Gab Marcotti on TalkSport

[Royal Rother]

Brief notes on his comments re Reading tonight.

He said over the weekend he heard someone on a phone in say that Watford were more likley to stay up than Reading because they play a long ball game whereas Reading rely on a sharper passing game that won't be suited to the Premiership. He said that nearly made him drive off the road. Since when did a long ball game become a better bet for survival than a passing game?

He recalled the season when Peter Taylor was sacked from Leicester and Mickey Adams took over and signed a bunch of experienced old men used to the long ball game. They went down. When asked why he has gone for that style Adams had said that it was not possible to sign players who are capable of playing a passing game from the lower leagues.

Marcotti was delighted to point out that Reading proved this was not the case. There are plenty of decent footballers in the lower leagues who were capable of playing at the top level if given the chance. What was more gratifying was the fact that most of the Reading players were English as well.

He gave Jason Cundy some right old stick for saying that he had adopted Reading as his second team now. He called him a "Johnny-cum-lately Gloryhunter" or some such, and asked him if he had any idea what Reading were doing 5 years ago.

Anyway, thought I'd share that with you.

[Amsterdam Royal]

Made me laugh too...enjoy Marcottis international perspective and brings some balance to a too often 'good cop /bad cop ' sports show !!

By the way....had an authentic Korean meal on saturday night in New Malden and ( so my host told me ..) they were talking about our good old debut boy...and they were pretty excited too!

What a great debut and how nice to see him relaxed outside the ground signing autographs before the game.

[Royal Rother]

Marcotti is top man in my book, especially for remaining sane and balanced in the TalkSport environment you aptly describe.

[pooandwee]

Marcotti generally talks a lot of sense. He has a great inside knowledge of the game.

[Finchley Royal]

Is Marcotti the one who joint authored Vialli's recent book, the Italian Job? The excerpts from it in the Times made interesting reading.

[Royal Rother]

He is.

[Finchley Royal]

Thank you.

[Arch]

Not sure about most REading players being English, though.

[rabidbee]

Not sure about most Reading players being English, though.

If we can count Murty (?), it's six of the fourteen who played on Saturday:

Shorey, Harper, Sidwell, Kitson, Lita, (and Murty?).

[yorksroyal]

Can we count Lita? I thought he was born in Congo.

[noise]

Shorey, Sidders, Little, Lita (though born in congo), Kitson, Halls, Harper, Osana, Brown, Cox, Golbourne are our english men.

Doyle, Hunt, Hayes, Stack, and Long are our irish men.

Convey and Hahnmann are our americans.
Gunnarsson and ingimarrison our icelandic men.

Murty is our scotsman.
Sonko our senegal man.
oster your welsh man.
sodje our nigerian man.
seol is our south korean.
federici is our australian.

I think it is safe to say most!

[rabidbee]

Can we count Lita? I thought he was born in Congo.

But he's played for England U21s.

[rabidbee]

Shorey, Sidders, Little, Lita (though born in congo), Kitson, Halls, Harper, Osana, Brown, Cox, Golbourne are our english men.

...

I think it is safe to say most!

Hmmm, but Halls, Osano, Brown, Cox and Golbourne have 3, 0+1, 0, 0+6 and 1 appearances respectively (most in Cup competitions). You can hardly say that they were an integral part in our success, either last year or on Saturday.

[Ian Royal]

Personally I've always considered the Welsh, Scottish and to a certain degree the Irish to count as home players as well as the English. They are all part of either Great Britain, or the British Isles.

That makes the majority of our players from the home nations, and the majority of those are English. Murty to my mind counts as English as much as he counts as Scottish, and just because Lita was born outside this country doesn't stop him being English. He may have a claim to Congo citizenship, but in the majority he is English.

[rabidbee]

Personally I've always considered the Welsh, Scottish and to a certain degree the Irish to count as home players as well as the English. They are all part of either Great Britain, or the British Isles.

That makes the majority of our players from the home nations, and the majority of those are English. Murty to my mind counts as English as much as he counts as Scottish, and just because Lita was born outside this country doesn't stop him being English. He may have a claim to Congo citizenship, but in the majority he is English.

Yeah, most of the players are British, which is generally what matters to me too. I am pedantic about the differences between English and British for political reasons, though, so I responded as such.

[Ian Royal]

Personally I've always considered the Welsh, Scottish and to a certain degree the Irish to count as home players as well as the English. They are all part of either Great Britain, or the British Isles.

That makes the majority of our players from the home nations, and the majority of those are English. Murty to my mind counts as English as much as he counts as Scottish, and just because Lita was born outside this country doesn't stop him being English. He may have a claim to Congo citizenship, but in the majority he is English.

Yeah, most of the players are British, which is generally what matters to me too. I am pedantic about the differences between English and British for political reasons, though, so I responded as such.

Fair enough. I'm aware it offends the principalities and co-kingdom when the term English is used when British should be. Bless

[rabidbee]

Personally I've always considered the Welsh, Scottish and to a certain degree the Irish to count as home players as well as the English. They are all part of either Great Britain, or the British Isles.

That makes the majority of our players from the home nations, and the majority of those are English. Murty to my mind counts as English as much as he counts as Scottish, and just because Lita was born outside this country doesn't stop him being English. He may have a claim to Congo citizenship, but in the majority he is English.

Yeah, most of the players are British, which is generally what matters to me too. I am pedantic about the differences between English and British for political reasons, though, so I responded as such.

Fair enough. I'm aware it offends the principalities and co-kingdom when the term English is used when British should be. Bless

It doesn't offend me, just annoys me, because it's inaccurate. I'm not English, I'm British.

[Ian Royal]

Personally I've always considered the Welsh, Scottish and to a certain degree the Irish to count as home players as well as the English. They are all part of either Great Britain, or the British Isles.

That makes the majority of our players from the home nations, and the majority of those are English. Murty to my mind counts as English as much as he counts as Scottish, and just because Lita was born outside this country doesn't stop him being English. He may have a claim to Congo citizenship, but in the majority he is English.

Yeah, most of the players are British, which is generally what matters to me too. I am pedantic about the differences between English and British for political reasons, though, so I responded as such.

Fair enough. I'm aware it offends the principalities and co-kingdom when the term English is used when British should be. Bless

It doesn't offend me, just annoys me, because it's inaccurate. I'm not English, I'm British.

It confuses me, but I like to think of myself as both.

I'm human(insert joke here), then British, then English, then Readingish or whatever it should be called. Actually thats balls. I'd support Reading over England any day of the week.

[rabidbee]

Personally I've always considered the Welsh, Scottish and to a certain degree the Irish to count as home players as well as the English. They are all part of either Great Britain, or the British Isles.

That makes the majority of our players from the home nations, and the majority of those are English. Murty to my mind counts as English as much as he counts as Scottish, and just because Lita was born outside this country doesn't stop him being English. He may have a claim to Congo citizenship, but in the majority he is English.

Yeah, most of the players are British, which is generally what matters to me too. I am pedantic about the differences between English and British for political reasons, though, so I responded as such.

Fair enough. I'm aware it offends the principalities and co-kingdom when the term English is used when British should be. Bless

It doesn't offend me, just annoys me, because it's inaccurate. I'm not English, I'm British.

It confuses me, but I like to think of myself as both.

I'm human(insert joke here), then British, then English, then Readingish or whatever it should be called. Actually thats balls. I'd support Reading over England any day of the week.

I'm half-(Northern) Irish (and my Gran would think of herself as an Ulster Scot, at that), I have some Welsh roots, and I used to be married to a Scot, and spent time in Scotland. I've lived more of my life in the north-west now, but I was born down south. (However, I was born in Aldershit, so I don't really want to focus on that too much!) I'm English, when it comes to supporting the national team (although I follow N Ireland when not playing England), but I'm British when it comes to national politics.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with the Team board, so I shall desist...

[RIP ELM Park]

Shorey, Sidders, Little, Lita (though born in congo), Kitson, Halls, Harper, Osana, Brown, Cox, Golbourne are our english men.

Doyle, Hunt, Hayes, Stack, and Long are our irish men.

Convey and Hahnmann are our americans.
Gunnarsson and ingimarrison our icelandic men.

Murty is our scotsman.
Sonko our senegal man.
oster your welsh man.
sodje our nigerian man.
seol is our south korean.
federici is our australian.

I think it is safe to say most!

So 11 English / 12 British if you prefer and 15 non english /14 non British
therefore of the playes you've listed most are not English/British

So not so safe to say most