Coventry - back from the lame: drawing, drawing Reading

[Who Moved The Goalposts?]

100% unwilling I am afraid, but its his choice. Now if you are a basket case printer(s), selling a cost or below then JM.s benevolance knows no bounds.
£100,000,000 million and counting so far.

'Goodhead owner Sir John Madejski, who reiterated his long-term commitment to the business in an interview with PrintWeek during the summer, loaned the group an additional £10.8m during the period, and has extended further financial support since.
http://www.printweek.com/News/1042995/BGP-full-year-results-new-contracts-kick/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Those figures are truly frightening

Coupled with his estimated £30m "going-nowhere" investment in Station Hill, I really do believe his fortune - and especially his liquidity - is the lowest it's been since before he sold Auto Trader. Perhaps he's being so ultra-cautious at RFC because he can envisage a nightmare scenario of meltdown which sees RFC in trouble, no buyer on the horizon and no spare cash to tide us over!

[brendywendy]

hence why its unable, rather than unwilling, despite the first sentence of the post.

[Northern Git]

hence why its unable, rather than unwilling, despite the first sentence of the post.

See your point brendy, I wrote unwilling as he clearly has the ability to support projects (although I agree that with some of his other investments not performing either that may not last long), its just that RFC are not where his personnel resources are headed at the moment.

Looked at from a financial standpoint, I cannot for the life of me see him getting his money back , or even most of his money back, from his print investments. The EBITDA data is truly shocking (and I have seen some bad ones in the print sector)

It does make me wonder what would have happened if a small percentage of that money had reached RFC and enabled us to retain our Premiership place. Potential return must have been better than what he faces at
BGP.

Still thats in the past now. Onwards and upwards (I hope)

[brendywendy]

its certainly not looking like a good way to piss your money away- but i guess thats his perogative

[Ian Royal]

Gotta love how spending a few million on required players would automatically render us bankrupt and relegated. Its as if there is no medium. If we are not financially secure enough, especially after receiving 7 million on sig in august on top of 20 million in the last few seasons to spend 2-3 million in january, we quite frankly are an awfully run club and the fans have every right to ask where the money went.

It's about expectation & practicality. Do it once and you have to keep doing it.

We finish in the top six and fail to go up, we have to spend big to maintain that next season, because it's so easy for other clubs to spend big and over take us,...........
Until the league bring in new legislation barring other clubs from spending more than Reading, then we have to accept this as a fact of life in trying to run a professional football club in a competitive environment. If you can't stand the heat, you have to ask yourself what business you have in the kitchen.

Or, we can keep running a tight ship trying to slowly accumulate a side good enough that with a much smaller push will still make it, ....... Especially with Madejski unwilling or unable, depending on who you believe, to seriously bankroll us.

Sure, we did it once, Ian, but IMHO, we kinda fluked it. It was like a Hollywood plot line, a bunch of misfits, failures, and unknowns from other clubs being brought together to smash this league, and eventually rise to 8th in the country.
Remember, at that time, we had a chairman who was in a position to put monies in, and he did. £100K Ingi, £150K Kitson, etc.
Now we no longer have that chairman, which, in my view, makes it even less likely to see lightning strike twice in the same place.

Of course we're unlikely to do it to that extent again, but lets face it, it's not like it was a fluke in that it's the only time we've challenged is it! And just because we won't slaughter the league again, doesn't mean we won't go up again.

We've been in three play offs competitions to get into the Premier League, missing out on one by a matter of minutes (which any other year we'd have been automatically promoted in anyway), narrowly missing the play offs in another three seasons....

Madejski only really put in the £1m for Lita from what I can tell, generally the rest of it was the way we budgeted. We can still do that, we spent about £3m last season afterall.

Other clubs can play with fire, I don't care. We're still pretty competitive working the way we are. Sooner or later things are going to get a shake up, and even if they don't I for one don't think we should start following the heard so we can get in trouble and stiff our creditors (Coz it'll be us as taxpayers and local businesses that get hit the worst by us getting to pay off 10p in the £) because football is so bent.

[Ian Royal]

hence why its unable, rather than unwilling, despite the first sentence of the post.

See your point brendy, I wrote unwilling as he clearly has the ability to support projects (although I agree that with some of his other investments not performing either that may not last long), its just that RFC are not where his personnel resources are headed at the moment.

Looked at from a financial standpoint, I cannot for the life of me see him getting his money back , or even most of his money back, from his print investments. The EBITDA data is truly shocking (and I have seen some bad ones in the print sector)

It does make me wonder what would have happened if a small percentage of that money had reached RFC and enabled us to retain our Premiership place. Potential return must have been better than what he faces at
BGP.

Still thats in the past now. Onwards and upwards (I hope)

Quite rightly, he sure as hell ain't gonna make a profit out of us with out a oxf*rd load of money going in... so far better to try and make it elsewhere. If he does and gets liquidity again then we may well get a slice.

[Northern Git]

Quite rightly, he sure as hell ain't gonna make a profit out of us with out a oxf*rd load of money going in... so far better to try and make it elsewhere. If he does and gets liquidity again then we may well get a slice.

Ian, was speculating what might have been if the investment has been made whilst we were at our peak a few seasons back. I agree that to get us back to being a competive Premiership side from our current set up would either take loads of cash or some 'miricle' buys from the lower leagues

[PEARCEY]

I can't recall there being this black hole when Madejski gave Burns significant monies to spend on players when we were languishing in the lower divisions and constantly posting losses.

you dont remember a blacvk hole, but also at the same time remember us posting losses every year.........


he had more money then, and not all tied up in struggling businesses for starters.

I could have expressed it better. I don't recall a black hole being used as an excuse not to buy players even though we were posting losses at the time. Hope that meets your divine requirements brendyman.
Madejski does have less money available. I accept that part of your argument to an extent. It still doesn't answer why the club remains unsold despite it being "on the market" for more than three years.I wonder why that is.

[Ian Royal]

Just watched the first half:

Pleased to see Leigterwood much improved in terms of match fitness and being up to the pace of the game, shame he was still pretty mediocre. Karacan & McAnuff playing very well, with McAnuff involved in virtually every attack we had. Long missing a hatful of a good scoring opportunities and ruining a bunch of other attacks with a first touch and control I'd be ashamed of. Kebe quiet. Mills his usual self, Griffin good. Clearly playing a 4-4-2 IMO but with Hunt & Long too eager to roam all over the place.

If a neutral was watching the game they'd think Long was a top top player who was just not having a good day. Shame that most of us have seen him play too many games this season to make that mistake, it's about as good as he gets unfortunately.

Second half:

Lost our rhythm second half and the game became very scrappy. Leigterwood improved, but still wasn't especially good, much more involved though. Karacan went off and we lost our way, might as well as not had a midfield at that point. Criticism of Church is hard, we barely got the ball out of our half while he was on the pitch and he got virtually no service. HRK put in a very good cross, no idea how Long missed from it. Other than that not a lot. Tabb was ok, the game was already over when he came on though.

Federici - 7 - good couple of saves not much wrong
Griffin - 7 - too many lofted balls up the line, but he's pretty reliable
Harte - 6 - not a lot wrong, tidy passes, also too many lofted balls forward
Mills - 6 - usual couple of stupid mistakes and niggly play but nothing cost us and some good.work
Pearce - 7 - much smarter player than Mills, if only he wasn't so cumbersome.
Karacan - 8 couple of wayward passes towards the end, needs to keep it on the deck not dink it miles into the air.
Leigterwoord - 6 - getting progressively better but not really sure why we brought him in on his first two displays. not as good as Tabb or Karacan. Slower, but bigger, whoopee.
McAnuff - 8 MOTM - at the heart of most our best play. Keeps it on the deck, clever player, some great crosses.
Kebe - 6 - wouldn't come off for him, some poor control and touches, a couple of moments of magic, very quiet.
Long - 5 - missed half a dozen chances, ruined another 4 or 5 attacks with control like he has a club foot.
Hunt - 5 - not really in the game at all.

Church - 6 - game died once he came on, but I genuinely don't think with the service he got he could have done a great deal better, hence the 6
Robson-Kanu - 6 - one great cross that should have won us the game, otherwise nice feet but no end product.
Tabb - 6 - not enough time, energetic and replaced what we'd been missing with Karacan, but the damage had been done.

How we didn't win that I have no idea. By far the better team, especially first half where we tore them apart. Utterly toothless in the box.

[PlasticRoyale]

p.s. stop using the word 'monies' - you thick pcunts

[Pseud O'Nym]

100% unwilling I am afraid, but its his choice. Now if you are a basket case printer(s), selling a cost or below then JM.s benevolance knows no bounds.
£100,000,000 million and counting so far.

'Goodhead owner Sir John Madejski, who reiterated his long-term commitment to the business in an interview with PrintWeek during the summer, loaned the group an additional £10.8m during the period, and has extended further financial support since.
http://www.printweek.com/News/1042995/BGP-full-year-results-new-contracts-kick/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Absolutely, imagine how ridiculous it would be if he were to think that keeping open a factory that's responsible for half the employment in Bicester was as important as RFC getting a few extra points.

[under the tin]

Quite rightly, he sure as hell ain't gonna make a profit out of us with out a oxf*rd load of money going in... so far better to try and make it elsewhere. If he does and gets liquidity again then we may well get a slice.

Ian, was speculating what might have been if the investment has been made whilst we were at our peak a few seasons back.
Jm has just passed the 20 year mark as chairman.
From my rubbish memory (and I'll retract this if I'm wrong), the only two seasons that RFC made an operating profit in his entire tenure were the two seasons in the PL, weren't they?
I agree that to get us back to being a competive Premiership side from our current set up would either take loads of cash or some 'miricle' buys from the lower leagues