How bad would relegation be?

[Elm Park Kid]

1 = Just a one-off, fun season in League One where we'd get back into winning ways and come back up stronger.

10 = RFC would cease to exist.

[Royal_jimmy]

Closer to 10.

There's already a big relegation thread

[Snowflake Royal]

4 ish

[AthleticoSpizz]

Been there…done that many a time..…it’s cyclic for teams like ours…it happens…that’s why we have the excitement of promotions and relegations

Partridge shrugs etc

[ILoveMoonPig]

Do we lose protection of our academy if we get relegated? That could be bad if we plan to survive on our academy graduates.

[PATRIQT]

£8m loss straight away, and the chances of our owner giving up and pulling his investment increase.

He coughs up £2.5m a season to keep the academy Cat 1.

Look at the likes of Bolton, Wednesday, Leeds, Sunderland, Charlton etc etc, for how hard it can be to get out of that league!

How bad would it be? For a club with our debts, with zero assets. It could be Armageddon bad for Reading FC.

[Lower West]

Has the club ever been in a worse position ? The next two years offer little in the way of optimism.

[tidus_mi2]

£8m loss straight away, and the chances of our owner giving up and pulling his investment increase.

He coughs up £2.5m a season to keep the academy Cat 1.

Look at the likes of Bolton, Wednesday, Leeds, Sunderland, Charlton etc etc, for how hard it can be to get out of that league!

How bad would it be? For a club with our debts, with zero assets. It could be Armageddon bad for Reading FC.

It's really not that bad, even if the owner decided to pull out the restrictions enforced on us have set us down the path to self-sustainability. With regards to the academy, that would 100% be scaled back significantly, no idea what we would go down to but we're not locked into investing into it, we'd let people go and drop our yearly investment, we'd still have the facilities.

[CountryRoyal]

I’ve gone for 8, I think whilst seeing the club cease to exist is a little difficult to imagine, the situation would still be awful. Despite our average league finish in the last couple of decades, I don’t think we have the fan base representing an established Championship club. Now, a couple of successful seasons that may change, but at the moment I think it’s far more feasible to see us get relegated to league two than promoted back up to the championship. For every argument (which I agree is possible) that it will be a good opportunity to reset and come back stronger, I see plenty of others which suggest we will languish and struggle in the third tier (or worse).

For me, it’s not a risk I’m happy to take and I think relegation needs to be avoided at all costs.

[Snowflake Royal]

Do we lose protection of our academy if we get relegated? That could be bad if we plan to survive on our academy graduates.

Believe only if we dowmgrade it.

[Snowflake Royal]

£8m loss straight away, and the chances of our owner giving up and pulling his investment increase.

He coughs up £2.5m a season to keep the academy Cat 1.

Look at the likes of Bolton, Wednesday, Leeds, Sunderland, Charlton etc etc, for how hard it can be to get out of that league!

How bad would it be? For a club with our debts, with zero assets. It could be Armageddon bad for Reading FC.

On the other hand, Rotherham, Barnsley, Wigan and Peterborough have done it alright .

Leeds didn’t even take that long iirc, about 3 seasons, Wednesday 2. Sunderland are at 4 currently, Charlton did it in 3 (then dropped again).

You missed Sheff U who took 6. Though then they went up twice, to the PL.

Then there's Norwich, Saints, Forest, Leicester - they've all bounced back in 3 or fewer seasons.

It's actually more the exception that clubs of these sizes stay down for more than a handful of seasons or drop multiple levels. Even Bolton bounced back straight away, dropped again, dropped to L2, immediately came back up and in season 3 are mid table L1.

Pompey are really the main example of a sizeable club falling apart and not getting back, in 9 seasons and counting now.

[Jackson Corner]

Just think for a minute. All our players on big wages go. Lots of staff who have worked years for the club would be made redundant. Gates down to 8 k. Losing to Forest Green on a freezing Tuesday night. Papa Johns Auto Windscreen thing. Maidenhead knocking us out in the cup first round. Ladies team scraped to save money. The Eamon Dolan stand empty. Relegation to league 2. The club wound up ground sold off and land used for a permanent home for the travelling community.

[windermereROYAL]

Just think for a minute. All our players on big wages go. Lots of staff who have worked years for the club would be made redundant. Gates down to 8 k. Losing to Forest Green on a freezing Tuesday night. Papa Johns Auto Windscreen thing. Maidenhead knocking us out in the cup first round. Ladies team scraped to save money. The Eamon Dolan stand empty. Relegation to league 2. The club wound up ground sold off and land used for a permanent home for the travelling community.

I bet you are fun at parties.

[Barney]

Has the club ever been in a worse position ? The next two years offer little in the way of optimism.

Well it has. 1970s we were skint. Robin Friday asked to come back but we had already spent the transfer money we received. Late 1980s were dire also....very very low crowds, Maxwell, and 40 minutes from heading back to the fourth tier. And we were losing money every week.

As CR keeps correctly stating, we HAVE to stay up AT ALL COSTS.

As for the next two years my friend, let's initially focus on the next three months. These will dictate the next couple of years.

[Zip]

8. Seriously worried that our downward spiral would continue. Ever further dwindling crowds, only a handful of players still under contract and not wanting to stay, a transfer embargo and owners who would surely be very unhappy.

I would be concerned that it could lead to our demise.

[windermereROYAL]

I give you Wigan, owners walked away, they are flying now.

[glenroyal]

I don't think it could be much worse than it is now, major clear-out & refresh might not be all bad.

(That said, odds of not being relegated not looking good anyway - 4 teams avoiding the 3 drop slots, with 2 win gap above?)

[Snowflake Royal]

Looking at it a different way, is anyone actually enjoying watching us these days?

This is the tenth season of shite.

Stam 1 we finished in the play offs but the football was poor and we whimpered out.
Pauno 1 we finished high up but the season finished with a total whimper.
Adkins we just missed the play offs but even then we only won a little over a third of our home games.
Bowen we achieved mid table and finished badly

We've averaged 8 home wins a season over the last decade now. Are more disappointing relegation fights with over paid disappointments where we're saved only by even more abject teams worth it? With the odd flurry of quality that takes us to the top end for one season.

Does the level we play at matter more than seeing us compete and win? Not for me. I want to see us compete at the highest level we're able to, but that hasn't really been this one for a while now, has it.

Everyone talks about us going out of business. But when has that actually happened to a club of our size? Derby are at risk, but there are many more factors at play there.

Pompey survived going down to L2, Sunderland have survived going to L1, Bolton survived going to L2, just about, Wigan have survived going to L1. So have Charlton. As did Leeds, Sheffs U and Weds, Forest, Norwich, Ipswich etc.

Do you really think we are likely to be the exception rather than the norm?

[Millsy]

If owners stay, no biggie.

If it means they'll bugger off and leave us in trouble potentially closer to 10.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

6.

I can't see the owners walking or even putting the club up for sale either to be honest. Whether that's seen as a good or a bad thing is a different story though.

I don't think it would ever go as far as the club ceasing to exist and I believe we'd find a buyer to get us out of trouble anyway eventually, but I don't even think we, as fans, should even be considering that as an option really. The fact it regularly gets mentioned on here, shows how bad the current situation is at the club really and that's what needs to be addressed.

On the field and off the field, it makes us worse, for obvious reasons. Especially with a mass exodus of players, maybe in the short-term we would find it difficult to get out of League One. Many clubs have found it hard, Sunderland and Ipswich not withstanding, and they've been in better shape than what we will be going into the summer when you consider players contracted to the club, no restrictions on those clubs etc.

A couple of seasons ago I may have seen it as a blessing in disguise. It would have allowed us to potentially develop a Holmes - McIntyre CB partnership at that level and above which I would favour personally and is a real statement for our academy. We'd be better placed to blood through top quality youth prospects, obviously playing against weaker opposition so making their opportunities greater and we could look to have a matchday squad where maybe a third, or even up to a half, of the squad was made up of academy players turned first team players. It would have meant that some of our bigger earners would have potentially moved on to pastures new as they wouldn't want to be playing at that level, thus reducing our wage bill etc.

In fairness, most of that could still happen even if we were relegated this season, probably to a greater degree as I can imagine our academy prospects we will be relying on more next season anyway but I feel like we've missed our chance to be relegated and then come back up immediately. I'd never want us to go down obviously, but in terms of "taking a step backwards to take two steps forward", I feel like we are past that point now. We'd have to take 2 steps back before we'd even consider moving forward properly again now.