Next Reading Manager: Press Conference @ 9:15

[RoyalinBracknell]

They've removed a manager they didn't think could do the job they wanted him to do after giving him ample opportunity to make a success of the job he started with promotion.

They didn't just throw him out at Christmas but showed him loyalty worthy of the man, a loyalty that most other clubs probably wouldn't have afforded him.

I love the fact that you (and others) take the fact that Brian wasn't sacked after 18 games as some kind of positive, as if it would have been perfectly reasonable to do so.

YES! We're so benevolent we're not ditching the guy who's brought us 2.5 seasons of success against the odds after 18 games!!11!!

That really depends on definition of success. Only one season was truly successful. And he really did screw up big time this season on virtually all fronts, not least in the squad that he assembled and his dealings during the two transfer windows.

I think you'd need to have quite a harsh definition of success not to view his previous 2.5 seasons as successful! He took us to two FA Cup quarter finals, got us promoted, steered us away from a relegation battle to a top half finish and took us to a play-off final! The only real slightest 'failure' in his reign (before this season) was losing at Wembley to a superior Swansea side. It would be a shame if what happened this season tainted the preception of his previous reign.

That said, it's fair enough to say McDermott has made mistakes this season. We don't know for certain whose choice it was not to invest more in the squad (I'm open to the idea that McDermott overestimated the ability of the squad following our run last season - if he did, I think others did too) and there have certainly been some decisions you would question. Personally I'd have stuck with him but the decision to change manager can certainly be justified. The key is to work out what we need to establish ourselves at this level in the long-term and what manager is right for that. How close the board are to getting that is difficult to ascertain as we've heard very little from them. But having made the decision to change manager I'm happy for them to take their time bringing the new one in. Ideally you'd get your preferred choice in as soon as possible so he has time to assess the squad and possibly even give us a strong enough honeymoon period that we could avoid relegation. But currently we're not in the strongest position and if waiting until the end of the season allows us greater choice in terms of who we appoint (no relegation on their CV, they'll know their own club's fate by then) then I'm happy to go along with that, and I'd be interested to see how Dolan got on for the remainder of the season.

[Tredder]

Adkins price has gone from 4/6 to 1/8 within the last hour, bearing in mind, this is now the 3rd time he's gone odds on.

[working class hero]

Describing some of the delusional fans as mongs is extremely offensive to those with Down's syndrome....

[paultheroyal]

Adkins price has gone from 4/6 to 1/8 within the last hour, bearing in mind, this is now the 3rd time he's gone odds on.

[surrounded by saints]

I'd just like to see an update from the club - giving some sort of scoop on how the search is going. Sounds as if it's not going too well, but now we don't know if the club has ANYONE in mind - other than Dolan.

So far, from the club itself - all we've received is "McDermott sacked. Hard decision. Will have new manager ASAP." - Leaving us all in the dark really. C'mon Reading FC, tell us what is going on, or what isn't going on (as the case may well be).

the club seem intent on keeping us in the dark,but will no doubt be pestering us shortly to renew our season tickets.

[The Beardy Man]

I'd just like to see an update from the club - giving some sort of scoop on how the search is going. Sounds as if it's not going too well, but now we don't know if the club has ANYONE in mind - other than Dolan.

So far, from the club itself - all we've received is "McDermott sacked. Hard decision. Will have new manager ASAP." - Leaving us all in the dark really. C'mon Reading FC, tell us what is going on, or what isn't going on (as the case may well be).

the club seem intent on keeping us in the dark,but will no doubt be pestering us shortly to renew our season tickets.

I for one, would rather that the club didn't keep clogging up my various news feeds with 'What Sean Morrison is having for breakfast' or 'how meaningful it was to Robson-Kanu to score for Wales' or indeed how 'Player X knows we need to fight and will keep trying till the end of the season'.

It would be nice in fact, if the club took the view that no news to report means reporting no news.

If they have no concrete managerial info to impart then much the better that they say nothing at all in my eyes, just hoping they extend that to their reporting on all the other spurious nonsense to come out of the club in order to try and get hits on the internet.

[Royalwaster]

Adkins price has gone from 4/6 to 1/8 within the last hour, bearing in mind, this is now the 3rd time he's gone odds on.

Noticed that too - that's almost a dead-cert in betting terms .... it's either we've got some serious delusional betters out there or ....

[Wycombe Royal]

I'd just like to see an update from the club - giving some sort of scoop on how the search is going. Sounds as if it's not going too well, but now we don't know if the club has ANYONE in mind - other than Dolan.

So far, from the club itself - all we've received is "McDermott sacked. Hard decision. Will have new manager ASAP." - Leaving us all in the dark really. C'mon Reading FC, tell us what is going on, or what isn't going on (as the case may well be).

the club seem intent on keeping us in the dark,but will no doubt be pestering us shortly to renew our season tickets.

Maybe it is because they are going after managers of other clubs and it would be disrespectful to talk about it in the media.

These things SHOULD be done without media intervention, but that obvoiusly doesn't fit with all the keyboard warriors out there who are intent on moaning about everything.

[Royal Rother]

Its actually quite touching how many of you seem to cling to some deluded hope that one day I'll say something positive about the club.

Would have been far more apposite.

[Rollerbob]

I'd just like to see an update from the club - giving some sort of scoop on how the search is going. Sounds as if it's not going too well, but now we don't know if the club has ANYONE in mind - other than Dolan.

So far, from the club itself - all we've received is "McDermott sacked. Hard decision. Will have new manager ASAP." - Leaving us all in the dark really. C'mon Reading FC, tell us what is going on, or what isn't going on (as the case may well be).

the club seem intent on keeping us in the dark,but will no doubt be pestering us shortly to renew our season tickets.

Maybe it is because they are going after managers of other clubs and it would be disrespectful to talk about it in the media.

These things SHOULD be done without media intervention, but that obvoiusly doesn't fit with all the keyboard warriors out there who are intent on moaning about everything.

It's doable without mentioning names + clubs, but if the club came out and said "we are in the process of interviewing clients and have targeted three names" - I'd be happier, and at least I'd know that Reading have a plan.. or what their thinking is..

[Royal Lady]

Adkins price has gone from 4/6 to 1/8 within the last hour, bearing in mind, this is now the 3rd time he's gone odds on.

What you praying for Paul - according to you on March 11, he was signing the contract within 48 hours!

[Pepe the Horseman]

I want Branko Brnovic, seems to be quite a good WUM.

[Hoop Blah]

What have they done right?

They've removed a manager they didn't think could do the job they wanted him to do after giving him ample opportunity to make a success of the job he started with promotion.

They didn't just throw him out at Christmas but showed him loyalty worthy of the man, a loyalty that most other clubs probably wouldn't have afforded him.

I love the fact that you (and others) take the fact that Brian wasn't sacked after 18 games as some kind of positive, as if it would have been perfectly reasonable to do so.

YES! We're so benevolent we're not ditching the guy who's brought us 2.5 seasons of success against the odds after 18 games!!11!!

Against the climate of clubs sacking managers after a lot less games, the average life span of a league manager being something like 2 seasons, and the criticism being that the sacking was a monumental shift away from 'The Reading Way' (which incidently includes sacking Porterfield, Bullivent, Burns and Rodgers under pressure of bad results) I think it's pretty much a given that it's positive that the club stood by him longer than the majority of other clubs probably would have.

You keep comparing it to the real world of industry and commerce, but in my industry an MD is booted after a bad financial year or, in general after 3 or 4 years irrespective of performance. Football is a ruthless, often immoral, business. It's based largely on results on the field which can be impacted by lots more than the managers performance. The nature of the beast is that managers get sacked but somewhere along the lines many of you seem to think that RFC operate in a paralell universe where all managers live happily ever after.

[akranes]

WE WANT DICK!

i won't stop until our managerial position is penetrated

[Hoop Blah]

Why on earth would any club sack a manager with 9 games to go unless they had a viable successor ready to take over.

Because that manager they're sacking had tried and failed already.

I keep hearing all this rubbish about other clubs always having managers lined up to take over when they sack a failing one. I just don't think thats the case apart from rare examples like Ramos at Spurs or more recently Southampton when they booted Adkins.

Some appointments happen pretty quickly yes, but I don't think they've usually been signed, sealed and delivered when the exiting manager leaves.

Wolves did the same last year and that went well. We had a better - be it very slim - chance of staying up by keeping faith with Brian.

Wolves sacked a manager on a bad run of form who'd just slipped in to the relegation zone on goal difference then appointed his assistant until the end of the season. Nothing was likely to change in that situation.

It's not what we've done. The only similarity is sacking a previously successful manager.

Slight re-writing of Wolves's history there. Wolves had been on a slippery slope for much of the season before that point - like us - and many had speculated about McCarthy being sacked before Xmas - like us (on here, at least, if not in the papers). After sacking him very late in the season - like us - they then tried a number of names for their next manager, each turning them down. So far, we've only had Gus turn us down but the similarities are there for all who care to look for them, rather than stick their heads in the sand.

Totally agree they'd been having a bad season (not sure on the sacking at Christmas thing as I don't follow them that closely) but they'd just dropped into the relegation zone on goaldifference whereas we'd just failed to get out of the bottom 3, where we've been the majority of the season, with 2 of our biggest home games of the season. They were must win games.

The Wolves decision looked much more like a knee jerk reaction on the back of a 5-1 defeat in their local derby. Ours looks more like, to me at least, the decision to try the only thing left having been stranded at the foot of the league with very little chance of getting out of it with the current manager.

As you say we've, apparenlty, been turned down by Poyet after an interview (I've no idea if we did or didn't offer him the job or if he's just one of the shortlist we were always apparently going to interview). That's similar yes, but the key difference for me is that we have made a change whereas they just removed the man at the top and left the rest of his team in place to carry on his work.

That's not the case here.

[Hoop Blah]

What have they done right?

They've removed a manager they didn't think could do the job they wanted him to do after giving him ample opportunity to make a success of the job he started with promotion. Didn't give him the tools to do the job.

They didn't just throw him out at Christmas but showed him loyalty worthy of the man, a loyalty that most other clubs probably wouldn't have afforded him. Loyalty would've been to give him money after he had to continually sell his best players year after year. Do you and others really think that after having Sig and Long sold from under him BM wouldn't have been like a kid in a sweet shop given a bigger budget?

Quietly drawn up their shortlist of prospective managers and started talking to them about the job, potentially offering it to one (three) candidate(s) who may have turned it down. (They may have offered it to three. One who they were very unlikely to get as he could be passing them by, one who is unlikely to join as he has probably had enough of trigger happy owner's to last him a lifetime and one who they likely wanted but were quickly shut down by the players.)

They're taking their time trying to find the right person all without turning it into a media circus (It is a media circus already, we're in the PL.) under pressure from a soundbite generation of fans dying for the latest bit of irrelevant 'breaking news' from Sky Sports News. (I don't care about what SSN has to say about who are the favourites I want the club to actually look like they have some sort of a plan)

Face it Hoop there is very little direction in this process and you can dress it up as much as you want but this is a mess. As others have said it's rather naïve of you to think this is going any other way but badly.

No direction? What do you mean by that?

To me there's plenty of direction because they've removed the man they don't think could do the job they wanted him to.

They've put the first team in the hands of someone who might be able to shake things up a bit whilst they go through the proper process of recruiting someone.

It would seem that Zingaravich has a good idea of what he wants and is going after it. He might not get his first target but he certainly has direction.

[Royal Rob]

Adkins price has gone from 4/6 to 1/8 within the last hour, bearing in mind, this is now the 3rd time he's gone odds on.

The Reading Post have reported he is "increasingly unlikely" to take the job. A Press Association sports journalist has Tweeted he would be "shocked" if Adkins took the job from what he has heard. I find these two sources a lot more reliable than a few punters spot the odds shortening and pile in thinking they're onto a winner - and in the process make the odds shorten even further. The odds have slid all over the place during the last two weeks of frenzied speculation.

Ignoring the bookmakers entirly, the longer this goes on the more I'm convinced it will be Dolan on a caretaker basis until the end of the season.

[winchester_royal]

I do love a good saga.

['lista]

IN! for One Direction as manager(s).

[Hoop Blah]

They've removed a manager they didn't think could do the job they wanted him to do after giving him ample opportunity to make a success of the job he started with promotion.

They didn't just throw him out at Christmas but showed him loyalty worthy of the man, a loyalty that most other clubs probably wouldn't have afforded him.

Quietly drawn up their shortlist of prospective managers and started talking to them about the job, potentially offering it to one candidate who may have turned it down.

They're taking their time trying to find the right person all without turning it into a media circus under pressure from a soundbite generation of fans dying for the latest bit of irrelevant 'breaking news' from Sky Sports News.

In my book, loyalty lasts a bit longer than 2 months.

Loyalty would've been giving him the season. If you're going to sack someone and get in someone to do a better job, at least give him the time to do something about it.

We already are a media circus - we're in the Premier League, it comes with the territory. We've already had the Di Canio & Poyet installments & Adkins may be another - if we appoint Dolan (even if it is only for the rest of the season) there will be a fair bit of media comment on us failing to get our preferred choice(s) and now left with the only option available to us.

Loyalty in football doesn't really exist though. Like you I'd quite like to have seen him given the season after his previous successes, but if we were going to sack him in the summer why wait until then?

If he'd got us to survival over the next 9 games (and that is just about the biggest IF going) then the season would, in my opinion, still have been a shambolic failure because of the manner of the way we've played and the issues we've faced all season. I'm guessing that Zingaravich feels much the same and so didn't have faith in McDermott to perform better next season.

Why just prolong the agony. It's like not dumping a girlfriend before Christmas because you've already bought her a present.