Ex Players

[Hendo]

Jake Cooper scored today

How many more times will this happen. An ex player that doesn’t make the grade at Reading comes back to score against us. Greg Halford, Darius Henderson, now Jake Cooper. How many more?

Ex-players score against the former clubs all the time - this is not exclusively a Reading FC issue. Although it does seem that some Reading fans think it is, which I find bizarre.

[URZZZZ]

Jake Cooper scored today

How many more times will this happen. An ex player that doesn’t make the grade at Reading comes back to score against us. Greg Halford, Darius Henderson, now Jake Cooper. How many more?

or clearly is making the grade but our inept background staff miss the ability aka Stacey, Osho and our greatest ever transfer mistake Antonio.

At the risk of repeating what’s been said numerous times to you, these players would likely have not have had the careers they’ve had if they’d stuck it out here

Given how poor and ineffective Loader was who was given a fair few opportunities with us, will that be a mistake if he becomes a top player?

[paultheroyal]

How many more times will this happen. An ex player that doesn’t make the grade at Reading comes back to score against us. Greg Halford, Darius Henderson, now Jake Cooper. How many more?

or clearly is making the grade but our inept background staff miss the ability aka Stacey, Osho and our greatest ever transfer mistake Antonio.

At the risk of repeating what’s been said numerous times to you, these players would likely have not have had the careers they’ve had if they’d stuck it out here

Given how poor and ineffective Loader was who was given a fair few opportunities with us, will that be a mistake if he becomes a top player?

No, because he is not very good. HTH.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

How many more times will this happen. An ex player that doesn’t make the grade at Reading comes back to score against us. Greg Halford, Darius Henderson, now Jake Cooper. How many more?

or clearly is making the grade but our inept background staff miss the ability aka Stacey, Osho and our greatest ever transfer mistake Antonio.

At the risk of repeating what’s been said numerous times to you, these players would likely have not have had the careers they’ve had if they’d stuck it out here

Given how poor and ineffective Loader was who was given a fair few opportunities with us, will that be a mistake if he becomes a top player?

Whilst I agree with the fact that these players would have not had the careers they have now by staying with us, I do believe we made a mistake in not having clauses, such as a buy back clause of percentage of next sale on most of these. The only one I can think of is Stacey.

Even both Olise and Richards I'd class as a failure. We've basically received £8m for the pair when we could have got £30m+ for the pair. Yes, Bayern might not have taken him if it meant they had to pay a fee but someone in the PL would have paid £10m for Richards and Olise could have commanded up to £25m himself quite comfortably. We've lost out on a hell of a lot of money or talent just through poor planning.

Whilst Loader was given a few opportunities, they were hardly consistent and whilst he didn't really produce much for us, he could have benefitted from game time elsewhere. A lot of clubs will send players out on loan to the lower levels of the Football League or even to affiliate clubs abroad, whereas we don't. The only times I remember this is Tom Holmes, who is now regarded as a good, first team regular, and Aluko to China. Whilst the latter didn't mean much, the former would have benefitted from this, even if it was only for a few games. I believe Dorsett is out on loan now as well at Rochdale so that should benefit him as well as Andresson, but my point is it's not exactly common for our top youngsters.

We've got the likes of Oxford, Swindon and Wycombe in our local area who play at a level below us, or at the top end of L2 in Swindon's case. Why the likes of some of our more promising youngsters don't go and get 1-2 seasons worth of game time at those clubs, I don't know. Loader would have done well in either L1/L2, even for half a season. Andresson needs a full season somewhere, as does Dorsett again, preferably in L1, as does Abbey, as does Samuels, as does Bristow, maybe even Azeez as well etc.

[paultheroyal]

Azeez would be the next one that would worry me - looks quality - wretched time with injury, but there is clearly a player in there.

[Snowflake Royal]

Jake Cooper scored today

How many more times will this happen. An ex player that doesn’t make the grade at Reading comes back to score against us. Greg Halford, Darius Henderson, now Jake Cooper. How many more?

Ex-players score against the former clubs all the time - this is not exclusively a Reading FC issue. Although it does seem that some Reading fans think it is, which I find bizarre.

It's amusing that the three players listed cover about a 15 year period too. You'd think you could come up with a tighter, more recent cluster.

[oldebiscuit]

How many more times will this happen. An ex player that doesn’t make the grade at Reading comes back to score against us. Greg Halford, Darius Henderson, now Jake Cooper. How many more?

Ex-players score against the former clubs all the time - this is not exclusively a Reading FC issue. Although it does seem that some Reading fans think it is, which I find bizarre.

It's amusing that the three players listed cover about a 15 year period too. You'd think you could come up with a tighter, more recent cluster.

Just 3 names that sprang to mind, and at my age they seemed quite recent. I’m sure that if you trawl through the records you will come up with a few more, and more recent too.
As you seem to have nothing better to do with your life other than spend it drooling over HNA, perhaps you could be kind enough to spare a few minutes and undertake the research.

[paultheroyal]

Reports this morning a number of top clubs are preparing bids of £75m + for Olise.

Someone, anyone, please tell me we added on a 20% sell on clause?

[From Despair To Where?]

Not if he had a release clause.

[Snowflake Royal]

Who was it telling us he wasn't very good ?

[YorkshireRoyal99]

Reports this morning a number of top clubs are preparing bids of £75m + for Olise.

Someone, anyone, please tell me we added on a 20% sell on clause?

One could only hope. Palace would have been doing us a favour if that was included though, although I can't see why they would when they only needed to pay a fee outright for him.

[Pepe the Horseman]

Reports this morning a number of top clubs are preparing bids of £75m + for Olise.

Someone, anyone, please tell me we added on a 20% sell on clause?

One could only hope. Palace would have been doing us a favour if that was included though, although I can't see why they would when they only needed to pay a fee outright for him.

Unless his release clause was £8m + xx% sell on. Which is possible.

[Hound]

Reports this morning a number of top clubs are preparing bids of £75m + for Olise.

Someone, anyone, please tell me we added on a 20% sell on clause?

One could only hope. Palace would have been doing us a favour if that was included though, although I can't see why they would when they only needed to pay a fee outright for him.

Unless his release clause was £8m + xx% sell on. Which is possible.

Fuchs sake - had a half a season there. Bet we don’t have a sell on

[Snowflake Royal]

Lets face it, we got lucky getting him in the first place to get a season and a half and £8m out of him.

He was always too good for us.

[NathStPaul]

Lets face it, we got lucky getting him in the first place to get a season and a half and £8m out of him.

He was always too good for us.

This is how I see it. He also could have walked away for nothing had he so wished so £8m is more than ok with me in the grand scheme of things.

[Hound]

Lets face it, we got lucky getting him in the first place to get a season and a half and £8m out of him.

He was always too good for us.

This is how I see it. He also could have walked away for nothing had he so wished so £8m is more than ok with me in the grand scheme of things.

Yes there is that. Obvs there was a lot of doubt that he’d sign the first contract originally

Still it’s a bit annoying to see CP potentially cream off a huge profit

[SCIAG]

or clearly is making the grade but our inept background staff miss the ability aka Stacey, Osho and our greatest ever transfer mistake Antonio.

At the risk of repeating what’s been said numerous times to you, these players would likely have not have had the careers they’ve had if they’d stuck it out here

Given how poor and ineffective Loader was who was given a fair few opportunities with us, will that be a mistake if he becomes a top player?

Whilst I agree with the fact that these players would have not had the careers they have now by staying with us, I do believe we made a mistake in not having clauses, such as a buy back clause of percentage of next sale on most of these. The only one I can think of is Stacey.

Even both Olise and Richards I'd class as a failure. We've basically received £8m for the pair when we could have got £30m+ for the pair. Yes, Bayern might not have taken him if it meant they had to pay a fee but someone in the PL would have paid £10m for Richards and Olise could have commanded up to £25m himself quite comfortably. We've lost out on a hell of a lot of money or talent just through poor planning.

Whilst Loader was given a few opportunities, they were hardly consistent and whilst he didn't really produce much for us, he could have benefitted from game time elsewhere. A lot of clubs will send players out on loan to the lower levels of the Football League or even to affiliate clubs abroad, whereas we don't. The only times I remember this is Tom Holmes, who is now regarded as a good, first team regular, and Aluko to China. Whilst the latter didn't mean much, the former would have benefitted from this, even if it was only for a few games. I believe Dorsett is out on loan now as well at Rochdale so that should benefit him as well as Andresson, but my point is it's not exactly common for our top youngsters.

We've got the likes of Oxford, Swindon and Wycombe in our local area who play at a level below us, or at the top end of L2 in Swindon's case. Why the likes of some of our more promising youngsters don't go and get 1-2 seasons worth of game time at those clubs, I don't know. Loader would have done well in either L1/L2, even for half a season. Andresson needs a full season somewhere, as does Dorsett again, preferably in L1, as does Abbey, as does Samuels, as does Bristow, maybe even Azeez as well etc.

Sell on clauses: we had one for Antonio which got us a useful sum of money. Pretty sure we also had them for Fosu, Cox, and Gylfi, as well as Stacey like you mentioned. I don’t think that’s an exhaustive list but it is our standard practice when selling a young player.

We send lots of players out on loan. Unfortunately it is becoming harder to secure loans that are actually valuable. In the Coppell era we were very good at it (you might recall Pearce, Henry, Karacan and Golbourne all going on loan to Bournemouth at the same time) but recently there have been more restrictions placed upon loans as well as greater competition from the likes of Chelsea.

To be honest, I think loan spells have always been a bit overrated. Once upon a time you didn’t break into the Reading side without having a loan, but Richards, Olise, Rinomhota and McIntyre all didn’t go out on loan, Liam Kelly only went to the sixth tier… contrastingly players who did get loans at a good level like Watson, Barrett and Smith didn’t make a breakthrough. A little further back, a lot of players had loan spells that were either pointless or actively counter-productive - eg Aaron Kuhl’s confidence suffered after a lonely spell in Dundee, Dom Hyam spent a year warming the bench for Portsmouth and Aldershot, Craig Tanner ended up partnering Akinfenwa up front for Wimbledon. Meite had a very productive loan spell of course, and Aaron Tshibola did as well, but even in those cases I think they’d have been served just as well by staying at the club under a manager who had faith in them.

And that’s probably the rub. Whether footballers “make it” has a large element of luck. If we had kept Adkins around (aside from his fascination with Akpan), stuck to the Madejski model of selling before we bought, and used young players out of necessity, chances are that a lot of the players we’ve discarded would have made it here, barring injury. The thing which caught out both Cox and Antonio was that they were fifth choice and we were in the Premier League - letting them drop to League One was probably the right thing to do. But our constant changes of manager have meant that we’ve not always been strategic about developing and retaining players.

Final point in a long post - if we still had a reputation as a “selling club” then it would probably be easier to get young players to commit to contracts. Didn’t Gylfi and Long both sign new contracts shortly before we sold them in order to drive up the price we could get? If we’d accepted that offer for Moore then maybe Richards and Olise would have done the same.

[Snowflake Royal]

Believe Gylfi was all cash upfront, which made it unusual. No sell on.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

Lets face it, we got lucky getting him in the first place to get a season and a half and £8m out of him.

He was always too good for us.

This is how I see it. He also could have walked away for nothing had he so wished so £8m is more than ok with me in the grand scheme of things.

Unless our financial figures for next season say that the £8m we received was required so we didn't break FFP regulations again, I'd argue the case that we might have actually benefitted from having another season of him this season as he would have won us so many more points as well now I reckon and just lost him for nothing.

It's not as if we rely on player sales to fund ourselves anyway. Obviously the money is great but I feel like we've taken a massive hit on him already as it is just through poor planning as per usual.

[NathStPaul]

Lets face it, we got lucky getting him in the first place to get a season and a half and £8m out of him.

He was always too good for us.

This is how I see it. He also could have walked away for nothing had he so wished so £8m is more than ok with me in the grand scheme of things.

Unless our financial figures for next season say that the £8m we received was required so we didn't break FFP regulations again, I'd argue the case that we might have actually benefitted from having another season of him this season as he would have won us so many more points as well now I reckon and just lost him for nothing.

It's not as if we rely on player sales to fund ourselves anyway. Obviously the money is great but I feel like we've taken a massive hit on him already as it is just through poor planning as per usual.

Interesting point. Obviously don't know for sure but if I had to guess I'd say that £8m might have been the difference between us being where we are now or being Derby County.