Where is the bottom for this club?

[rhroyal]

Our last similar slide to this started from a 2nd place finish and play-off final loss in 1995 and turned at around the turn of the Millenium with Division 3 football at the time beckoning. This slide has seen us fall from 8th in the Premiership in 2007 to League 1 football looking like a big possibility as we enter 2010. How much further do we fall? What pulled us around last time? What differences are there now?

[cmonurz]

Very much depends on how the board reacts to the abject failure of this season. If we stay up, will Madejski invest further in the squad, or will A N OtherManager have to turn us into a decent Championship side by selling our best players?

[Royalwaster]

I think it will take till someone realises that you can't run a football club on the cheap as we've done for the last 4 seasons - it started in the Premiership with our total inability to strengthen the team and has continued since then. The BR fiasco is just a continuation of that - what a stupid strategy to pay all that money to get him and then not give him a decent budget to do well. Should have instead got a journeyman manager and told him to manage ...

[RoyalBlue]

Very much depends on how the board reacts to the abject failure of this season. If we stay up, will Madejski invest further in the squad, or will A N OtherManager have to turn us into a decent Championship side by selling our best players?

What have we got left to sell?

Mind you, could probably sell 10,000 plastic seats on ebay - we won't be needing them after next weekend.

[facaldaqui]

If we go down, I don't see us doing much better than mid table in the first division next season. There will have to be another grotesque round of cost cutting, with highly paid players being shipped out: that would be Matejovsky, Kebe, Cisse, and maybe Mills, whom I presume is on high wages. Sigurdsson and Macanuff might also be picked off. The first division is really competitive these days: even if Leeds go up, some of Charlton, Colchester, Millwall, Norwich, Southampton, Swindon, Huddersfield, and Milton Keynes will still be there. These are probably better teams than us even this season. Fortunately, you can usually depend on a couple of teams going into administration to take up some of the relegation places, so I don't see us dropping into the bottom tier.

Getting out of division I is notoriously difficult, as Reading fans know only too well. You need exceptional management, as we got from Branfoot, McGhee, and Pardew. You have to throw a six to get on the ladder, and that means a good manager.

[RoyalBlue]

If we go down, I don't see us doing much better than mid table in the first division next season. There will have to be another grotesque round of cost cutting, with highly paid players being shipped out: that would be Matejovsky, Kebe, Cisse, and maybe Mills, whom I presume is on high wages. Sigurdsson and Macanuff might also be picked off. The first division is really competitive these days: even if Leeds go up, some of Colchester, Millwall, Norwich, Southampton, Swindon, Huddersfield, and Milton Keynes will still be there. These are probably better teams than us even this season. Fortunately, you can usually depend on a couple of teams going into administration to take up some of the relegation places, so I don't see us dropping into the bottom tier.

Marek and Cisse are quite likely to be the next bits (not that there are many left) of family silver flogged off/given away this coming January.

[Schards#2]

Hard question to answer, certainly it will be below the championship.

Hopefully someone will see potential in the club when it's available for a song, ideally before we reach Div 2.

Whilst I felt Rodgers did a dismal job, a club that doesn't invest in the playing side is ultimately doomed long term. You cannot defy gravity

[Arch]

Hard question to answer, certainly it will be below the championship.

Hopefully someone will see potential in the club when it's available for a song, ideally before we reach Div 2.

Whilst I felt Rodgers did a dismal job, a club that doesn't invest in the playing side is ultimately doomed long term. You cannot defy gravity

The thing is, Schards, the money spent on players should have been enough to give us a mediocre mid-table Championship side along the lines of, say, Coventry or Watford. But we're not even that. Compare our purchases in the last two years with Palace and look where they are.

[M Brook]

Where is the bottom for this club?

I used to think it was Brendan Rodgers mouth but now I'm not so sure.

[Ian Royal]

Hard question to answer, certainly it will be below the championship.

Hopefully someone will see potential in the club when it's available for a song, ideally before we reach Div 2.

Whilst I felt Rodgers did a dismal job, a club that doesn't invest in the playing side is ultimately doomed long term. You cannot defy gravity

The thing is, Schards, the money spent on players should have been enough to give us a mediocre mid-table Championship side along the lines of, say, Coventry or Watford. But we're not even that. Compare our purchases in the last two years with Palace and look where they are.

Good shout.

[Very near...far away]

To sort of paraphrase the great Kevin Keegan:

"No one knows how low this club can go. I don't know and the players don't know".

[Quick pause and sheepish look]

"It's depends how far they want it to go."

[andrew1957]

I supported BR and felt that we should stick with him even if we went down as I believe he would have got the best from the Academy players in the longer run and we could have had a chance of rebuilding.

I have now lost all hope as I feel we are very likely to be relegated - particularly if yet another new manager is appointed and then Sir John will probably panic yet again (like he did in sacking Rodgers) and sell the brighter stars that we have like Sig and then we will most likely be staring League 2 in the face this time next year.

There really are no grounds for optimism and I think the impatient Reading fans and the Chairman deserve what they have got frankly!! I am not sure if I can summon the enthusiasm to go week after week to watch the rest of this dreadful saga play out.

[Arch]

4.50 today. It's all up from here.

[M Brook]

There really are no grounds for optimism and I think the impatient Reading fans and the Chairman deserve what they have got frankly!! I am not sure if I can summon the enthusiasm to go week after week to watch the rest of this dreadful saga play out.

Fortunately for me, I came to that same conclusion seven months ago and for the first time in 15 seasons did not renew my ST. Even so, days like today still hurt dreadfully.

[strap]

Well let's assume Hammond is telling the truth and we sell (well, ship out), some more players from the largest squad in the Championship come January.

Marek and Cisse will go as their wages are too expensive for what we get out of them. I simply cannot believe Kebe is on high wages, but let's assume he is and he too is binned (actually a positive).

Bryn & Ivar will not be offered new contracts for 10-11 season, and may even go in Jan as their wages will also be significant.

McAnuff has already shown his standard performance - starts off with a new club with a degree of success and rapidly fades. No change there then.

Rasiak is a journeyman non-entity along the lines of Keith Scott. Howard is well, just Howard. Cummings cannot play football and Mills is a £2M flop.

Sig will be offloaded for £500k in Jan as the one player in our squad who can command a transfer fee.

So we are left with the bulk of the last couple of years' Academy. Davies and Henry will hopefully be recalled from loan. With luck, Noel hunt will fully recover from injury adn will stay around for one more season.

Given that, we will be end 2010-11 as lower mid table League 1 - IF WE ARE LUCKY.

By then a few more of the Academy players wilk begin to mature as Siggy has, and we might begin a slow painful climb up League 1 finishing mid-table 2011-12. Thereafter, Madejski will have sold the club for £5M plus his debt, and he will have retained the Hotel for his businesses. Depends on who he has sold it to as to where we go from there.

[Ian Royal]

I supported BR and felt that we should stick with him even if we went down as I believe he would have got the best from the Academy players in the longer run and we could have had a chance of rebuilding.

I have now lost all hope as I feel we are very likely to be relegated - particularly if yet another new manager is appointed and then Sir John will probably panic yet again (like he did in sacking Rodgers) and sell the brighter stars that we have like Sig and then we will most likely be staring League 2 in the face this time next year.

There really are no grounds for optimism and I think the impatient Reading fans and the Chairman deserve what they have got frankly!! I am not sure if I can summon the enthusiasm to go week after week to watch the rest of this dreadful saga play out.

I'd have stuck by him into next season if he'd still been here come February because I think he would have learnt enough to make a good fist of League One. At least worth finding out. But at the same time I was happy he went when he did. It was a close call and only May will be soon enough to really have any idea if it was the right one or not. Probably we'll never know for sure.

[The Real Sandhurst Royal]

Early January 2010 must see the appointment of a new manager at RFC with some loan signings bought in immeadiatly to try and recover the situation that we are in.

If we continue to delay we will continue the slow and painful fall to League 1.

[Man Friday]

I supported BR and felt that we should stick with him even if we went down as I believe he would have got the best from the Academy players in the longer run and we could have had a chance of rebuilding.

I have now lost all hope as I feel we are very likely to be relegated - particularly if yet another new manager is appointed and then Sir John will probably panic yet again (like he did in sacking Rodgers) and sell the brighter stars that we have like Sig and then we will most likely be staring League 2 in the face this time next year.

There really are no grounds for optimism and I think the impatient Reading fans and the Chairman deserve what they have got frankly!! I am not sure if I can summon the enthusiasm to go week after week to watch the rest of this dreadful saga play out.

I too have lost hope and will struggle to summon the enthusiasm to attend matches - especially at £75 a shot (travelling, tickets, programme, food, etc). Frankly, I'd rather spend my money elsewhere. If anyone wants to criticise this fairweather attitude then I understand that fully but nevertheless that's how it is. The only hope we have is Madj sells up quickly at a price that is lower than he really wants. Can't see it for a number of reasons but perhaps most of all because I genuinely feel that he's concerned about losing the name of the stadium, and therefore his profile, in a sale.

[The 17 Bus]

when the royals visit the rec next season,will they fill the away end?

[howser]

It is difficult to hammer the players over this season, we have sold all the good ones and replaced them with, to say the least very average, and thats being generous, has beens. I dont think there were too many clubs fighting us for the signatures of Rasiak, Howard and Mcanuff, unfortunately we have an owner and his playmates on the board and of course Hammy, who have not the slightest interest in providing anything positive for the club, just balance the books and when the question of "where has all the money gone" is asked, they come out with a hotch potch statement about how much we have spent on the Hotel and media centre, just letting the fans know what they want them to !! In our position now a caravan would do as a media centre !!

It is not surprising the players peform with an, undetermined, no effort and totally uninterested attitude, and play like they are just going through the motions to pick up their pay, after all that cancerous thread is flowing through the club with the present owner, who is soley to blame, undoubtedly the cause of the disease rotting Reading FC from the top down.

Where is the bottom well at the moment its last place in the championship, other teams presently below us, aka peterboro, seem to have got some sort of pride, spirit and effort to get out of thier present plight, we certainly dont have that, or a manager to instill some, and in the present climate McDermott will be the permanent one, as he will be cheap, the main criteria for Madejski, and in reality we havent had much desire and determination to since christmas 2008