Flemming Pedersen was pleased to bounce back from last week’s defeat to Birmingham City with a convincing win over Reading at Jersey Road on Monday afternoon. Raphael Assibey-Mensah struck a hat-trick and Danny Parish netted the other as The Royals, who have beaten Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester City in the PDL Division One this season, were blown away by the young Bees. Speaking to Bees Player after the match, Flemming said that yesterday’s game was all about the result after last week’s defeat and he was delighted to get the win and a performance to match.
“I am very happy with the performance,” said Flemming. “Our target was to win. After we lost 5-0 to Birmingham Reserves it was important to show that we could bounce back and I think we showed that from the first second. We had one main goal today and that was to win. All the tactics that we prepared worked. The high pressure worked fine, not perfectly to start with, especially on our left side, but with a little adjustment in the second-half we closed everything down. Except for a couple of minutes in the first-half and a couple of minutes in the second-half we showed we could play with high pressure for 90 minutes and that is very seldom seen. Most of the game it was one-way traffic.”
Monday’s victory means that The B Team have now lost just one of their last six matches and Flemming is pleased with the improvements that he is seeing both individually and as a team. The Danish coach feels that the better team play in recent weeks is helping individuals within the team to show off more and improve.
“Today the decision making on when to play forward and when to keep hold of the ball was better than we have seen it before,” said Flemming. “The quality in playing forward when we won the ball was also better today. We showed today that we have improved in a lot of parameters. I am seeing improvement in the quality of the passing and the quality of the decision making but it always depends on your teammates. If they move in the right way then it is always easier for the individual to make the right pass. We have to see everything in context, but if we are improving the context then the individuals will also improve, as we say today.”