Ex Players

[Sutekh]

So, essentially, none of this would have happened if I'd been charge. One in the eye for the 'IR doesn't have a clue brigade'.

Most fans would probably not have signed half the players the idiot did.

[Snowflake Royal]

Shhhhh

[WestYorksRoyal]

Alex Pearce scored for Wimbledon against Portsmouth last night and his celebration is doing the rounds on Twitter. Very familiar, reminds me of watching back 11/12 compilations.

[Hendo]

Alex Pearce scored for Wimbledon against Portsmouth last night and his celebration is doing the rounds on Twitter. Very familiar, reminds me of watching back 11/12 compilations.

https://twitter.com/AFCWimbledon/status/1737387687399641216

[Sutekh]

Did Reading sell him or was he another just given away?

[Stranded]

Did Reading sell him or was he another just given away?

He left as a free agent.

[Snowflake Royal]

Did Reading sell him or was he another just given away?

He left as a free agent.

Iirc he wasn't rated by many fans by the time he left.

I don't think him getting rinsed in the PL helped perception of him a lot.

Always loved him for his Donny (A) stepover.

[Stranded]

Did Reading sell him or was he another just given away?

He left as a free agent.

Iirc he wasn't rated by many fans by the time he left.

I don't think him getting rinsed in the PL helped perception of him a lot.

Always loved him for his Donny (A) stepover.

Don't recall any one shedding any tears when he left it had to be said - certainly not a case of one we let go in error - it was definitely the right time to part ways.

[JedMaxwell]

Yeah I think he wanted more money than we were offering, so he took his chances and went to Derby. Was a decent, old-school type defender and always gave his all for us.

I'll always remember him at an away game somewhere in 2011/12 - possibly Donny - and he had a bit of a set-to with an opposing player, right in front of the travelling fans. He just laughed in the bloke's face and trotted off, much to the delight of all of us in the away end.

[Sutekh]

Poor old Paul

https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/i-was-mystified-paul-ince-gives-honest-reaction-to-reading-fc-sacking/

[WestYorksRoyal]

No sympathy. Any manager who publicly stands up and says his players are shit should be sacked on the spot.

[From Despair To Where?]

To be fair to Ince he's saying that he was mystified with being sacked with 4 games to go and I tend to agree with him. Given we were on an eight game run without a win, it should have happened 6 games earlier.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

The timing on Ince's sacking was wrong above all else. He's probably not far wrong with a lot of things he's said, why would you change your manager with 4 games to go? We should have done it really with 10 games to go really. The bottom line, irrespective of our points deduction, there is no way we should have gone from the cusp of the play offs over the Xmas period to relegated, points off or not. We definitely still should have picked up another couple of wins minimum in that time, that also was a major contribution as to why we went down.

[tmesis]

The timing on Ince's sacking was wrong above all else. He's probably not far wrong with a lot of things he's said, why would you change your manager with 4 games to go? We should have done it really with 10 games to go really. The bottom line, irrespective of our points deduction, there is no way we should have gone from the cusp of the play offs over the Xmas period to relegated, points off or not. We definitely still should have picked up another couple of wins minimum in that time, that also was a major contribution as to why we went down.

Basically, until the points deduction we looked in no real danger of going down. After that, the players just switched off.

[WestYorksRoyal]

It did seem to affect the side's mentality. If you look at Everton, they have simply shaken off their deduction, but for us it has always affected our on pitch performance too.

No doubt without it we'd have picked up another 3 or 4 wins and finished in comfortable mid table.

[6ft Kerplunk]

Other teams had worked us out by the World Cup, Ince's plan A wasn't that great and he didn't have a plan B. I think that probably did as much for the player's morale as the points deduction. They were getting sent out every week knowing the game plan was shit.

[Mid Sussex Royal]

It did seem to affect the side's mentality. If you look at Everton, they have simply shaken off their deduction, but for us it has always affected our on pitch performance too.

No doubt without it we'd have picked up another 3 or 4 wins and finished in comfortable mid table.

Everton is a bit different I reckon....points deduction in the autumn and with the three promoted sides really struggling they must have known they'd probably be okay.

Different for us, we went from more or less safety following beating Blackpool & Rotherham to the Telegraph leak which was just prior to the Middlesboro game which started a run of 5 or 6 games against playoff/ in form sides which we lost the lot. I believe the actual deduction came after Easter during that run of defeats.

[Sutekh]

The timing on Ince's sacking was wrong above all else. He's probably not far wrong with a lot of things he's said, why would you change your manager with 4 games to go? We should have done it really with 10 games to go really. The bottom line, irrespective of our points deduction, there is no way we should have gone from the cusp of the play offs over the Xmas period to relegated, points off or not. We definitely still should have picked up another couple of wins minimum in that time, that also was a major contribution as to why we went down.

Basically, until the points deduction we looked in no real danger of going down. After that, the players just switched off.

Reading were 14th when some arse in the media broke the rumour that the club were going to be docked 6 points. That was at the very beginning of March, just after the club had beaten Blackpool, and as soon as the rumour started circulating Reading commenced their fantastic season run in of 0 wins in 13 attempts.

The 6 point deduction was finally applied on 4 April dropping the club from 18th to 22nd and form actually improved slightly with the club getting 4 draws from the remaining 7 games (as opposed to 2 draws from the 6 games with the rumour circulating).

Ince was sacked with just 5 games remaining (Burnley, Luton, Coventry, Wigan & Huddersfield) and if Ince hadn't been such a negative nancy (and if the referee at Burnley had applied the laws of the game) then Reading would likely have just survived, at the expense of Cardiff, despite the loss of points and we would now be heading towards the worst ever second division points tally but the profile would be higher and the back story possibly more noticeable in the media.

[Hound]

Think you’d have to throw in we were a pretty poor side last year relative to the rest of the division

Ince did a fantastic job up until Christmas but his limited tactics and are limited ability got found out and once things started going wrong, he couldn’t turn it round

Didn’t help with a ton of injuries and some of our few quality players looking like they couldn’t wait to get out the door

Still really should have picked up at least a couple of wins to see us safe

[WestYorksRoyal]

A lot of our early wins were a blurry line between gritty and lucky. I remember beating Middlesbrough 1-0 with a Fornah long ranger and then letting them dominate possession. You can call it smart, but you don't normally win games that way. A few similar wins like that.

I think our later season form was reversion to the mean; you can't maintain that luck. Perhaps we could have done better had he found a way to use Joao.