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

[winchester_royal]

Feel sorry for him in a way.Madejski said he would only sell to someone with deep pockets,but it seems new boss same as old boss,nothing seems to have changed.

Without those new and deeper pockets we'd never have gone up last season.

Yep, not to mention all the investment going on behind the scenes..

Sadly most on here won't be happy until we start behaving like QPR.

[JoeyJoeJoeJnrShabadoo]

1 win in 18 & that 'Manager' is still in a job!!? Yep, we're stuck with him. Absolute joke

God forbid we should show some loyalty and support to a manager who has taken us from the bottom of the Championship to the top flight on a shoe string. People like you are what is wrong with modern football.

Never a truer word spoken

[larry1971]

1 win in 18 & that 'Manager' is still in a job!!? Yep, we're stuck with him. Absolute joke

God forbid we should show some loyalty and support to a manager who has taken us from the bottom of the Championship to the top flight on a shoe string. People like you are what is wrong with modern football.

I agree but the sad truth is if you are serious about establishing yourselves as a Premiership club then you cant afford to remain loyal to a manager who iss clearly out of his depth just because he got you promoted . Also I believe the new tv contract that starts next season is worth at least £60m per season and that's a hell of a lot of money for a club like Reading with limited resources to miss out on.

[Millsy]

Can we steady on a bit here?

Can't blame Brian, not enough investment.

But then even though I thrive on blaming lack of investment even I couldn't definitely see this coming. I was of the opinion, as were many, that we played it smart to strengthen a bit here and there without breaking the bank. That turned out to be wrong, and there's nothing we can do about it until January.

January will give us some answers.

So until feb 1st can we stop blaming Brian, Anton, or Sir John?

[Victor Meldrew]

I expect that if we get a few points over Christmas Brian will stay.
If we lose all three I think that will be the end.
What is so amazing is that it has taken until Christmas for the team to go out as an organised unit having in some of the previous games (particularly against an Arsenal struggling in confidence and just been beaten at home with calls for Wenger's head)been an absolute shambles.
Watching Wigan matching Arsenal all the way with good organisation and some skill against the same side made me feel even moore certain of relegation and even more so when City grabbed the winner that we all knew would happen.

Incidentally Saints lost by one goal v City,Man Utd and Liverpool,the same as us,have just lost to Sunderland and earlier to Wigan and IIRC were tonked by Arsenal-it does look as though it will be them and us plus one other to go down,probably QPR or maybe Fulham.

[marcusopp]

Can we steady on a bit here?

Can't blame Brian, not enough investment.

But then even though I thrive on blaming lack of investment even I couldn't definitely see this coming. I was of the opinion, as were many, that we played it smart to strengthen a bit here and there without breaking the bank. That turned out to be wrong, and there's nothing we can do about it until January.

January will give us some answers.

So until feb 1st can we stop blaming Brian, Anton, or Sir John?

It's not just about signing new players, a lot if investment has been made to keep our current squad. When these new contracts are offered you can bet they'll be twice what they were before. We've probably doubled our wage bill since last year already.
Those already signed will almost certainly have had a promotion bonus written onto their contracts.
It's not about boom and bust, i'd rather we go down than become another portsmouth

[Extended-Phenotype]

What, new contracts like Pearce's?

[SPARTA]

What, new contracts like Pearce's?

Federici, Karacan, Kebe, Cummings, Morrison..

[SPARTA]

Federici

Did we award the worst goalkeeper in the division a new and improved contract!?

First thing we did in January with AZ's money. Same with Kebe. The wages we're paying now we could never have supported under SJM's ownership.

[beno]

team for january:

----------mccarthy
gunter pearce mariappa shorey
-----tabb karacan
--kebe arshavin mcanuff
------------ pog

subs: federici, morrison, guthrie, mcleary, le fondre

reserve: gorks, harte, cummings, leigertwood, robson canoe, hunt, roberts

a chance of staying up

[SPARTA]

team for january:

mccarthy
gunter pearce mariappa shorey
tabb karacan
kebe arshavin mcanuff
pog

subs: federici, morrison, guthrie, mcleary, le fondre

reserve: gorks, harte, cummings, leigertwood, robson canoe, hunt, roberts

a chance of staying up

You feel so confident of keeping us up with that side that you leave out two subs...

[Sir Dodger Royal]

RFC have one of the lowest budgets in the Premier League. Well known fact so where is/has the money gone? Won't be long before we will hear the we are skint announcement. Hopeless. RFC are a lost case. No idea or ambition. Where are the reubles?

[Royal Rother]

Aha! A "where's the money gone" post!!

Fantastic!!!

[Pete10]

Where has the money gone.Did we not learn from the last time.

[Victor Meldrew]

Where has the money gone.Did we not learn from the last time.

We never got to the bottom of where all the old money went,what will happen when this year's £40 million plus comes around?
Surely not all of it will go on the hotel.

[Mike Hunt]

Fuck me some of you are thick.

They said it would be business as usual. That we were not going to go out and spend up big.

What they did say is that we will continue as is, but on a level that is a bit more than SJM could afford.

This has been proven with the signing of Roberts, new contract for Kebe etc.

Then in the summer, we got Guthrie and Pog. Sure they were on a "free" but with the sign on bonus and agent fees, that would surely add up. Not to add the wages that we would have had to offered to capture them. Say what you want about the two of them, but without TSI, the two of them would not be here.

[West Stand Man]

beno, mccarthy is out for the season

Sadly you are not.

[Millsy]

Can we steady on a bit here?

Can't blame Brian, not enough investment.

But then even though I thrive on blaming lack of investment even I couldn't definitely see this coming. I was of the opinion, as were many, that we played it smart to strengthen a bit here and there without breaking the bank. That turned out to be wrong, and there's nothing we can do about it until January.

January will give us some answers.

So until feb 1st can we stop blaming Brian, Anton, or Sir John?

It's not just about signing new players, a lot if investment has been made to keep our current squad. When these new contracts are offered you can bet they'll be twice what they were before. We've probably doubled our wage bill since last year already.
Those already signed will almost certainly have had a promotion bonus written onto their contracts.
It's not about boom and bust, i'd rather we go down than become another portsmouth

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm a very changed man from the "we must invest" 2ww of yesteryear, because the situation is different now so I'm open to a steady approach and I agree we definitely don't want to be Pompey.

However I don't for a second buy that our quantum leap in revenue is swallowed up by an increase in wages of current players and a couple of freebies on prem wages. If we want to invest we damned well can do better than a few wage increases!. The question is whether or not we want to. And that will become clear in January. If Anton chooses not to that's fine, for now... but I for one will want GOOD reasons, whether it be the cat1 academy, stadium expansion, or whatever. "oh but look we increased some wages" will result in "Anton out" being my new slogan as Madejski out was (and I'm glad he's going).

[Millsy]

Fuck me some of you are thick.

They said it would be business as usual. That we were not going to go out and spend up big.

What they did say is that we will continue as is, but on a level that is a bit more than SJM could afford.

This has been proven with the signing of Roberts, new contract for Kebe etc.

Then in the summer, we got Guthrie and Pog. Sure they were on a "free" but with the sign on bonus and agent fees, that would surely add up. Not to add the wages that we would have had to offered to capture them. Say what you want about the two of them, but without TSI, the two of them would not be here.

If that's all TSI can muster then can we have Sir John back please???

Unless, of course, they give us good reasons why we're not investing so we can understand. The lying is the problem. Talk of ambition with nothing to show for it.

Talking about being thick, there's nothin thicker than genuinely believing that getting a couple of freebies with their agent fees and increasing some wages amounts to investment. When you move up divisions if you don't invest well, you're actually going backwards. We're not she only small team to have been promoted. Others have done it, invested and are going strong.

Still I'm not jumping on the anti Anton bandwagon at all. For me it's either decent investment in January or decent answers. If I don't get one of those, I'll turn into an ugly beast. Oh hang on I already am. Uglier then.

[Royal Rother]

Gambling with money you either haven't got or are not prepared to simply write off if the gamble doesn't come off is neither "investment" nor "ambition".

It's stupidity.

Almost EVERY SINGLE thing said by Samuelson, Madejski and Zingarevich himself was completely clear about how the club would be run, and that was continuing down the same path followed by SJM over the years. Financial prudency.

AZ then said we were aiming to become an established Top 8 team within the next 5 years. Unfortunately to some people that appears to be a contradiction of the above statement so they chose to believe he was really going to be spending big - how else could we become Top 8 after all...?

All he was doing was stating an ambition - even though it was a completely reasonable statement to make, he would have been better off not saying it to avoid sending the more challenged supporters down a completely unrealistic glory path that existed only in their imaginations.