Back from the game - QPR

[Ian Herring]

Cheers. Well if stay around 10th all season and finish 9th I won't be disappointed. If we stay top 8 and then finish 9th, I will be. Hope that clears it up for everyone.

Certainly sounds like feminine logic to me.

still a bit alcohol addled from yesterday tbf.

Ha ha fair enough!

[Millsy]

Partly the loss of Sigy as a player but more so the failure to reinvest more than 1% of the proceeds.

That just sends as clear a message as is possible regarding the ambitions of the club and it's been picked up on by the fans who are becoming fewer in number. What's the point in investing time, effort and money following a team who's ambition doesn't extend beyond being financially viable? It's not an inspiration to make the blood rush through the veins.

It's hard to imagine that it doesn't ultimately impact on the players who know that in the unlikely event of our leftovers put a good run together, those who are responsible and can command a fee will be promptly flogged off.

God change the record Schards

This squad has just as much money invested in it transfer fee wise as the team that had 106 points, that team didn't have success overnight and nor will this team that Brian's building now. It's going to take time and Brian himself has said he wants too and has the funds to bring in a player or two (on the basis that they just missed out on a striker at the deadline) ffs we're not even half way through the season yet. Cast your minds back to seasons such as 2003/2004 and 2004/2005 and we were getting similar results against bigger sides while players like Sidwell, Shorey, Harper etc were still honing their craft. Did you think we were showing 'ambition' when we were picking up Brentford castoffs like Sonko and Hunt, goalkeepers who's last run outs were at Rochdale, signing strikers from Division 3 or taking a punt on a winger from the States who's first season was pretty terrible. Perhaps it's wise to place trust in a management team and board that have seen this club rise from mid table third tier to consistently challenging in the top ten of the second tier or higher every year since 2002.

I don't quite know where this 'we'll flog off our stars' mentality has come from either. The only player we've 'cashed in' on was Siggy and NO team in the Championship without a sugardaddy or at the least parachute payments could turn £7 million down. Other players to leave have been because they wanted too, why would Kitson, Doyle, Shunt, Shorey, Sidwell want to stay, they'd done what they could with the club and in hindsight we did bloody well getting so much for Sonko and Kitson.

This 'lack of ambition' mentality really annoys me because I honestly don't know what more 'ambition' you want the club to show? What exactly is so wrong with the team or the club that needs fixing other then maybe a better striker a central midfielder and perhaps a better quality of reserve winger. As I said there is the POTENTIAL for this team to grow and really challenge. As someone in this or another thread pointed out, the average age of this squad is very young and with experience and patience it MIGHT turn into something special. Is there a guarantee of success? of course not. But neither does splashing cash either. Sean Evers, Scott Murray, Shaun Goater, Emerse Fae, Greg Halford, Carl Asaba all classic examples of transfer fees paid out for with little of no reward.

I'm not so deluded or up Madejski's/the clubs arse that I don't think mistakes have been or will be made. I'm also not suggesting that this is the final product but I am happy that we're still getting good results this season, we're competing with just about every other side in this league and we could still end up with a trip to Wembley at the end of the season.

If fans don't want to show up because the ticket prices are too high, they don't like Brian's tactics or they've had enough then that's fair enough. EVERY SINGLE CLUB bar perhaps the top 5-6 in the PL have attendance fluctuations and we're no different. I'll cast you back to 2005/2006, our best ever season at this level and even then, the attendances were below 18k until the second half 'half season ticket' bandwagon got rolling. Attendance since then has been inflated by the Premier League years and another mini surge when it looked like we might get up to the PL again and 1500 or so fans held onto season tickets because of price deals based on if we got up.

So Schards I know you've been going for probably longer then I've been alive and you're a decent rational bloke but I don't understand what you, or the 'Madejski out' 'the club's got no ambition' brigade are on about. This is the same Reading as it's ever been and we're on course for one of the ten best finishes in this club's history. If you want to see where short term whinging about 'ambition' gets you then look no further then Charlton who changed their mentality after fans got 'bored' under Alan Curbishly and where did it get them?

Sorry Wimb, you've said complimetary thing about my posts and I appreciate that and this is never a personal attack just an attack on te opinions expressed. Very well written post I have to say and there's a lot of sensible stuff you say.

Butthe fact that such a long apologists post is needed for a simple comment says it all. Schards is 110% totally and absoutely spot on.

The point I highlight from your post is to me the crux of the matter, and interestingly enough kind of what Schards is pointing at in the first place.

It's the fact that ALL we need is a striker and another player or two that is SO upsetting.

I am very happy not to have a "splash out millions" approach to ambition and I don't even regard that as ambition but more as gambling and I'm quite happy to use our developed players and have a sound brick by brick approach. But as I've said several ties before and haven't had a decent combeack to the problem is Madejski is more interested in keeping us as a Nearly Club. Nearly good enough, but not quite. When it would only take a tiny amount of investment to keep us in the Prem, when it would only take a bit of targetted investment to give Brian a real shot at promotion, THAT's when it hurts and it becomes clear enough that we have no ambition. BECAUSE IT'S SO EASY TO FIX. I agree that if we were totally rubbish and ambition would mean pumping billions into the club and totally transforming it it wouldn't be worth it. But as I say that's not the case. Ambition in our case would simply mean spending a little bit on a striker (like we did with Lita before our 106 season for example...) and a couple of others perhaps.

The simple truth is, as far as I'm concerned, Madejksi bottled it in the Prem because it was too much of a financial gamble (which isn't necessarily unreasonable btw) and, with his sights elsewhere financially, has sucked and will continue to suck the juice out of this club but will have us teetering in comfort in the division with an outside chance of making the playoffs because he'll be able to get away with it and it is financially the safest option: a club with a good chance of winning the biggest prize in English football (£30million prootion to the Prem) attracting a fair number of fans and little to go on wages vs the lottery of the Premiership. Of course if we get there for peanuts (which we happened to do JUST ONCE IN FIFTEEN YEARS OF ALLEGEDLY TRYING VERY HARD - very poor record) then I'm sure Madejski will be happy, but as history as shown, he won't invest in it as he's not interested.

MADEJSKI IS NOT THE MAN TO TAKE THIS CLUB FORWARD which is why much a I like him and appreciate what he's done for us, his time is up and I pray for the day when someone with more balls and a bit more interest in football sees the same potential that Madejski saw in our club takes over.

[Millsy]

(excuse typos - I don't know why when a post gets too long it jumps about and doesn't let me see what I'm typing..!)

[Big Foot]

If Gylfi went for £7M then Tarabbt is a £10M player all day long

[Mr Optimist]

Agree with Wimb. The man is wise beyond his years.

As for wanting someone with more ambition, and presumably more money, but with the club's best interest at heart, to take over. Good idea in principle but I think it will be a long wait!

[RoyalBlue]

Coming from one of the more intelligent football posters on here that is worrying.

FWIW do you think that the loss of Siggy has had a detremental effect on the squad?

Despite the stats it seems that the goals from him from distance are missing from the current players.

Partly the loss of Sigy as a player but more so the failure to reinvest more than 1% of the proceeds.

That just sends as clear a message as is possible regarding the ambitions of the club and it's been picked up on by the fans who are becoming fewer in number. What's the point in investing time, effort and money following a team who's ambition doesn't extend beyond being financially viable? It's not an inspiration to make the blood rush through the veins.

It's hard to imagine that it doesn't ultimately impact on the players who know that in the unlikely event of our leftovers put a good run together, those who are responsible and can command a fee will be promptly flogged off.

God change the record Schards

This squad has just as much money invested in it transfer fee wise as the team that had 106 points, that team didn't have success overnight and nor will this team that Brian's building now.

The record has been changed because there is a massive difference between the two scenarios. Coppell was largely allowed to keep the talent he was putting together and add to it. McDermott has to get sell before he is allowed to buy. Then every time that he starts to put something together he has to flog off a key part because the 'business genius' that is Madesjki has stumbled across another black hole at a club that has been so 'incredibly well run' over the past 4 or 5 years.

I agree with Schards, there won't be may football supporters who are happy to use as their prime measure of success 'long term financial viability', regardless at what level their team operates. What's more, despite all the horror stories circulated by Madejski and his merry band of followers, there are still precious few football clubs (at any level) that have gone to the wall.

[rhroyal]

Hate 4-5-1. I don't care if it works occasionally. Hated it under Pardew and hate it under McDermott. With the quality wingers we have here we should be playing two up front.

+111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111119

LOL at anybody who hated the 4-5-1 under Pardew and the good football we played in that 02/03 season.

[floyd__streete]

LOL at anybody who hated the 4-5-1 under Pardew and the good football we played in that 02/03 season.

In 02/03 we had the players to play that system. Forster was absolute quality up front, making chances for himself and tormenting defences. Shane LOLong isn't capable of doing that, simple as. Compare and contrast the 02/03 and 10/11 sides:

Hahnemann/Federici
Shorey/Harte
Murty/Griffin
Williams/Mills
Brown/Zurab
Salako/McAnuff
Hughes/Kebe
Harper/Tabb
Watson/Howard
Newman/Karacan
Forster/Long

02/03 a better side for me. Far more entertaining to watch too.

[pea]

Can't believe everyone's so in love with Taraabt, seemed like a complete twat to me. He's got some good tricks but Faurlin was a far more effective player for them at the end of the day.

[Big Foot]

LOL at anybody who hated the 4-5-1 under Pardew and the good football we played in that 02/03 season.

In 02/03 we had the players to play that system. Forster was absolute quality up front, making chances for himself and tormenting defences. Shane LOLong isn't capable of doing that, simple as. Compare and contrast the 02/03 and 10/11 sides:

Hahnemann/Federici
Shorey/Harte
Murty/Griffin
Williams/Mills
Brown/Zurab
Salako/McAnuff
Hughes/Kebe
Harper/Tabb
Watson/Howard
Newman/Karacan
Forster/Long

02/03 a better side for me. Far more entertaining to watch too.

+1

We then added a certain Steve Sidwell which bolstered the side even further, the only changes to playing personnel these days is a cheap stop gap

I can't remember the last signing we made which signalled an intention of improving the squad, Matejovsky maybe? But that was more for the fact we'd attracted a Czech international

[Platypuss]

Football supporting is all about passion and fair play to the posters on here who have shown that with their comments. However I think there has been a bit of overreaction. Yes it was disappointing that we couldn't put on a better show but at the end of the day we were away to one of the two best sides in the division on a day when they played pretty well, our faults showed up and we caught Taarabt on one of his good days. To win the game we needed them to have an off day like Burnley did when we played them and to get the first goal.

... or have them down to ten men for more than half the game?

[Croydon Royal]

LOL at anybody who hated the 4-5-1 under Pardew and the good football we played in that 02/03 season.

In 02/03 we had the players to play that system. Forster was absolute quality up front, making chances for himself and tormenting defences. Shane LOLong isn't capable of doing that, simple as. Compare and contrast the 02/03 and 10/11 sides:

Hahnemann/Federici
Shorey/Harte
Murty/Griffin
Williams/Mills
Brown/Zurab
Salako/McAnuff
Hughes/Kebe
Harper/Tabb
Watson/Howard
Newman/Karacan
Forster/Long

02/03 a better side for me. Far more entertaining to watch too.

+1

We then added a certain Steve Sidwell which bolstered the side even further, the only changes to playing personnel these days is a cheap stop gap

I can't remember the last signing we made which signalled an intention of improving the squad, Matejovsky maybe? But that was more for the fact we'd attracted a Czech international

Agreed. How much of a difference would Sidwell have made yesterday (or indeed Siggurdson?) We were desperate for someone to put their foot on the balll in the middle, look up and carry it forward. With 10 men there was acres of space in the middle but Howard and (to a lesser extent) Tabb seemed to lack ideas and instead took the easy option playing it out to the wings. We needed a driving force in the middle and didn't have one.

And I said it before in a previous post but you've really pointed it out there with team comparisons - our fulll backs have been so important to our attacking play in previous years with Murty and Shorey - and while Griffin is an excellent defender and Harte is deadly at set plays, they're not supporting the wingers in the way they should. Where's the man getting to the byline and cutting it back? With one up front we need to get it to the byline if just to give time for others to get in the box.

[Wimb]

No offence taken 2WW and cheers for the other compliments, It's not an attack on Schards directly either, more a general attack on some of the negativity towards the overall state of the club.

I agree with you about Madejski not being the ideal man to take us forward, but I at least feel confident he'll keep us in the top half of the Championship and out of financial difficulty, which is about all you could probably expect if the club were under fan ownership for example.

I guess I just have a different interpretation of ambition and a different view of the timescale and blueprint that I think the club should follow. As I said I've got faith in the current hierarchy who managed to get us steadily into the top flight over a 5 year period. I'd like to think that the mistakes we made when we got there would have been learned from and we wouldn't suffer a similar fate.

I'd love the club to go out and buy those couple of missing pieces and I honestly think we'll go out and spend a decent fee on a striker this January and hopefully add another quality player or two in the summer. I think it's a fair idea to label this the first true post-Coppell era and if Sir Steve was allowed 2 seasons to build a side then Brian should be given the same sort of timeframe.

I can understand the frustration, I guess I'm more patient/naive then others

[PistolPete]

PPS – A note on the second goal when it all kicked off down in the bottom left hand corner – I’m certainly not condoning the Reading fans that tried to jump on the pitch, but Kenny is a professional footballer, and despite the goading should not have celebrated in front of the away end so poignantly. Fans shouldn’t take the bait so easily, but history tells us that they do, and as a professional he should be aware of that. A young kid got kicked in the face by one of the fans trying to jump on the pitch, and that wouldn’t have happened if Kenny hadn’t celebrated how he did. I simply can’t understand how a player can get booked for celebrating with his own crowd after scoring, but a player doesn’t get booked for celebrating in front of the opposition fans. Andy Johnson has always done this, and to me it’s far worse than the “bookable offence” of celebrating with your own fans.

As soon as Kenny walked to the Reading end for the start of the second half he was greeted with never-ending taunts about his weight, his ex-girlfriend, his drugs ban etc...

And he reacted to NONE of it.

Now I'm all for a bit of goading of opposition players - we are supposed to be the '12th man' after all, however, if in celebrating he looked up at the Reading fans for second or so then fair play to him. If it was me I would have done a hell of a lot more. In fact, judging by the mongs surrounding me, they all would have done a lot worse.

"Ref, ref, he's celebrating at us!" shouted the 'tards around me...

Pathetic.

We deserved everything that we got yesterday and his class save in the bottom right corner was the icing on the cake.

I'm sorry that a young kid got kicked in the face, but in my opinion, if a guy gets wound up by an opposing goalkeeper celebrating so much that he cant see the kids around him then he shouldn't be allowed out.

[Bandini]

^ Agreed. Kenny was perfectly entitled to celebr8 as he did. His smirk at Church missing an open goal was also well deserved. There did seem a high level of mongishness amongst the Reading fans. There were the kids just to the left of the goal who were delaying giving the ball back to Kenny when we were (admittedly rather poorly) trying to chase the game, and the guy a bit to the right of the goal having the staring contest with the steward in the last few minutes appeared to be an utter twat - he must have been late 20s/early 30s, but came across as being a petulant toddler.

Anyway, we were just a bit outclassed.

Federici - 7 plenty of good saves, especially in the first half
Griffin - 5
Zurab - 6 did OK
Mills - 4 looked like a red card waiting to happen for most of the first half. Calmed down for the remainder of the match, but was second best to Hulse throughout.
Harte -5
McAnuff - 7 Only real creative outlet, QPR often needed 2 men on him
Howard - 5 - OK apart from the mindless tackle to give away the pen
Karacan - 5 battled hard to little effect
Tabb - 6 put in a lot of running, but unable to breakdown a well organised defence
HRK - 4 largely anonymous
Long - 6 excellent goal, apart from which he was completely ineffective. Blocked a shot by Church that looked to be goalbound.

Church - 4 not a striker
Antonio - 3 muscled off every time
Hunt - 5 ran about a bit

[Dan - B15 Royal]

If Gylfi went for £7M then Tarabbt is a £10M player all day long

not sure i agree with that, i would much rather have gylfi in my side. Not many teams would want to pay more than £7mil for a championship player, and that includes taratwat in my view.

[Elm Park Old Boy]

Compare and contrast the 02/03 and 10/11 sides:

Hahnemann/Federici
Shorey/Harte
Murty/Griffin
Williams/Mills
Brown/Zurab
Salako/McAnuff
Hughes/Kebe
Harper/Tabb
Watson/Howard
Newman/Karacan
Forster/Long

02/03 a better side for me. Far more entertaining to watch too.

Interesting though that you have nearly harlf of the present side as better than one that wasn't far off promotion to the Premier League.

[rhroyal]

Compare and contrast the 02/03 and 10/11 sides:

Hahnemann/Federici
Shorey/Harte
Murty/Griffin
Williams/Mills
Brown/Zurab
Salako/McAnuff
Hughes/Kebe
Harper/Tabb
Watson/Howard
Newman/Karacan
Forster/Long

02/03 a better side for me. Far more entertaining to watch too.

Interesting though that you have nearly harlf of the present side as better than one that wasn't far off promotion to the Premier League.

That side almost certainly performed above itself that season though, in the same way as the 06/07 side. Hughes has a great season in 02/03, that says all you need to say about how that side relied upon temporary form. Floyd also misses out the loan of Upson which, led to our best stretch of the season.

[Bandini]

Also, girl with red hair with her tits hanging out - 7/10. A rare bright spot.

[Elm Park Old Boy]

Not much to add to what others have said, except I prefer to focus on the positives. I don't think we were as bad as many have suggested. But QPR were a lot better.

Good points for us: Long's goal, Fed's save from the free kick (but shame Smith got the rebound), Macanuff played quite well in my view, as did Khizanishvilli.

Minus points: I didn't think we exploited the extra man advantage enough, and Mills was lucky not to be sent off (I think he was right to be annoyed by the yellow card for Taarabt's playacting but reacted very badly indeed and should definitely be grateful for the Ref's indulgence. This guy has a lot of good qualities by considering he's the captain, sense and judgement don't seem to be among them sufficiently). Thought Church should have scored too.

Good day out, decent atmosphere and enjoyable game even though we lost. And excellent lunch and beer in my favourite London pub (which I will not name because, frankly, I'd hate it to get too popular with football fans! )