The truth about Royston...

[Royal Biscuitman]

I'm not suggesting anything here, but if a club had a player they wanted to get rid of who they suspected was on drugs would they:

a) Drugs test them, causing damage to club reputation (perhaps at a critical time with a takeover underway) and get them off the wage bill for gross misconduct, possibly even sue them as well to recover some costs.

b) Don't drugs test them because that will damage the clubs reputation and also make it impossible to sell the player and receive a transfer fee.

The Reading way has always been a) as far as I am aware - Glasgow, McLaren...... However I imagine there are some clubs who have sold players on for over £3m after there were allegations of drugs, I wonder if they did drugs tests theirselves or were too afraid of a positive result that would force them to act/confront the issue and possibly write off £3m if they stuck to their morals?

[Extended-Phenotype]

If a player tested positive for drugs or was guilty of any misconduct, you could terminate their contract and wouldn't need to worry about selling them on.

[melonhead]

coke is cleared very quickly from your system tbf

single figures of days.

so you could get away with regular use if you did it right

[Extended-Phenotype]

2-4 days usually. Plenty of time to catch a player out tbh.

[philM]

2-4 days usually. Plenty of time to catch a player out tbh.

If they do a hair test it's up to 90 days for coke. Hair grows approx 1/2 inch per month so I guess if you time it right you could get round it by having a number 1 cut every week.

[Uke]

Drenthe probably only had his FIFA tournament to take the piss out of his mates...

[SPARTA]

Spoke to someone at the match yesterday who has a family member working at the club - apparently the imminent new owners want Drenthe to stay. If so I hope this isn't another case of excessive interference from the ownership against the manager.

Worst case is he's here until next summer and then free to go. The biggest problem with him is he had a few off-field spats with team mates last season (Pearce was one that I think is known), and he's a lazy trainer. He offered next to f**k all when he played, so I just don't see what benefit of reintroducing him into what is now a very tight group. Big risk. He has to go, or he can waste a year throwing more junk up his nose. Sooner he's out the better.

[wingnut]

Whole load more conjecture there to get E-P riled.

[Royal Biscuitman]

If a player tested positive for drugs or was guilty of any misconduct, you could terminate their contract and wouldn't need to worry about selling them on.

Yes, which is fine if the player is worth next to nothing but what if it's a player with a resell value of several £m's? - Terminating their contract will save you their wages, which may be nowhere near as profitable as selling them to some unsuspecting opposition club.... I imagine their manager will be furious when the found out we didn't tell them things about the player we sold them.

[Extended-Phenotype]

Tbf, its the responses that have been riled. I'm just calmly interested what the issue is and whether there is any substance to the allegations on offer here.

I can't help it if people get grumpy when you ask them a fair enough question.

[genome]

How can you criticise someone with the panache to grow a beard like this and go out in public

http://instagram.com/p/ruT1W5Gh-R/

[P!ssed Off]

Suggesting that he is absent from the squad because of money is absolutely laughable as well. I know Anton was playing championship manager but he's hardly going to sign off large appearance fees for someone who was for all intents & purposes a footballing exile, no matter how much we all dislike what he's done to the club, he wasn't a complete fcuking idiot. Furthermore, whatever sort of deal Drenthe is on, Pog can't be far behind yet he is a full part of the team.

If Royston's contract was to contain large appearance fees then that would be instead of, rather than in addition to, a large basic contract.
Why would giving Drenthe such a contract make Anton a "complete oxf*rd idiot"?

[Royal Biscuitman]

Spoke to someone at the match yesterday who has a family member working at the club - apparently the imminent new owners want Drenthe to stay. If so I hope this isn't another case of excessive interference from the ownership against the manager.

Possibly under the misguided belief that the fans they've spoken to want Drenthe to stay..... when I say fans, I mean the ones with Dutch accents who like to play FIFA.

Maybe a free transfer to Thai Police United or whatever it's called can be arranged?

[Extended-Phenotype]

If a player tested positive for drugs or was guilty of any misconduct, you could terminate their contract and wouldn't need to worry about selling them on.

Yes, which is fine if the player is worth next to nothing but what if it's a player with a resell value of several £m's? - Terminating their contract will save you their wages, which may be nowhere near as profitable as selling them to some unsuspecting opposition club.... I imagine their manager will be furious when the found out we didn't tell them things about the player we sold them.

If we are interested in resale value, I'm not convinced sticking him in the reserves is the best tactic.

We obviously don't want him here - if it's because of misconduct, terminate his contract. If its because we have signed him to a contract we can't afford, dunno - make life as difficult as possible for him so he up and leaves of his own accord? That doesn't seem to be working.

But not terminating his contract because we are worried about selling him on, yet not playing him and sticking him in the wilderness? Doesn't really add up.

Would like to know what the deal is as the guesswork isn't cutting it.

[Extended-Phenotype]

Suggesting that he is absent from the squad because of money is absolutely laughable as well. I know Anton was playing championship manager but he's hardly going to sign off large appearance fees for someone who was for all intents & purposes a footballing exile, no matter how much we all dislike what he's done to the club, he wasn't a complete fcuking idiot. Furthermore, whatever sort of deal Drenthe is on, Pog can't be far behind yet he is a full part of the team.

If Royston's contract was to contain large appearance fees then that would be instead of, rather than in addition to, a large basic contract.
Why would giving Drenthe such a contract make Anton a "complete oxf*rd idiot"?

My guess would be such a contract is fair play for a player you aren't sure is going to cut it but has the potential to be fantastic. I.e. If you are good enough to keep your place in the side week-in, week-out, you will get the pay you are after. If not, we drop you and save ourselves on a big salary.

Not the worst idea, especially if you have an owner who is up for bank rolling it and isn't going to do a runner.

[Ian Royal]

I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of professional footballers use coke, but must have it under control and it doesn't affect anything badly. It's so rare you hear of a player getting into trouble for using.

I can't help but think that could maybe lead clubs to ignore even the problem players on the most part, because shopping them would lead to half the squad going down with them.

[Millsy]

The thing about Drenthe is that although he has done some things maybe there aren't enough things he's done to warrant the things he may have done if he was a better player who hasn't done things like playing well (or not well) with perhaps drugs or not it's what you call "bad luck" when actually if you're playing well it's all a little bit like there's something going on but what are his wages anyway I think that affects if you do things or if others perceive if you do things or not (or more to the point things are often done but are undone, or not even done in the first place) so whilst people argue he must go and some so he must stay the question on everyone's mind is quite simply does he or does he not ( given a certain situation which may or may not be conducive to staying depending othe things he's done) deserve a second chance IF he hasn't done the things in the first place which I am 100% certain he has if of course he is guilty of them in the first place. So should he be or not?

I think every true Reading fan who isn't a mong knows the answer to that.

[RoyalinBracknell]

Spoke to someone at the match yesterday who has a family member working at the club - apparently the imminent new owners want Drenthe to stay. If so I hope this isn't another case of excessive interference from the ownership against the manager.

Possibly under the misguided belief that the fans they've spoken to want Drenthe to stay..... when I say fans, I mean the ones with Dutch accents who like to play FIFA.

Maybe a free transfer to Thai Police United or whatever it's called can be arranged?

I was certainly surprised when I heard it said. Who knows. If true it's a concern if the manager doesn't have full control. If the new owners do want Drenthe to stay I suppose it could also indicate that they're happy to keep paying his wages and so on - not sure if that's good or bad really! It's good in that it might suggest there isn't going to be any drastic need to get rid of players but at the same time I hope there will be more prudency with this ownership than Anton's.

[Royal Lady]

In what possible way would the new owners want to keep Drenthe, manager doesn't want him, he's not playing, he's been banished to train with the under 21s and he costs a fortune. Who in their right mind would take over a club and want to keep a player like that?

And I will still stick up for Drenthe until I have definitive proof that his being banished to the under 21s is nothing more than Adkins childish attempt to try and have some managerial "influence" because he didn't want him or sign him in the first place. IF all these stories were true, including taking coke, which is libellous without any proof whatsoever, by the way, we'd have got rid of him by terminating his contract.

[yappy]

Don't believe any of the stories on here. If the new owners did want Royston to stay surely he would be training with the first team again by now. Considering we've already bought in Mackie, Cox, Ferdinand and soon Norwood before the takeover is ratified, I don't see why we would be waiting off on recalling Royston to the first team.

As for the other rumours, I think it's quite clear that Royston has a bit of a flash lifestyle, and I think because of this people are just making assumptions as to why he's been banished. I personally think it's down to high wages and poor attitude and not a lot else. Takeover or not, can we really justify giving the wage Royston is supposedly on, on what has been a fairly mediocre return?