Huddersfield penalty shoot out - sliding doors?

[WestYorksRoyal]

The shoot-out probably was a sliding doors moment, but not in the way you'd expect.

Had we gone up and been a Premier League club, Dai's ownership of the club wouldn't have been ratified and we would have remained owned by the Thais. This probably would have been an absolute disaster from a football point of view, and a very swift return to the second tier would have followed, but we'd have been more secure.

If you want a real sliding doors moment for us as a club, removing Howe and appointing Gourlay is MUCH more significant.

The takeover was completed before Wembley, and the PL had put out a statement that they wouldn't block anything.

Not sure the Gourlay appointment was as significant as people make out. Dai was always going to surround himself with clowns to piss money away - it just happened to be Gourlay. There was no space for sensible decision makers like Howe and Tevreden.

[Forbury Lion]

Here's a sliding doors moment - Sir John never sold the club, We potter around in the Championship and the fans are moaning calling for him to sell to someone with deep pockets, saying we'd have been better off with that Russian in charge, what about that Thai consortium who were interested? How about that Chinese guy who said he'd invest £240m in the club.... Sir John is holding us back, Let's start a Sell Before We Madejski campaign even though that slogan doesn't work with his name and throw tennis balls on the pitch in protest at how well he's run the club and paid the wages each month without investing millions into signing players.

A conspiracy theorist might say that Sir John secured his legacy by ensuring he didn't sell to someone who could lead the club to greater achievements than he did.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Here's a sliding doors moment - Sir John never sold the club, We potter around in the Championship and the fans are moaning calling for him to sell to someone with deep pockets, saying we'd have been better off with that Russian in charge, what about that Thai consortium who were interested? How about that Chinese guy who said he'd invest £240m in the club.... Sir John is holding us back, Let's start a Sell Before We Madejski campaign even though that slogan doesn't work with his name and throw tennis balls on the pitch in protest at how well he's run the club and paid the wages each month without investing millions into signing players.

Well, this. I remember a lot of criticism at SJM in his later years; we were selling our best talent every season. He got booed a few times. The older fans who remembered the Maxwell days were much more accepting of the situation and did warn us. But he was very openly looking to sell in his later years; it was always going to happen. He got hoodwinked into trusting AZ. So the real alternative reality is not him staying but finding a better buyer.

If we ever have another moderately successful era, I will now be one of the old farts telling the younger generation that mid table in the Championship is good enough for a club of our history.

[Snowflake Royal]

Maybe there is a thread to merge this with. But I've seen a few threads and heard a few podcasts look upon the shoot out against Huddersfield in 2017 as the sliding doors moment under Dai; a counterfactual.

I say total bollocks. Had we got promoted, it would have meant more money to piss away, more opportunity for Kia to leech off us, more journeymen on obscene wages. Imagine Aluko, Puscas and Baldock but with PL financial power. It would have come to a head 4 years after relegation from the PL, which would have been 2022. Pretty similar to the reality.

Dai is an absolute oxf*rd disaster so let's put this all on him. Not Moore and Obita. The only beneficiary from promotion that day wouldn't have been Kia Joorabchian.

The sliding doors moment was 2008. We should have stayed up then and had a 5/6 yest PL stint. Perhaps we'd have found a better buyer and would now be Fulham. But it didn't happen and we're suffering now.

Very much agree on 2008.
A great opportunity (see Bournemouth, Fulham, Brighton, Brentford) for one of the smaller clubs to consolidate at the top level.

Yeah. If Coppell had been less loyal. Or we'd just spent better that summer.

Fae was a disaster.
Duberry wasn't good enough.
Little was done.
Convey was done.
Was Halford that season too?
Passed on was it O'Neil?
Rosenior was toss.
Lita not up to it

[Snowflake Royal]

The shoot-out probably was a sliding doors moment, but not in the way you'd expect.

Had we gone up and been a Premier League club, Dai's ownership of the club wouldn't have been ratified and we would have remained owned by the Thais. This probably would have been an absolute disaster from a football point of view, and a very swift return to the second tier would have followed, but we'd have been more secure.

If you want a real sliding doors moment for us as a club, removing Howe and appointing Gourlay is MUCH more significant.

The takeover was completed before Wembley, and the PL had put out a statement that they wouldn't block anything.

Not sure the Gourlay appointment was as significant as people make out. Dai was always going to surround himself with clowns to piss money away - it just happened to be Gourlay. There was no space for sensible decision makers like Howe and Tevreden.

Gourlay or Howe, as you say, the clown at the top is still the one calling the shots

[Clyde1998]

As others have said, 2008 was a real sliding doors moment.

Had we survived, we would've been in our third successive Premier League season (and would effectively have been an established top flight club) and would've been able to attract better players than we could in our first two seasons. We probably would've gone ahead with the stadium expansion (and have a 36-38k seat stadium); we had waiting lists for season tickets in the Premier League in our first stint. There was plenty of demand to watch Reading.

Relegation also coincided with the financial crash, which meant Madejski couldn't put meaningful money into the club. That coupled with the continuing inflation of transfer fees and wages in football. The club was financially dependant on player sales for the final years under Madejski - something that wasn't the case prior to promotion.

Surviving in 2008, or getting promoted in 2009, would've completely changed the football club and we may have become a club similar to a side like a Fulham or a West Brom - usually in the top flight, with a few seasons every now and again below that level and the possibly of the odd year in Europe. We're maybe seeing at Brighton what could've happened if we'd stayed up that season.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Although imagine if we'd fallen victim to a shit owner after expanding the stadium. 9k on a Tuesday night in a 36k bowl

[blythspartan]

Although imagine if we'd fallen victim to a shit owner after expanding the stadium. 9k on a Tuesday night in a 36k bowl

If we were established in the premiership and doing a Brighton. Do you think we’d be able to fill a 36k stadium or get crowds >30k?

[WestYorksRoyal]

Although imagine if we'd fallen victim to a shit owner after expanding the stadium. 9k on a Tuesday night in a 36k bowl

If we were established in the premiership and doing a Brighton. Do you think we’d be able to fill a 36k stadium or get crowds >30k?

Neither us or Brighton are big clubs. Even if we had a spell like theirs, a decade of managed decline and disillusionment accelerating into a death slide would make punters stay at home.

[Hendo]

Although imagine if we'd fallen victim to a shit owner after expanding the stadium. 9k on a Tuesday night in a 36k bowl

If we were established in the premiership and doing a Brighton. Do you think we’d be able to fill a 36k stadium or get crowds >30k?

I think for the bigger games, we'd be selling out 36k easily. For most of the Prem games, 29k+

[Mr Angry]

I still think the lack of trying to put more than 4 past an utterly hapless Derby side on that last day of the 2007/08 season was significant; 7 would have kept us up and totally doable against 11 points Derby.......

However, I will add another sliding doors moment; us losing to Birmingham at home on the last day of the 2008/09 season.

Had we won, we would have finished on the same points as Birmingham and Sheffield Utd, but with a superior goal difference and would have gone up in 2nd place. However, we ended up - yet again - failing to get promotion through the play-offs; what was so frustrating is that we could easily have gone up, but we only won 5 of our last 17 games.

We would have had a reasonable chance of survival in the Premier League the following season, and the club would have been more attractive for a prospective buyer.

[Vision]

I don't think theres ever really a sliding doors moment in sport. There's always other games/seasons and plenty of opportunities to get it right or at least not get it disastrously wrong. I mean it's not like Huddersfield themselves truly made the most of winning the shoot out. They stayed up(just) one season, got relegated the next and are following a similar trajectory to us ever since.

But for the sake of an entertaining discussion I'd offer up Madejski not accepting Coppell's offer of resignation in January 08. Coppell didn't have the stomach to do what was necessary to improve the squad as by his own admission he'd grown too attached to 'his team". A new hand on the tiller may well have been a little more ruthless when it was needed. I think Shorey winning an England call up and realising exactly how much money other Premier League players were earning fed through to the rest of the squad. They went from being Reading players to just Premier League players who happened to play for Reading pretty quickly that 2nd season. - I'd also say the Spurs 5-4 defeat was pretty significant as we could have written off the Pompey 7-4 as a one-off but once it happened again at Spurs the full backs who had been an integral part of our success barely crossed the halfway line for the rest of the season.

The above was then compounded by well meaning fans campaigning in the car park begging him to stay when he clearly didn't really want to. If Coppell's history proved anything it was that if his heart wasn't in something then he wasn't much use.

[Clyde1998]

Although imagine if we'd fallen victim to a shit owner after expanding the stadium. 9k on a Tuesday night in a 36k bowl

You'd have to lower ticket prices in order to maximise attendance and revenue. Lower ticket prices alone could encourage more people to go to games on a more regular basis, but most people will end up spending on food, drink, etc. once they're in the stadium in addition.

That said, we would've only started the expansion if we'd remained in the Premier League for the third season - and it would've been two phases: East Stand as phase one and both ends as phase two. If we weren't selling out after the first phase (30k), or got relegated in that time, we wouldn't've gone all the way to 36-38k. That extended time in the top flight would've helped keep people interested in the club for longer and grown the fan base naturally - especially among those who ended up "supporting" Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd, etc - while the larger capacity could induce demand to some extent.

In terms of occupancy, our 9,500 against Fleetwood in a 24k stadium is about the same as 14,250 in a 36k ground (9k in a 36k is about the same as 6.3k in a 24k ground for reference). Our midweek attendances are pretty horrific anyway - I'd guess largely to do with the general employment makeup our supporters (working in London for example).

For our second season at the Mad Stad - the most similar season to now in terms of performance at this stage of the season (third bottom at the end of January after only four wins all season) - we had an average attendance of 9k; up until our sixteenth home game of the season, we only had two matches with attendances above 10k - they were against Bristol City and Oxford (both would've brought relatively huge away support). At that time, it must've seemed like we'd built a ground far too big for us.

You could use methods to make the ground feel more full than it actually is should a small crowd occur, such as at BC Place in Vancouver:


Then again, I'm trying to avoid thinking about how bad it would be.

[stealthpapes]

Maybe there is a thread to merge this with. But I've seen a few threads and heard a few podcasts look upon the shoot out against Huddersfield in 2017 as the sliding doors moment under Dai; a counterfactual.

I say total bollocks. Had we got promoted, it would have meant more money to piss away, more opportunity for Kia to leech off us, more journeymen on obscene wages. Imagine Aluko, Puscas and Baldock but with PL financial power. It would have come to a head 4 years after relegation from the PL, which would have been 2022. Pretty similar to the reality.

Dai is an absolute oxf*rd disaster so let's put this all on him. Not Moore and Obita. The only beneficiary from promotion that day wouldn't have been Kia Joorabchian.

The sliding doors moment was 2008. We should have stayed up then and had a 5/6 yest PL stint. Perhaps we'd have found a better buyer and would now be Fulham. But it didn't happen and we're suffering now.

Very much agree on 2008.
A great opportunity (see Bournemouth, Fulham, Brighton, Brentford) for one of the smaller clubs to consolidate at the top level.

Yeah. If Coppell had been less loyal. Or we'd just spent better that summer.

Fae was a disaster.
Duberry wasn't good enough.
Little was done.
Convey was done.
Was Halford that season too?
Passed on was it O'Neil?
Rosenior was toss.
Lita not up to it

Went down with such as whimper.
Anyway, clearest issue was the, iirc, eleven different players we used at right midfield/right wing back over the season.

[Mid Sussex Royal]

Looking more recently I reckon the home defeat V Blackpool under Pauno was a big moment, we were doing okay then suddenly we lost a game in the last 20 mins from 2-0 up and I can't recall us going on a good run since that game, we've certainly hardly won away since then...

[Dirk Gently]

Very much agree on 2008.
A great opportunity (see Bournemouth, Fulham, Brighton, Brentford) for one of the smaller clubs to consolidate at the top level.

Yeah. If Coppell had been less loyal. Or we'd just spent better that summer.

Fae was a disaster.
Duberry wasn't good enough.
Little was done.
Convey was done.
Was Halford that season too?
Passed on was it O'Neil?
Rosenior was toss.
Lita not up to it

Went down with such as whimper.
Anyway, clearest issue was the, iirc, eleven different players we used at right midfield/right wing back over the season.

Or a simpler option. If Scott Brown hadn't had his heart set on joining Celtic and had agreed terms with us when Hibs accepted our offer. Replacing Sidwell properly with him would, I'm sure, have made all the difference that season.

[URZZZZZZZZ]

The shoot-out probably was a sliding doors moment, but not in the way you'd expect.

Had we gone up and been a Premier League club, Dai's ownership of the club wouldn't have been ratified and we would have remained owned by the Thais. This probably would have been an absolute disaster from a football point of view, and a very swift return to the second tier would have followed, but we'd have been more secure.

If you want a real sliding doors moment for us as a club, removing Howe and appointing Gourlay is MUCH more significant.

The takeover was completed before Wembley, and the PL had put out a statement that they wouldn't block anything.

Not sure the Gourlay appointment was as significant as people make out. Dai was always going to surround himself with clowns to piss money away - it just happened to be Gourlay. There was no space for sensible decision makers like Howe and Tevreden.

I have it on good authority from people at the top of the business at the time that the club would have reverted back to the Thais

[Royal Ginger]

Letting Ali Al-Habsi go.

Ended a string of better than average goalkeepers who could be world beaters on their day.

We’ve been shit ever since.

[Franchise FC]

Letting Ali Al-Habsi go.

Ended a string of better than average goalkeepers who could be world beaters on their day.

We’ve been shit ever since.

Shit as a whole or specifically in the goalkeeping department

If the latter, there’s a World Cup winner that may have a view on that

[Royal Ginger]

Letting Ali Al-Habsi go.

Ended a string of better than average goalkeepers who could be world beaters on their day.

We’ve been shit ever since.

Shit as a whole or specifically in the goalkeeping department

If the latter, there’s a World Cup winner that may have a view on that

Shit as a whole. Martinez as an emergency bandage to stop the bleeding sort of leans into the point. In the last 25+ years any success we’ve had has been when we’ve had goalkeepers being one of if not the best player on the team, and that string ended with Al Habsi. Cause or effect could come into question but there’s a pattern.