How bad would relegation be?

[Sutekh]

So Dai Yongee is complete innocent in all of this then? Naive thinking at its best

Life is never so easy. I live in China, I know what Chinese bosses are like. I've spoken about it before on here.

However the question here is, who would have had Reading doing better? Maybe someone would. He choices for managers has been weird at best. He fires the current manager who was doing well, 37% win ratio. Pauno had 35%, though I'd say he got unlucky, especially this season, would Bowen have done better? Maybe, probably not, we'll never know. Ince was a weird, weird appointment. Maybe he'll only get one win ever at Reading.

But Madejski was someone who cared about the club, he sold to someone who didn't care about the club who sold to people who didn't care about the club who sold to someone who doesn't care about the club. Welcome to modern football. You get lucky or not. Look at Chelsea, Abramovich was the best thing to happen to them and now he's screwed them. Any Chinese or Russian owner is now going to look very fragile. But Reading is a club with not much going for it other than having a sizable support for a Championship team at best.

The Russian was the worst thing that's happened to the club since [insert whenever you think it was worse, before Madejski probably]. Whatever bad things Dai might have, have been made worse by the problems of overpaid players which long contracts.

Please correct me if I’m wrong but as I understand things what money AZ had came from his father in the understanding he (Anton) brought in other parties to take on/share the financial burden which he couldn’t do. As a result of this the shares he had acquired reverted to JM at the end of the 2012/13 season and JM was left to find another set of owners (the Thais) as quickly as he could.

[Royal_jimmy]

China is an industrial shithole

[YorkshireRoyal99]

Chinese culture doesn't really help either.

[Elm Park Kid]

What you have to appreciate is that the Championship as a whole has been a financial circus for the last 10 years. Our spending really isn't unique compared to what other clubs have done and our wage budget (even last season) was fairly average for the league. The issue is that at any one time there are like 4-5 clubs receiving parachute payments and another 2-3 with owners who are trying to gamble the same as us. They're pretty much all spending ridiculous amounts trying to achieve the prize of PL football before the ticking timebomb goes off.

If we had done the 'sensible' thing of keeping spending without P&S limit then we'd basically be one of the lowest wage budget Championship club, continually selling our 'top talent'. Given how the league works now, I would argue that the 'Reading way' has a low probability of success. Sure, with decent management, scouting, coaching and financial planning you can potentially do well, but everything has to go right at the same time.

I don't like the way football finance work - but the sad, sad truth is that the spending we did was probably the mot realistic way of getting into the PL. The issue is just how appalling awful that spending was carried out. Yes - everything is a gamble in football, there's no certainty that anything you do will work out. But it's no coincidence that we've gotten things wrong time and time again. But the owners aren't going to acknowledge that anytime soon - and frankly the last thing we want right now is for them to leave. I don't see an easy way out - maybe the next manager they bring in will actually be decent and take a hands on approach with everything. That's our only hope.

[Dennis the Butler]

Relegation maybe the only way we can get rid of the that cnut Kia, hopefully he wouldn't want to be associated with a League 1 club .. would he ?

[YorkshireRoyal99]

What you have to appreciate is that the Championship as a whole has been a financial circus for the last 10 years. Our spending really isn't unique compared to what other clubs have done and our wage budget (even last season) was fairly average for the league. The issue is that at any one time there are like 4-5 clubs receiving parachute payments and another 2-3 with owners who are trying to gamble the same as us. They're pretty much all spending ridiculous amounts trying to achieve the prize of PL football before the ticking timebomb goes off.

If we had done the 'sensible' thing of keeping spending without P&S limit then we'd basically be one of the lowest wage budget Championship club, continually selling our 'top talent'. Given how the league works now, I would argue that the 'Reading way' has a low probability of success. Sure, with decent management, scouting, coaching and financial planning you can potentially do well, but everything has to go right at the same time.

I don't like the way football finance work - but the sad, sad truth is that the spending we did was probably the mot realistic way of getting into the PL. The issue is just how appalling awful that spending was carried out. Yes - everything is a gamble in football, there's no certainty that anything you do will work out. But it's no coincidence that we've gotten things wrong time and time again. But the owners aren't going to acknowledge that anytime soon - and frankly the last thing we want right now is for them to leave. I don't see an easy way out - maybe the next manager they bring in will actually be decent and take a hands on approach with everything. That's our only hope.

Agree in part in terms of finances. Football clubs, particularly Championship clubs, aren't really run to be self sustainable anymore. If you were to look at wages to turnover percentage, I could bet that over 2/3's of the league would be over 100%, it's not sustainable, it has and at the moment always will rely on clubs to be funded by owners who put money in, which is why so many clubs run into financial problems. Maybe not financial problems in terms of going bust, but financial issues in terms of being able to spend. That's the Championship culture these days which is really exaggerated due to parachute payments.

You have to be set up well in order to be successful. I have been convinced that teams like Millwall, Preston and maybe even Luton nowadays do as well as they do because a lot of other clubs are run incorrectly, namely ourselves, Birmingham, Derby and Sheffield Wednesday. You can normally tell when a decent club has off the field issues, when their league position starts to falter. Look at Stoke and Bristol City this season for example, who seem under pressure from FFP now. We are very much the same, with last year being the exception.

[Orion1871]

Relegation maybe the only way we can get rid of the that cnut Kia, hopefully he wouldn't want to be associated with a League 1 club .. would he ?

Which just leaves us with experienced football expert Dayong Pang to do the negotiations to rebuild the squad for next season.

We're screwed either way.

[Royal_jimmy]

At least Dayong Pang is good at Excel spreadsheets

[Snowflake Royal]

But apparently not good enough with his conditional formatting to show our wage budget in the red for the entire time he's been here.

[Ascotexgunner]

Go down, and we ain't coming back for a while. Could be years even like Ipswich or Sunderland.....unless we get really lucky and find a great manager.....which if recent selections are to go by....isn't gonna happen.

[ReadingGlasses]

Relegation would be a really bad scenario.

People often talk as if it would be easy to come back up, but that's a long way from guaranteed. There's plenty of decent teams in that division in competition for promotion. The current financial problems aren't going to go away, and if anything will get even worse, so it's also not like Reading will have the budget to make a big push for promotion.

The reality would be that the majority of the squad would leave on a free transfer, and the squad would have to be rebuilt based on cheap free transfers and promoting academy players who may not be ready.

The last time Reading were relegated to that division they were in a much better state. The new stadium had just opened, the club had a wage budget at the higher end of the division, the behind the scenes management of the club was pretty good, and there was a general atmosphere of hope for the future.

And it was still pretty crap at first. I'd bet that many who romanticise the idea of relegation are forgetting those awful mid week games in the pouring rain, watching Reading lose 1-0 to a "smaller team" in front of 6-7,000 fans.

It took several seasons to slowly build back up last time. Relegation now could be a lot harder, and take a lot longer to recover from.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

Go down, and we ain't coming back for a while. Could be years even like Ipswich or Sunderland.....unless we get really lucky and find a great manager.....which if recent selections are to go by....isn't gonna happen.

The only real comparison to Sunderland or Ipswich would be the timescale it would take us to get back up. We wouldn't be the club that everyone targets as the "favourite" to get out of the vision like Portsmouth, Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday are. We'd certainly be up there, but there would be far less pressure on ourselves than the aforementioned clubs.

The problem Ipswich had was a lack of investment, an ageing squad littered with players who were stale and decreasing in value and they were more interested in retaining players rather than investing on new players. They ended up with a very poor squad in this league, hence why they finished bottom and they haven't been able to build since. Sunderland suffered from major financial issues with their players earning massive money as well as a lack of investment from themselves, even in the PL, on basic assets, such as painting their stadium seats for example.

We are almost the inverse to that where extravagant spending has lead to these issues now and the problem in League One would be we might not have the pulling power or ability to invest to bring in top players at that level to get us promoted at the first attempt. If we had the squad we have now and went down, I think we'd get back up at the first attempt as we'd only require a manager who could get enough out of a clearly talented group of players, not a distinctly tall order given the quality we have in respect to the rest of League One.

[under the tin]

"Quality of Squad"
Quality schmolity.
I spent over 35 years watching Reading grubbing around in the lower reaches of the league, and if you think that the Championship is a war of attrition, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Even if our technicians bother staying with us, (which they won't) they will get kicked up in the air on a freezing cold night in Fleetwood, and
we don't have enough warriors in our squad to cope with that.
We have lacked big characters to drive the team on for many a season now, perhaps Leigertwood/Jem the last?
It finally caught up with us. It's back to the very basics, should we go down, but we wont have the pulling power of a Pompey or a Sunderland, either.

[Snowflake Royal]

Go down, and we ain't coming back for a while. Could be years even like Ipswich or Sunderland.....unless we get really lucky and find a great manager.....which if recent selections are to go by....isn't gonna happen.

Ipswich and Sunderland haven't been down that long. They're only just beyond the reasonable 3 year bounce back period.

[Notts Royal]

Is it me or is L1 a much stronger division that it was when we were there last? Not necessarily in terms of talent, but clubs.

There’s at least half a dozen that are bigger than us: Sunderland, Pompey, Ipswich, Sheff Wed, Charlton, Bolton (marginally), Plymouth?

[BROB0T]

China is an industrial shithole

wadacunt!

[Snowflake Royal]

Is it me or is L1 a much stronger division that it was when we were there last? Not necessarily in terms of talent, but clubs.

There’s at least half a dozen that are bigger than us: Sunderland, Pompey, Ipswich, Sheff Wed, Charlton, Bolton (marginally), Plymouth?

Lolly @ Charlton, Bolton or especially Plymouth being bigger than us.

And what exactly have Wednesday or Ipswich done in the last 20 years to be bigger than us?

Pompey used to be more recently, but they're a shadow of their former (cheating) selves. And being big hasn’t done Sunderland any favours for quite a while.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

Is it me or is L1 a much stronger division that it was when we were there last? Not necessarily in terms of talent, but clubs.

There’s at least half a dozen that are bigger than us: Sunderland, Pompey, Ipswich, Sheff Wed, Charlton, Bolton (marginally), Plymouth?

Lolly @ Charlton, Bolton or especially Plymouth being bigger than us.

And what exactly have Wednesday or Ipswich done in the last 20 years to be bigger than us?

Pompey used to be more recently, but they're a shadow of their former (cheating) selves. And being big hasn’t done Sunderland any favours for quite a while.

Maybe not so much in recent history, but we are a similar statured club to Charlton and Bolton I'd say are bigger than what we are. Plymouth have a great fanbase and have spent some years in Division One (Championship) but they are not bigger.

Wednesday and Ipswich are definitely traditionally bigger clubs than ourselves, as are Sunderland. Whether it helps them or hinders them now is a different story, but you'd get the feeling that they will eventually make it out of that division, whereas the likes of Shrewsbury and Lincoln, who have recently made it to the play off final in League One, you would imagine would have to make the most of the opportunity to get out of League One, whereas your Sunderland's, Ipswich's, Portsmouth's etc there is a general feeling that it's "only a matter of time" before they do. Time being the variable of course.

[Weymouth Royal]

For the loss of £8m, dropping to the third division; is there a parachute payment system in place to cope with the financial loss?

[sheshnu]

Would relegation actually mean anything to the majority of fans? We'd still look forward to Saturdays and midweeks, there would still be plenty of bigger teams and plenty of smaller teams and hopefully we'd see a good game every now and then.

I've never understood fans who would rather be watching Reading play Liverpool or West Ham over Birmingham or Blackburn, or Portsmouth or Charlton. As long as the team is still playing every week the entertainment is largely the same, we enjoy the victories and try to forget about the defeats.

The club going out of business wouldn't be great for the fans who go to games, who would then be left with a choice of non-league or travelling to.. Wycombe? but I think the transition to another team would be pretty smooth for most. A welcome relief for some

Still, let's hope we can enjoy a successful battle against relegation and hope things improve next time (they probably won't).