League. There were torrid reviews from fans of former club West Bromwich Albion and a sense that Reading didn’t really need a new keeper, with Coniah Boyce-Clarke, Jokull Andresson and Joel Pereira all floating around the place.
I was a little surprised to see fans turn on Button so much after the defeat to Shrewsbury Town. The first goal was a deflecty-swervy b’stard of a shot which came through a crowd and caught Button out. The second saw Charlie Savage lose his runner and Tyler Bindon miss a tackle in the box, before a decent finish. The third was an absolute screamer. What’s more, this was Reading’s first home defeat in two-and-a-half months - so hardly the sort of afternoon you’d desperately need to find a scapegoat to explain.
And yet so many did, the prevailing sense of the wind being that Pereira ‘deserves a chance’. It’s clear that Ruben Selles won’t drop Button though and he wouldn’t be alone in not doing so, as managers generally speaking don’t like dropping ‘keepers and there’s a good reason for that.
Pereira’s career stats are frankly puny compared to Button’s and, penalty shootouts aside, he’s hardly set the world alight in the cups. For me, he’s destined to enter the Tennai Watson realm of Reading players urgently demanded by fans, despite the incumbent (in Watson’s case, Chris Gunter) being basically fine if unspectacular and certainly not the problem. For what it’s worth of the other possibilities, in my opinion Boyce-Clarke needs a loan and Andresson has done precious little with his move to Carlisle United.
The thing with Button is… he’s a mid-level League One goalkeeper. You look at his stats (Ross does this in-depth here in a TTE video here) and he’s up in some departments, down in others and mid-table in many of them.
Personally, goalkeeper stats are far from the whole picture because there are a million different contextual factors surrounding the shots which they face, such as the defence in front of them, that maybe aren’t applicable in more universally comparable moments such as a striker bearing down on goal.
Therefore the eye test plays a big role and, well, Button comes out pretty ‘League One’ to me. His reflexes are strong, his long kicking can occasionally be crap and he can be questionable at crosses.
But Reading were never going to get a Championship-level goalkeeper this season. The club has a transfer embargo and a billion other issues, so they trusted a highly experienced goalkeeper to deliver a minimum level of performance and have got exactly that. I was a doubter to begin with but it’s clear with the reaction to Button that we have inexorably high standards for our goalkeepers, thanks to the great players we’ve witnessed over the years.
I don’t think there are many Reading fans who realised quite the drop in quality League One would bring after our decades away. I certainly didn’t. While we’ve given the appropriate slack to several other areas of the pitch and players, it feels a little harsh to go after Button after a couple of recent slips.
With so few games left to play and so much on the line, I don’t think it’s beneficial for our goalkeeper, whoever he is, to feel anything less than total support from his fans as he trots over to start each game.