I am slightly relieved we did not sign any more Drenthe-like players, and I am not over-confident about Sissoko. Maybe our best bet is team spirit and workaday players, as in the past. The chief scout talks a bit of psychobabble, it seems to me, and I suppose he is behind the Euro-signing efforts. M...

I can't get worked up about the lack of signings yesterday. Good on Hammond if he won't pay through the nose. He was slagged off for not coughing up when we got gazumped over Tommy Smith, but he had the price right, and Portsmouth, those masters of financial wisdom, had it wrong. * In theory we have...

Jobie McAnuff

I thought he might have changed things at half time,like bring on Royston or something,Dunno why he chose not to.It may be a tin pot cup but its a tin pot cup with a europa league place avalible.Changing things around could have at the very least possibly limited the damage.Boro are a good side but...

Ray Hiron, Mikele Leigertwood, Stephen Hunt.

I just think this season has confirmed what I always suspected, which is that Jimmy is a malingerer. Is he always that badly injured? He is a very highly strung, almost delicate individual. He is always feeling little strains here and there just at key moments in a season--after which he is then out...

Reading almost always win these difficult games against lower-league clubs (but Stevenage, hmm), so I am going:

2:3 to us

Adkins might put some second-stringers in and accidentally improve the team.

Sidwell, Sigurdsson, Dunphy.

Aha! Re the Souness incident, see the bottom post on the linked page--from someone who was actually there:

http://hobnob.royals.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=108664

Graham Souness: is my memory playing tricks on me or do I remember reading in the Post in the seventies that Souness climbed over the wall in a stiffs match at Elm Park and squared up to some fans? (May have been when he was at Spurs?) Can't find it on the internet. If so, that's worse than what Sua...

It depends what sort of midfield we're going to have. If we adopt a pressing midfield, built round Leigertwood and Karacan (and before anyone hollers, that's very effective at champ level), then Tabb is the perfect back up for that. However, if--as I expect he will--Adsy goes for a more creative mid...

Does anyone find it odd that when Adkins was appointed there were many on here who railed against his supposed smugness, arrogance, and general square peg in a round holeness? Since then, every Saints fan who has come on here has said Adkins is approachable, and affable to the point of over friendl...

Carrico :D - was captain of Sporting Lisbon If we are going to have a new captain, Adders should choose him on what he sees at this club. Just making someone captain because they were captain at their last club is potentially problematic. Sven found that out when he made Matt Mills captain. Persona...

They also spent like a Premiership outfit, something that we all became painfully aware of early on in the season. McD failed on two counts in my opinion. Loyalty to certain players and the failure to spend what money was (apparently) given to him to do so in January. If we had actually spent £30m ...

melonhead agree with that, until you started going on about luck

Yeah, we've had some bad luck too, for example Newcastle at home.

I'm frankly amazed by some comments. So at the time of Adkins departure his team was "only" 3 points clear of the relegation places? How many points clear of Reading was that at the time? How many extra ppg had Saints gained? Answer .27ppg = 10 points in a season and Saints were improving...

Comes over to me as a prig, with the posture of a man recovering from penetration by a corn-on-the-cob. I don't expect to enjoy his smug interviews the way I enjoyed Uncle Fester's ever so umble ones. But this is all very subjective: like most schoolmaster types, he is probably reasonably genuine, j...

He was a significant contributor to QPR's promotion but became surplus to requirements once they got to the Premier League as he is nowhere near up to the required standard Nothing very true there. He came to us fairly early in QPR's promotion season, and he said Warnock had already told him he was...

Proud.

That is all.

Divvy http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/21793984?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Paolo Di Canio has denied that his visit to the Madejski Stadium at the weekend was linked with the departure of Reading manager Brian McDermott.

Thank oxf*rd for that.