Brendan's moaning again!

[Royalee]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2799249/I-never-had-chance-to-prove-myself.html

Looking for sympathy and he's not getting any from me. There's a reason you got sacked and that interview tries to make it sound like none of this was your fault, prick!

You're the prick if you can't see he was harshly sacked. We'll get what we deserve when we go down though - Rodgers is spot on with what he says.

HaROFLsh! We were going down with him in charge, at least i had a few days of hope when he went.

We were clear of the relegation zone and our form was improving over the last two months with 3 wins and 11 points in his last 7 games, so I'd very much dispute that assumption.

[Compo's Hat]

Sheffield Wednesday were awful, Blackpool didn't turn up and we got beat by a woeful Derby side.

[Royalee]

Sheffield Wednesday were awful, Blackpool didn't turn up and we got beat by a woeful Derby side.

It's a good job Plymouth are world class then.

[floyd__streete]

Results were improving? Rodgers penultimate game in charge, Reading 2-4 Crystal Palace. Rodgers - who had bigged up our youth products - dropped the best young prospect of the lot in Sigurdsson, played his 4-5-1 guff, saw his useless goalkeeper concede twice at his near post and his side ended up getting absolutely thrashed by a side who hadn't even been paid . If that is a sign of results improving then I am a chinaman.

"You thought.....that was worse than Tuesday?"

[Compo's Hat]

Still out on McDermott myself if he is to stay. Club would be well advised to let us supporters know what they're thinking instead of leaving us in the dark.

[Wimb]

Don't see anything wrong with what Rodgers has said to be honest. I find it laughable that he wasn't given until the cup game, as much as I hate conspiracy theories the whole 'did he have a 6 month clause' in his deal is making more and more sense.

He was harshly sacked, we weren't the worst team in the league and even the manager himelf and the board had said all along that it was a long term project. Sadly the powers that be shit the bed and pulled the trigger for whatever reason and have now placed their trust in someone with even LESS experience then BR.

Nothing against BM there, and not saying Rodgers was world class or didn't make mistakes but to be fair he has every right to express his opinions far as im concerned.

[Alan Partridge]

So it's Madejski's fault Reading have no forwards The main problem is going into the season (having had an entire pre season) thinking Long, Church and Raisak is enough. Rodgers spent close to £4million this summer if the sums are correct. So he had money to change things. I accept he lost certain players. He never managed Doyle, he was gone pretty much as he turned up, Hunt was gone last season, he was awful in the last 1/3 of the season. Hahnemann he didn't get, so those were the main 3. He wasted money on Howard. He wasted money on Cummings and whilst I quite like Mills, I'm not sure he's going to prove the best signing ever. Rasiak is ok, he'll chip in with goals here and there, Bertrand is decent enough in this league and McAnuff has been his star bit of work.

But that's not good enough if we're being honest here. Reading couldn't score a goal towards the end of last season with all the players here. He needed to completely revamp the frontline, instead he went 1 up front...mainly being Long at the start of the season. Guess what we didn't score any goals.

He came out with a load of crap about challenging for Europe, consistant Premiership football, skillful soldiers and models. He was starting a season in the championship with poor forwards, Federici, Pearce and Cisse. It's not going to happen. So he didnt' help himself.

The thing towards the end was, he was talking about having such a young side, now if he'd continued with the majority of players that played fairly well against Forest, I would completely accept that. But he didn't. Nearly the entire team were internationals or had had at least a full season under their belt in the championship. He was dropping players like Sigurdsson for Gunnarsson. He was playing the slowest 2 centre halves in this clubs history together regularly. It was all a bit of a mess, it struck of a bloke that had lost the plot if truth be told.

It was poor, the results were poor and in this day and age managers take the brunt of it. Rodgers just made it that much easier for them to make that decision.

[Vision]

Yes I think he was harshly treated and in view of the task he'd been set 21 games wasn't really enough for him to prove himself.

That said, any manager who spent half a season in the bottom 5 but had no inkling his job was on the line is showing a serious lack of judgement & awareness that hardly inspires confidence that he was up to the task.

Frankly no-one involved comes out of this with any credit whatsoever whatever people want to argue on here.

[CMRoyal]

Had we lined up a better manager, that would be understandable. That we haven't makes the timing of the sacking a bit of a mystery.

We did have a better manager lined up. And he's now in charge.

I meant a better manager than Brian, a man deemed not good enough for serious consideration in the summer.

[Royalee]

Results were improving? Rodgers penultimate game in charge, Reading 2-4 Crystal Palace. Rodgers - who had bigged up our youth products - dropped the best young prospect of the lot in Sigurdsson, played his 4-5-1 guff, saw his useless goalkeeper concede twice at his near post and his side ended up getting absolutely thrashed by a side who hadn't even been paid . If that is a sign of results improving then I am a chinaman.

"You thought.....that was worse than Tuesday?"

We had no other strikers available and although dropping Sigurdsson was a mistake, there was still no way we should have been 3-1 down - he couldn't have foreseen Federici diving out of the way of the ball twice. We then battered Scunthorpe and should have won by 4 or 5, but again suffered from a lack of firepower as Madejski wouldn't allow him the time and money to properly address the weakness.

[Wimb]

So it's Madejski's fault Reading have no forwards The main problem is going into the season (having had an entire pre season) thinking Long, Church and Raisak is enough. Rodgers spent close to £4million this summer if the sums are correct. So he had money to change things. I accept he lost certain players. He never managed Doyle, he was gone pretty much as he turned up, Hunt was gone last season, he was awful in the last 1/3 of the season. Hahnemann he didn't get, so those were the main 3. He wasted money on Howard. He wasted money on Cummings and whilst I quite like Mills, I'm not sure he's going to prove the best signing ever. Rasiak is ok, he'll chip in with goals here and there, Bertrand is decent enough in this league and McAnuff has been his star bit of work.

But that's not good enough if we're being honest here. Reading couldn't score a goal towards the end of last season with all the players here. He needed to completely revamp the frontline, instead he went 1 up front...mainly being Long at the start of the season. Guess what we didn't score any goals.

He came out with a load of crap about challenging for Europe, consistant Premiership football, skillful soldiers and models. He was starting a season in the championship with poor forwards, Federici, Pearce and Cisse. It's not going to happen. So he didnt' help himself.

The thing towards the end was, he was talking about having such a young side, now if he'd continued with the majority of players that played fairly well against Forest, I would completely accept that. But he didn't. Nearly the entire team were internationals or had had at least a full season under their belt in the championship. He was dropping players like Sigurdsson for Gunnarsson. He was playing the slowest 2 centre halves in this clubs history together regularly. It was all a bit of a mess, it struck of a bloke that had lost the plot if truth be told.

It was poor, the results were poor and in this day and age managers take the brunt of it. Rodgers just made it that much easier for them to make that decision.

Hard to disagree in general AP, but there was methods behind some of the madness you have to admit...

In terms of the forward line, people forget how much of a blow NHunts injury was. Hunt is an Ireland international who was every bit as much part of our success pre xmas last year then Doyle was. His struggle for fitness and eventual op really did oxf*rd us up, especially given the fact he'll have been on decent wages etc. Long too has been injured and then suspended and whilst that can't excuse his gash form he actually was looking half decent towards the end of last year and has always been useful off the bench. Rasiak has been ok and Church is a Welsh international who is showing promise.

In terms of his PR well that was pretty bad in hindsight but I honestly don't see anything wrong with a manager who likes to aim high... I really think he'd have come under more flak if he'd said, theres oxf*rd all money, we'll be bottom half and you're not going to see great football. Ok so he could have found a balance but he's a young manager and they DO make mistakes along those lines.\

His team selections were his biggest fault and that ultimately cost him the 6-9 points that in the end cost him his job. Would he have learned from such mistakes? we'll never know and that's the point.

[Terminal Boardom]

Funny how it is always someone else's fault.

[Royalee]

So it's Madejski's fault Reading have no forwards The main problem is going into the season (having had an entire pre season) thinking Long, Church and Raisak is enough. Rodgers spent close to £4million this summer if the sums are correct. So he had money to change things. I accept he lost certain players. He never managed Doyle, he was gone pretty much as he turned up, Hunt was gone last season, he was awful in the last 1/3 of the season. Hahnemann he didn't get, so those were the main 3. He wasted money on Howard. He wasted money on Cummings and whilst I quite like Mills, I'm not sure he's going to prove the best signing ever. Rasiak is ok, he'll chip in with goals here and there, Bertrand is decent enough in this league and McAnuff has been his star bit of work.

But that's not good enough if we're being honest here. Reading couldn't score a goal towards the end of last season with all the players here. He needed to completely revamp the frontline, instead he went 1 up front...mainly being Long at the start of the season. Guess what we didn't score any goals.

He came out with a load of crap about challenging for Europe, consistant Premiership football, skillful soldiers and models. He was starting a season in the championship with poor forwards, Federici, Pearce and Cisse. It's not going to happen. So he didnt' help himself.

The thing towards the end was, he was talking about having such a young side, now if he'd continued with the majority of players that played fairly well against Forest, I would completely accept that. But he didn't. Nearly the entire team were internationals or had had at least a full season under their belt in the championship. He was dropping players like Sigurdsson for Gunnarsson. He was playing the slowest 2 centre halves in this clubs history together regularly. It was all a bit of a mess, it struck of a bloke that had lost the plot if truth be told.

It was poor, the results were poor and in this day and age managers take the brunt of it. Rodgers just made it that much easier for them to make that decision.

Firstly, thanks to the genius management of Noel Hunt's injury by the previous management, we thought we also had Noel Hunt available for the season. Secondly, Long and Church picked up injuries and Rodgers didn't have the benefit of having watched Shane Long play for years and already knowing he was shit, although he did bring in Rasiak who was our top scorer when he left - God knows where we'd have been without him. Are you blaming the manager for coming into a new club and trying out his squad properly so that he could assess the strengths and weaknesses?

We lost £12 million of players and it's all very well saying he spent £3 or £4 million, but we lost pretty much half of our entire squad in pre-season, so that's still not enough, especially when you realise that we've halved our wages which in itself probably saves us another £10 million or so a year. Although Cummings was a poor signing, he was relatively cheap at 300k and we didn't have a fit right back at the club when he arrived and Howard was for a similar price and has performed ok to replace Harper - on lower wages too no doubt. I don't have too much of a problem with him bringing in Mills for that money given he's a young player who could serve us for years and we only had one other fully fit dedicated centre half at the club when he was signed.

We went one up front because our forwards were either injured or shit and we needed more midfielders chipping in with goals (you know, like Sigurdsson), which worked to some degree, before we could sort it in January, but he was never given the opportunity.

Again, with the talk about the Premiership, most outsiders looking in and even I, expected the squad left over to be slightly better than it actually was and given he hadn't had the benefit of watching us play in the second half of last season on a regular basis, I think I'll excuse his optimism and enthusiasm.

[howser]

I was always happy with BR, he walked into a minefield, and to this day I believe he was the man for the job, I dont see any manager who could have done a lot better once the hearts and soul of the team had been ripped out during the summer.

I could possibly have underastood his removal if we had replaced him with another experienced man, but that has not happened and from what I can see nothing has changed, we are bouncing from one good peformance to a dismal one, no improvement in our league position, and from what we are understood to be true reports we are not actively looking for some one else........................

All very confusing really ??????????????

[Alan Partridge]

So it's Madejski's fault Reading have no forwards The main problem is going into the season (having had an entire pre season) thinking Long, Church and Raisak is enough. Rodgers spent close to £4million this summer if the sums are correct. So he had money to change things. I accept he lost certain players. He never managed Doyle, he was gone pretty much as he turned up, Hunt was gone last season, he was awful in the last 1/3 of the season. Hahnemann he didn't get, so those were the main 3. He wasted money on Howard. He wasted money on Cummings and whilst I quite like Mills, I'm not sure he's going to prove the best signing ever. Rasiak is ok, he'll chip in with goals here and there, Bertrand is decent enough in this league and McAnuff has been his star bit of work.

But that's not good enough if we're being honest here. Reading couldn't score a goal towards the end of last season with all the players here. He needed to completely revamp the frontline, instead he went 1 up front...mainly being Long at the start of the season. Guess what we didn't score any goals.

He came out with a load of crap about challenging for Europe, consistant Premiership football, skillful soldiers and models. He was starting a season in the championship with poor forwards, Federici, Pearce and Cisse. It's not going to happen. So he didnt' help himself.

The thing towards the end was, he was talking about having such a young side, now if he'd continued with the majority of players that played fairly well against Forest, I would completely accept that. But he didn't. Nearly the entire team were internationals or had had at least a full season under their belt in the championship. He was dropping players like Sigurdsson for Gunnarsson. He was playing the slowest 2 centre halves in this clubs history together regularly. It was all a bit of a mess, it struck of a bloke that had lost the plot if truth be told.

It was poor, the results were poor and in this day and age managers take the brunt of it. Rodgers just made it that much easier for them to make that decision.

Hard to disagree in general AP, but there was methods behind some of the madness you have to admit...

In terms of the forward line, people forget how much of a blow NHunts injury was. Hunt is an Ireland international who was every bit as much part of our success pre xmas last year then Doyle was. His struggle for fitness and eventual op really did oxf*rd us up, especially given the fact he'll have been on decent wages etc. Long too has been injured and then suspended and whilst that can't excuse his gash form he actually was looking half decent towards the end of last year and has always been useful off the bench. Rasiak has been ok and Church is a Welsh international who is showing promise.

In terms of his PR well that was pretty bad in hindsight but I honestly don't see anything wrong with a manager who likes to aim high... I really think he'd have come under more flak if he'd said, theres oxf*rd all money, we'll be bottom half and you're not going to see great football. Ok so he could have found a balance but he's a young manager and they DO make mistakes along those lines.\

His team selections were his biggest fault and that ultimately cost him the 6-9 points that in the end cost him his job. Would he have learned from such mistakes? we'll never know and that's the point.

Fair point about Noel Hunt, he wasn't fit on Rodgers arrival, and whilst I quite like Noel, he strikes me as someone who needs a quality player like Doyle alongside him. Hunt is brave, reasonable touch and an eye for goal. He's better than his brother but still not got a fantastic all round game or that burst of pace to get by people. I would actually say Church is a more all rounded player than him. Those two might have worked quite well. As soon as it was confirmed Hunt was out (because it was early) another striker should have been brought in. I've never rated Long and whilst I'd accpet he chipped a few goals in towards the end of last season, i think his play was exaggerated by the horrific form of the others. He's never held down a first team place here and never will.

Thing is with Rodgers though Wimb, he'd say the cobblers above, then the next interivew would mention transition, then the next interview would mention playoffs, just didn't do himself any favours. IT's not just him admittedly, the board are horrendous for that. This was a transition season and he could have gone down the Billy Davies route of talking things down a little. I am fully aware that most can form a decent opinion and a sense of realism about the situtation, but still the clubs PR does have an impact on that. RFC's is awful.

Reading had enough home games against poor opposition to be higher up the table, and the last 2 were just really grim. Both teams were toilet. Moses made Palace look better than the average side they are and Scunthorpe are the worst team I've seen in yonks. Reading didn't beat either.

[Gav]

Had we lined up a better manager, that would be understandable. That we haven't makes the timing of the sacking a bit of a mystery.

We did have a better manager lined up. And he's now in charge.

I meant a better manager than Brian, a man deemed not good enough for serious consideration in the summer.

The circumstances in the summer were completely different. However, Brian has stepped in and shown in just a few games more ability in his little finger than Rodgers had in his entire tome of convoluted football tactics.

[Terminal Boardom]

Sorry Royalee but for 300k plus Short Coming's wages, it would have made far more sense keeping Rosenior.

To everyone else. The reason BR is blabbing is because his wife wants him out of the house. Sure it was nice for the family to spend Christmas together for the first time in ages but he really is getting under her feet. Sadly, he fails to realise that by gobbing off against a senior club official, he further reduces his viability as a football manager. To put it simply, he is a cock. The best he can hope for is to rejoin his mentor Jose somewhere.

[Maguire]

I agree with him - he was given nowhere near enough time and it was a crazy decision. Now we're more fcked and don't even have a proper manager. Awesome work.

Oh and results were improving, that's undeniable unless you choose to focus on one of the two games we'd lost in the previous SEVEN.

Overall, a grubby affair from which everyone comes aay a loser.

[John Peel]

Funny how it is always someone else's fault.

It's no one else's fault, he just shouldn't have been sacked. And why was he sacked? Because the Board wanted Brian McD in charge? If it's to bring in a manager with experience then that's a reason, whatever you think of Brendan's sacking. But for the purpose of bringing in Brian? Makes no sense to me. To me that isn't a sufficient reason.

[Royalee]

Sorry Royalee but for 300k plus Short Coming's wages, it would have made far more sense keeping Rosenior.

Not really given Rosenior will have been on far bigger wages (probably outstripping Cummings' wages plus the fee) and wasn't in the club's long term sustainable plans. Cummings was one brought in for the future and although it hasn't worked out, you can see why it happened.