How Long Will BM Last at this rate?????

[leon]

At Brighton, West Ham, and Southampton we could've and IMO should've, shipped a load of goals and lost heavily
but those sides froze and missed too often. That is, it was less we won those games deservedly
than the opposition blew it. A definite difference IMO

Went away to big old West Ham and spanked them 4-2 on their own turf. Went away to Southampton in a title decider and stuck three past them.

That's not lucky. Why "should" we have "shipped a load of goals"?? If those side were better at football maybe but they weren't. It's not like Southampton missed a string of sitters and indeed at West Ham we were about an inch away from winning 5-2 when Roberts' cutback was judged over the line.

Brighton - we hit the bar with a free header from six yards. Why not say it "should" have been 2-0?

Don't get me wrong, i don't think RFC played spectacular football last season but we were better at football than any other side in the division and fully deserved the title. West Ham lost 7-2 to us over two games, that's a battering. No amount of revisionism is going to convince me that somehow we fluked it.

This. 'Should have' can cunt off*




*copyright Leon 2012

absolutely gents. We won the league - no one else did. Unfortunately the characteristics that did that - team spirit, seeing out wins, clinical finishing and an absolute lack of nerves in facing down all of our rivals seems to have deserted us this season. I still think with some clever moves in the transfer window we could give it a go.

[Terminal Boardom]

Colin wins promotion to the Prem with QPR last season and gets rid of Gorkss. He also got rid of Liegertwood as well. Colin obviously knew that neither could cut it in the Prem. What do we see now? Gorkss and Liegertwood struggling in the Prem.

The senior players - those with Prem experience - should be in a meeting with BMcD and the coaching team to sort this shambles out.

If I was in charge, I would get someone like Wally Downes in to sort out the defensive side of the game. But most of all, get the players to get nasty. It's the only chance we have of survival.

[rhroyal]

The big difference between sacking Rodgers and potentially sacking McD is that the team in 2009 simply should not have been close to the bottom. They should have been too good to go down, and were being held back by a manager trying to change everything too quickly and not playing to the players' strengths.

This year, in comparison, the squad should be where it is. In fact we should be 20th. The squad not good enough for this league. And it's near impossible to go on a brilliant run like the last 3 years in this league, because there are 6 or 7 teams who we can't realistically compete with. And so you have to wonder what sacking McD will achieve.

However another part of me thinks it can't make things any worse, and he has a large share of the blame for this predicament. Stubborn with his direct 4-4-2, despite and excellent performance at Chelsea. Leaving out Guthrie and Pearce for non-footballing reasons. And this doesn't consider his summer signings (which I'm leaving out intentionally as I don't know budgets available etc.)

[loyalroyal4life]

"Have heard Arsenal should be Brian's last game. The problems with Guthrie, Roberts and Federici have left the club with no choice."

This is from a usually reliable guy, but we'll see...

I would only want Brian replaced with RDM , i am not sure who else is out there who could genuinely have a good shot at keeping us up

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

absolutely gents. We won the league - no one else did. Unfortunately the characteristics that did that - team spirit, seeing out wins, clinical finishing and an absolute lack of nerves in facing down all of our rivals seems to have deserted us this season. I still think with some clever moves in the transfer window we could give it a go.

I think we've had team spirit in bucketloads this season. We've just been caught out for not being good enough.

Last year, against weaker teams, we could just keep attacking for 90 minutes and teams would cack themselves, especially late on. We didn't let in many late goals last year because usually it was us doing all the attacking late on.

We try the same thing this year, and just keep getting hit on the counter by smarter teams.

[MmmMonsterMunch]

I think some miss the point, about whether this manager is a cheap option,
or whether, short-term, another manager can turn things round.

Nor is it relevant what a player or manager has done for us in the past.


In the case of the manager of a team where confidence is shot, where in-fighting
has begun and appears to be increasing, where effort appears to be declining, where
choices seem ever-more odd, where some players, good-enough players are excluded,
where morale continues to fall, where results are slowly worsening, sometimes the
only way to create even the possibility of an upturn, is for someone to be sacrificed.

Usually that is the manager. Very occasionally it's a chairman or a clique of players.



For me, the larger, longer-term issue is this. What if we follow these five poor defeats by poor teams
with heavy defeats, maybe 0-3 or 0-4 to Arsenal, then 6-0 away at Manchester City, then lose at home
to the excellent Swansea team and lose to West Ham?

The structure is then tarnished, the manager goes anyway, no players want to come to Reading in January
and we are headed for the worst or second-worst points total ever and a terrible season next year, still
reeling from the effects of a disastrous premiership campaign. Teams don't just shrug off a disastrous season.
It can go to the heart of the club, affect coaching, management, purchases.

If, OTOH, McDermott resigns and a new manager comes in, that manager gets a grace period, a honeymoon,
where the defeats are not laid at his feet. He can come in and set out a new strategy of building for next
year and the year after while still "giving it a go" this year. The right manager might have connections and be
able to bring better players with that promise.

Relegation? You have Brian McDermott who, rightly or not, will be seen as failing, steering a team which will surely
now have a near-record low points total. His presence will be drastically weakened. He will most probably be seen
as a manger who went a level too high, and/or a manager who got lucky in 2011-12 and stole the league (something
I said last season.)

Or you have a new broom, who comes in, is relatively UN-tarnished and is given the brief to save face this season
while building a new team for the next four.

I have great respect for Brian. I like the bloke. But my head says it's 99% certain he can't change things now.

Had we been 6th-bottom and things collapsed over the last dozen games, THEN the manager might bounce back,
but that is not the case with Reading 2013. We are now W1 D6 L9. That 9 may well be 12 or 13 by year-end.

I don't believe we can bounce back from that. Successive relegations could be possible.

Absolutely top post Snowball. Pretty much exactly how I feel & said as much last night (in a far less impressive way!). I believe we will be bottom third of the champ next season with Brian at the helm now. It's like breaking a vase into tiny pieces & then trying to glue it back together - it will never be the same.

[Vic_Flange]

cant steal a league

Funny, but there are a fair few serious posters who DO think we were lucky last season
and that's why we are struggling now, because the core of the squad was simply not up
to Premiership standard.

Many have dismissed Feds, Harte, Hunt, Church, HRK, Gorks, Ledge, McAnuff, Bryn, Tabb as not good enough
with Cummings and Alf marginal, Kebe inconsistent, Roberts ageing, Pearce maybe too slow...

seROFLious posters

Only Reading fans could hate themselves for winning the fcking league.

Yet another 'only Reading fans' bullshit post. Am I one of only a few Reading fans to have left Reading city (sic) limits? This happens everywhere. Come on mate, I've read a few of your posts and you're better than this son.

[MmmMonsterMunch]

"Have heard Arsenal should be Brian's last game. The problems with Guthrie, Roberts and Federici have left the club with no choice."

This is from a usually reliable guy, but we'll see...

Is this your 'connection' from London Irish?

[Royal Ginger]

cant steal a league

Funny, but there are a fair few serious posters who DO think we were lucky last season
and that's why we are struggling now, because the core of the squad was simply not up
to Premiership standard.

Many have dismissed Feds, Harte, Hunt, Church, HRK, Gorks, Ledge, McAnuff, Bryn, Tabb as not good enough
with Cummings and Alf marginal, Kebe inconsistent, Roberts ageing, Pearce maybe too slow...

seROFLious posters

Only Reading fans could hate themselves for winning the fcking league.

Yet another 'only Reading fans' bullshit post. Am I one of only a few Reading fans to have left Reading city (sic) limits? This happens everywhere. Come on mate, I've read a few of your posts and you're better than this son.[/quote]

Bollox, although there were enough wins to suggest it may have been planned rather than a seriously lucky absence of design, there did seem to be a lot of wins snatched from the jaws of defeat (Bristol, Brighton, Forest etc.)

[Millsy]

At Brighton, West Ham, and Southampton we could've and IMO should've, shipped a load of goals and lost heavily
but those sides froze and missed too often. That is, it was less we won those games deservedly
than the opposition blew it. A definite difference IMO

Went away to big old West Ham and spanked them 4-2 on their own turf. Went away to Southampton in a title decider and stuck three past them.

That's not lucky. Why "should" we have "shipped a load of goals"?? If those side were better at football maybe but they weren't. It's not like Southampton missed a string of sitters and indeed at West Ham we were about an inch away from winning 5-2 when Roberts' cutback was judged over the line.

Brighton - we hit the bar with a free header from six yards. Why not say it "should" have been 2-0?

Don't get me wrong, i don't think RFC played spectacular football last season but we were better at football than any other side in the division and fully deserved the title. West Ham lost 7-2 to us over two games, that's a battering. No amount of revisionism is going to convince me that somehow we fluked it.

This.

We deserved the title, end of.

Brian got the best out of the players and is the best man in my opinion to continue to get the best out of them and try to build things. If he doesn't manage it in time to stay up then so what? The least he deserves is to manage a whole season in the prem after getting us up against all the odds.

Talking about sacking our best legend since Coppell is ludicrous.

[Terminal Boardom]

And the Premier League is a great deal better than the Championship which is why we are struggling. The style of play and personnel are just not good enough at this level.

[Cripple Creek]

To be fair to Brian - and I'm sure this has been said somewhere in the previous 113 pages - he probably felt it right to give the players who had done so well in the championship their chance. It's the refusal to do this that is responsible, in part, for the success of someone like Ferguson who had no hesitation - often to the great surprise of a great many people - in selling people like Ince, Beckham, Jaap Stam in their prime because he was constantly rebuilding. You could argue that one of the reasons the current Man U squad isn't what it used to be is precisely because he no longer does this and hangs on to the old guard...but I digress.

[Terminal Boardom]

To be fair to Brian - and I'm sure this has been said somewhere in the previous 113 pages - he probably felt it right to give the players who had done so well in the championship their chance. It's the refusal to do this that is responsible, in part, for the success of someone like Ferguson who had no hesitation - often to the great surprise of a great many people - in selling people like Ince, Beckham, Jaap Stam in their prime because he was constantly rebuilding. You could argue that one of the reasons the current Man U squad isn't what it used to be is precisely because he no longer does this and hangs on to the old guard...but I digress.

To trust the players that won promotion may work lower down the football pyramid considering the way the loan system works. However, this is the top flight and there can be no room for sentiment. Coppell proved that in 2007/08. What galls me is that BMcD was on the scene when that happened and he has not learnt from that experience.

[Cripple Creek]

I agree, it galls me to that we didn't learn the lessons from the past. I've stopped thinking about how much more of an enjoyable season we might be having had we really made an effort for Zaha and several others. As it is, it is proving to be a pretty horrible experience.

[DOYLERSAROYALER]

Simple fact is that yet again club have tried doing the premiership on the cheap ....it's the Reading Way...

...too short sighted to see the benefits of proper Investment in squad (tv deal)...has to make you question if the board are capable of developing a coherent strategy for taking the club forward year-on-year...

..too much assumption that it's no problem, we simply go down, regroup and come back up again .....if you want to attract top players to the club on a long term basis, that's not the way to do it....

...If AZ had been serious about getting the club high up the league, the stadium expanded etc...he should also have known that a shoestring budget for transfers does not fit with that vision...for that I blame Madejski who said he's only sell to a billionaire with deep pockets...sadly it doesnt appear that he checked that the said billionaire would actually do what he wasn't prepared to do...invest ...

[Terminal Boardom]

Whereas spending millions does not guarantee success, I would be interested to know how much Wigan have spent since being promoted in 2005. They get smaller crowds than us yet they have reached a cup final. Fulham are also a similarly sized club yet they too have reached a cup final in recent years. What are they doing right that we can not understand or, as a minimum, aspire to?

[DOYLERSAROYALER]

Whereas spending millions does not guarantee success, I would be interested to know how much Wigan have spent since being promoted in 2005. They get smaller crowds than us yet they have reached a cup final. Fulham are also a similarly sized club yet they too have reached a cup final in recent years. What are they doing right that we can not understand or, as a minimum, aspire to?

Terminal .. No agree it doesn't guarantee success ...but equally spending little has shown it doesn't guarantee either....or is it a case that enough was spent in summer but on the wrong players?? ..how much did BM want Pog or was it a whim of AZ ?

BM is rolled out to say "every player I wanted, I got" ...if that is the honest truth then I guess BMs eye for a player that will improve the team/squad, has to be called into question....

[The Beardy Man]

To be fair to Brian - and I'm sure this has been said somewhere in the previous 113 pages - he probably felt it right to give the players who had done so well in the championship their chance. It's the refusal to do this that is responsible, in part, for the success of someone like Ferguson who had no hesitation - often to the great surprise of a great many people - in selling people like Ince, Beckham, Jaap Stam in their prime because he was constantly rebuilding. You could argue that one of the reasons the current Man U squad isn't what it used to be is precisely because he no longer does this and hangs on to the old guard...but I digress.

To trust the players that won promotion may work lower down the football pyramid considering the way the loan system works. However, this is the top flight and there can be no room for sentiment. Coppell proved that in 2007/08. What galls me is that BMcD was on the scene when that happened and he has not learnt from that experience.

In fairness Coppell proved the exact opposite of that in our first premier league year...that the players that got you there can indeed move you forwards beyond, if they proved to be sufficiently better than the league they played in the previous season. Our failing then was (similarly to this season) that we could not judge the right type of players to sign to improve the team beyond the standard we were already at...for which one might place at least a shred of blame at the feet of the then chief scout...

[Pepe the Horseman]

"Have heard Arsenal should be Brian's last game. The problems with Guthrie, Roberts and Federici have left the club with no choice."

This is from a usually reliable guy, but we'll see...

I would only want Brian replaced with RDM , i am not sure who else is out there who could genuinely have a good shot at keeping us up

RDM would be a fcuking disaster and wouldn't touch us anyway.

[Royal Rother]

Whereas spending millions does not guarantee success, I would be interested to know how much Wigan have spent since being promoted in 2005. They get smaller crowds than us yet they have reached a cup final. Fulham are also a similarly sized club yet they too have reached a cup final in recent years. What are they doing right that we can not understand or, as a minimum, aspire to?

Getting themselves into huge debt. That's the only way they have achieved what they have in recent times.

I believe Al Fayed is owed £200m and Whelan has recently written off £50m in preparation for FFP. In 2010 their total debt was in excess of £70m.