SteveRoyal The issue is the decisions of the board.
We'll assume that under Coppell, there weren't many decisions to be made regarding manager, staff, etc.
but there was the issue of buying players of Prem quality - which we didn't. Mark one.
This can't really be laid at the board seeing as everyone involved has confirmed money was made available. The signings we did make were poor, you can't blame the board for that, its football decisions and therefore the manager and scouting team.
Also Coppell himself has admitted to nearly signing several players and then getting cold feet in case they "disrupted his squad", for example O'Neill and Cahill.
Mark One Debunked.Then we risked finances by keeping the majority of our squad together and continuing to pay Premiership wages, only to fail to achieve promotion. Mark two.
Firstly we didn't continue to pay Premier League wages, the wage budget was cut considerably, it just remained extremely high for the championship despite that.
Is this such a fault? Is it even that high a risk gamble? Afterall there's no sniff of administration about the club DESPITE being threatened with relegation from the championship two years after relegation from the Premiership. That's fairly impressive given the likes of Charlton, Leeds & Saints financial plights recently.
The fans would have been fuming if the board hadn't made this decision. There was already enough bitching that we didn't spend enough on players. And it would have paid off if some of our key players hadn't just stopped turning up after Xmas last season. Very nearly paid off convincingly.
Mark Two Debunked.We then had to sell the majority of our recognisable stars, or loan them out to get them off the wage bill. Mark three.
This is essentially an extension of Mark Two and given if we had not kept the finances the season before the players would have gone then. So your point is completely flawed. You want one thing in the previous point and another thing in this. Also, regardless of the money situation we were never going to keep players who are considered by many who count to be Premier League quality.
Mark Three DebunkedWe then failed to bring in much quality to replace the likes of Doyle, Bikey, Harper (
) and instead replaced them with Academy failures or Championship chumps. Mark four.
Ridiculously harsh on a lot of the players making the step up this season. You simply can't expect every player to be a success. Rasiak, Howard, McAnuff, Bertrand, Sigurdsson, Karacan & Church have all done well and are all fairly new to the team. I'd also argue that only O'Dea has been a failure, with the rest still having plenty of potential.
People seem to fail to realise a championship club can't replace Premier League quality players with Premier League quality replacements. The deficiencies in the squad upfront last season are coming home to roost this season, at least partly due to an injury. And defensively we've been unfortunate in that Mills hasn't been as big as a success as hoped.
Again, this is much more of an issue for the manager and scouts
Mark Four DebunkedMost importantly, is the appointment of Rodgers'. I'm of the opinion that he came in at the wrong time.
He came into a Reading squad that had been dismantled in a matter of months, and then had to try and remake the squad with a "cloth cutting" amount of money. He then had to get his "world class" ideas across to the squad, which barely knew each other and had played together for a
very small amount of time. Mark five.
This is a fair point, though it is still worth remembering that Rodgers spent double the money of any previous Reading manager in the championship. In fact he spent close to Coppell's spending in the first Premier League season. We've never been huge Champ spenders, but regardless of that £3.5m should still get you plenty of quality at this level. Certainly enough with the players remaining that we should have been able to consolidate.If Rodger's had come in in a few years time, then perhaps he may have succeeded - we'll never know. He may get a second shot, although many Reading fans now hate him for the predicament he got us in.
Again, this is a fair comment.Then the sacking of Rodgers'. Sack the man that got us here, then have a scout manage the squad. Uhh...
wtf? 
It all comes down to the performance of the manager. There is no question that his performance with us was sackable. The only dispute can really be the timing and whether he was going to manage to turn it around. Opinion seems split pretty half and half on that, so you can hardly blame the board for that decision.
Yes you can have a valid point about the replacement, but it is still way too early to judge McDermott, afterall he has come into a situation half way through a season. Rodgers by comparison had months to work with the players before kicking off. Rodgers supporters wanted him to have yet more time and you couldn't judge him after 21 league games, yet can judge Mcdermott (who has a near identical record so far) after 4!!!??
The decision in the summer was obviously for new direction and an outside eye. The board obviously have decided that was the wrong decision and now believe continuity is key. That may not be right, but it's hardly a terrible decision to complain about. Especially when it's way too early to judge McDermott.So, 6 major decisions, 6 major impacts on our predicament now.
2 major decisionsCan't sack the board, because we have nobody to replace them.
Can't sack the board regardless, but you're right, no point in calling for them to go without a viable alternativeCan't sack the chairman, there's nobody there to buy it.
Essentially the same thing as the previous point seeing as JM and two of his employees are the board.Can't sack the manager, there isn't one.
We could sack the manager as it is Mcdermott, but three managers in a season is going to do no one good and it's too early to tell how good he is yet.What we need is to get a manager in and then hope that the hierarchy at RFC make the right decisions to get us out of this mess.
What WE need to do, is get behind the club, get behind the players and do everything we can to lift us. We need to back McDermott because he is the man in charge and if it all goes wrong then is the time for gnashing of teeth and recriminations. The only effect we can have is on atmosphere.Short-term, who knows what's going to happen?
