An official thank you to the parking space crew.

[clauski]

The illusion that Coppell has some magic up his sleeve has surely been shattered by now, however.

You have been watching:

Emerse Fae
Greg Halford
Seol Ki-Hyeon
Sam Sodje
Jimmy Kebe
Alan Bennett
Aaron Brown


Add Ferdinand and Keown to that, and a goalkeeper in the god-awful Graham Stack. Throw in Paul Brooker perhaps and that is the basis for a pretty hopeless Coppell flop XI.

To be fair to Coppell though at least he has realised and fairly quickly got rid of the worst cases. But we do need to step up the quality of our signings and be brave enough to do so.

[londinium]

The illusion that Coppell has some magic up his sleeve has surely been shattered by now, however.

You have been watching:

Emerse Fae
Greg Halford
Seol Ki-Hyeon
Sam Sodje
Jimmy Kebe
Alan Bennett
Aaron Brown


Add Ferdinand and Keown to that, and a goalkeeper in the god-awful Graham Stack. Throw in Paul Brooker perhaps and that is the basis for a pretty hopeless Coppell flop XI.

To be fair to Coppell though at least he has realised and fairly quickly got rid of the worst cases. But we do need to step up the quality of our signings and be brave enough to do so.

And to be even fairer to Coppell, he took us to top flight football for the first time in our history with a record breaking points total!!!!!!

[Millsy]

I wish people wouldn't weaken otherwise reasonable arguments by talking about Coppell magic. The illusion that Coppell has some magic up his sleeve has surely been shattered by now, however.

Ok then I admit it's not real magic it's just an incredible proven (several times) ability to take lower league players and mould them into a Championship winning (and in our instance a record breaking) team and into top flight. An incredible somewhat uncanny ability to take teams up to the top flight. I admit I don't believe it's real magic though

And how exactly does being relegated from Prem to Championship shatter the Championship-->Prem magic/ability I talk about may I ask?

He's back where his magic works.

And even if we are doing very badly in Christmas who's to say a brand new manager would do better, so who's to say who was misguided?

The reality of the situation is we've been relegated and that's always going to be painful, distressing, and devastating for any club. Blaming it on the almost unanimous no-brainer decision to keep the most successful manager in our history, the one man who managed to get us up, the man who's probably got the best record ever in the Championship is only clutching at straws, looking for a scapegoat and trying to reignite a pointless 'battle' I'm afraid. I think we have to face the reality that relegation is always going to be painful for many reasons and stop trying to fight an old cause that's already been soundly beaten and rightly so. This is getting boring.

[Dirk Gently]

Can't really argue with that, 2ww1wc.

I think, in our current situation, SC is the best manager to take us back up quickly, if anyone is going to - as you say, he's back where his magic works. A new manager would inevitably be starting from scratch, whereas SC knows the club, knows the players, knows the setup here, and knows how to take clubs up into the PL.

Having said that, I certainly don't think he's the best manager to keep a club in the PL, so while I support him to take us up I don't support him to keep us up. That needs different skills and I think he now realises it, too.

[working class hero]

Can't really argue with that, 2ww1wc.

I think, in our current situation, SC is the best manager to take us back up quickly, if anyone is going to - as you say, he's back where his magic works. A new manager would inevitably be starting from scratch, whereas SC knows the club, knows the players, knows the setup here, and knows how to take clubs up into the PL.

Having said that, I certainly don't think he's the best manager to keep a club in the PL, so while I support him to take us up I don't support him to keep us up. That needs different skills and I think he now realises it, too.

He showed great ability in our first Prem season. As he said at the forum he realises he was too loyal to players last season. I think that he will not make the same mistake twice at RFC.

I am not too sure we will be promotion material this season tho'. For me the team should have been built around Kitson / Marek / Ingi / Duberry. The loss of Kits fills me with [even more] gloom....

[clauski]

He showed great ability in our first Prem season. As he said at the forum he realises he was too loyal to players last season. I think that he will not make the same mistake twice at RFC.

Let's hope - at the moment we have no new faces and a sense of deja vu!

[North Somerset Royal]

Didnt maxwell fail totally?and therefore not damage our club at all.in fact it could be argued that his actions made possible madeskis reign and led to us becoming a prem club. Good argument

It is true that he failed in his bid to merge us with Oxford to create Thames Valley Royals but announcing his plans to the media and the boardroom wrangles that followed were very disruptive and impacted on the players and our ability to sign new ones. During that period the clubs financial position became even more acute than before and even after his scheme was blocked Maxwell refused to sell his shares for some time. The net result was a long period of disruption ending with relegation to Divn 4.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

He showed great ability in our first Prem season. As he said at the forum he realises he was too loyal to players last season. I think that he will not make the same mistake twice at RFC.

Let's hope - at the moment we have no new faces and a sense of deja vu!

The difference is that last year we had money to spend and didn't spend it.

This year we've had no money to spend (until Kitson left) which must have limited options a tad.

Why we had no money to spend is a different issue, but the zero budget was comfirmed at an internal meeting within the club this week, and it falls directly into line with the "we'll have to sell before we can buy" quotes made earlier.

Of course, going off to Sweden on a tour that's dates make it look like it was arranged at a time when the club believed they'd stay up, as it gives us two more piss-easy friendlies at a time when we should be stepping up a gear, is going to make any transfer dealings harder to do.

[Royal Lady]

So, we have no money, other than what we've just received for Kitson? So where is the money from last season's tv revenue etc going then? As, it's been said on here at least, the money is paid retrospectatively, i.e. we won't get the parachute payment for this season until the end of the season.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

Didnt maxwell fail totally?and therefore not damage our club at all.in fact it could be argued that his actions made possible madeskis reign and led to us becoming a prem club. Good argument

It is true that he failed in his bid to merge us with Oxford to create Thames Valley Royals but announcing his plans to the media and the boardroom wrangles that followed were very disruptive and impacted on the players and our ability to sign new ones. During that period the clubs financial position became even more acute than before and even after his scheme was blocked Maxwell refused to sell his shares for some time. The net result was a long period of disruption ending with relegation to Divn 4.

Long period of disruption? Hmm. The time between Maxwell announcing his plans and us being relegated was 4 weeks, and was after the transfer dealine, so had no impact at all on our ability to sign players. We also managed 8 points from 6 games in that spell, so results didn't suffer. Financial problems were there long before Maxwell came along, as Reading's support was abysmal at the time.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

So, we have no money, other than what we've just received for Kitson? So where is the money from last season's tv revenue etc going then? As, it's been said on here at least, the money is paid retrospectatively, i.e. we won't get the parachute payment for this season until the end of the season.

If that money went towards paying bills in our two premier league seasons, being paid that money a year in arrears doesn't mean we have extra this year. It just means we received the money to pay our bills at the end of the year rather than the start. It doesn't mean we have £30 million for this season.

[SteveRoyal]

The illusion that Coppell has some magic up his sleeve has surely been shattered by now, however.

You have been watching:

Emerse Fae
Greg Halford
Seol Ki-Hyeon
Sam Sodje
Jimmy Kebe
Alan Bennett
Aaron Brown


Add Ferdinand and Keown to that, and a goalkeeper in the god-awful Graham Stack. Throw in Paul Brooker perhaps and that is the basis for a pretty hopeless Coppell flop XI.

I order you to stop bullying Kebe.
We've hardly seen him play!

[working class hero]

Kebe couldn't even score agin Lge 1 opposition like MK Dons could he?

[floyd__streete]

This is to say an official thank you and well done to the several hundred people here, who, at the drop of a hat went out in force to support and welcome Coppell to stay.

You may not realise it now, but this one act of sheer passionate support may well have changed the direction of RFC forever.

Yep, thanks for that

[Arnie_Pie]

This is to say an official thank you and well done to the several hundred people here, who, at the drop of a hat went out in force to support and welcome Coppell to stay.

You may not realise it now, but this one act of sheer passionate support may well have changed the direction of RFC forever.

Yep, thanks for that

Hmmmm, hindsight and all that?

Poor post.

[londinium]

This is to say an official thank you and well done to the several hundred people here, who, at the drop of a hat went out in force to support and welcome Coppell to stay.

You may not realise it now, but this one act of sheer passionate support may well have changed the direction of RFC forever.

Yep, thanks for that

Grow up

[floyd__streete]

This is to say an official thank you and well done to the several hundred people here, who, at the drop of a hat went out in force to support and welcome Coppell to stay.

You may not realise it now, but this one act of sheer passionate support may well have changed the direction of RFC forever.

Yep, thanks for that

Hmmmm, hindsight and all that?

Poor post.

Poor idea in the first place.

[Arnie_Pie]

And how can you possibly state that? So, what you are saying that if we had got rid of Coppell we would without doubt, be in a better position than we are now, ie a place or two above where we are on the league?

Get real.

[Southbank Old Boy]

We might not have had quite a successful season this year, but instead of having a squad that is definately missing something and a manager that seems likely to leave at the end of the season, which will result in even more rebuilding being required, we mightve spent the summer and this season starting a new era with a new plan

We might have lost a couple more players, we might have kept a few more, but I am pretty damn sure we would have bought in players with more of a plan for the long term in mind

[Turns8]

We might not have had quite a successful season this year, but instead of having a squad that is definately missing something and a manager that seems likely to leave at the end of the season, which will result in even more rebuilding being required, we mightve spent the summer and this season starting a new era with a new plan

We might have lost a couple more players, we might have kept a few more, but I am pretty damn sure we would have bought in players with more of a plan for the long term in mind

Good post....

full of the usual...if we did this...if we did that...

I just wish I had picked different numbers tonight on the lottery and then who knows...but I didn't...but then that's life...

Realistically....how much money do you think we should have spent in the summer ?and can you list some players who would have been obtainable....There is alittle bit more to signing players, than just going out there and getting them...

Oh and say we had spent £20m on 7 or 8 players and we were currently sat in the bottom 3 would you be banging on about the waste of money new signings or would you be saying...it's such a shame it hasn't worked out....hmmm, I'd wager I would know the answer