SPECULATION - Charlie Austin

[Barry the bird boggler]

Reading have been put off by Swondin wanting some money for the player:

From the Crowthorne & Sandhurst Times:

Reading have also made an enquiry about Swindon Town’s Charlie Austin, a former Royals trainee.

The striker has netted 17 times already this season and Robins are reluctant to let him go on the cheap, but Reading look to have been put off by the steep asking price.

[loyalroyal4life]

Davies+Williams+GK (On Loan)+400k will do

[rfcjoe]

Just got the text from the club confirming this!

Shouldn't you be revising for school exams?

LOL 11 1




You should do some revision on banter, because yours is slacking.

[tomrfcurz]

Just got the text from the club confirming this!

Actually?...

[rfcjoe]

Check the website if you don't believe me..

[tomrfcurz]

Check the website if you don't believe me..

Umm yeh about that...

[The Surgeon of Crowthorne]

I refuse to believe there's any mileage in this rumour until I see it confirmed by Gazzer Loyal Royal

[Ferris]

He's been strangely quiet on the rumour front recently.

[muddyfeet]

At the moment I really can't see this happening - McD had originally come out and said we had money for transfers and they were actively looking, he's now saying prices are high and we dont have that much money (knowing rfc prob 100k!). tomorrow it will be there isnt anyone within our price range etc.

i would love to be proved wrong though!

[DOYLERSAROYALER]

Royals priced out of transfer swoop

ROYALS boss Brian McDermott has admitted Reading’s chances of signing a new player in the January transfer window are slim.

As the Chronicle revealed last week, McDermott is desperate to sign Swindon Town’s 21-year-old hotshot Charlie Austin.

But it is thought the Robins want at least £1 million for the Hungerford-born player who has rattled in an incredible 31 goals in 50 league games.

That is likely to price him out of the market, a problem the club also encountered when they were eyeing Leicester City’s Matty Fryatt before his £1.2 million switch to Hull City last week.

Though McDermott has cash to spend following last summer’s record £7 million sale of Gylfi Sigurdsson to Hoffenheim, chairman Sir John Madejski is eager to keep a tight ship in tough financial times.


How typical of the chairman - more than happy to take the market rate for one of his own, but baulk at the idea of showing any ambition by spending a small percentage of those proceeds on a player at market rate that Reading obviously need IF they are going to show any ambition of truly wanting to get back to the prem..

..Maybe thats it, Chairman is happy with current strikers because collectively he knows they arent' going to fire sufficient goals to gain promotion

[gazzer, loyal royal]

I refuse to believe there's any mileage in this rumour until I see it confirmed by Gazzer Loyal Royal

theres not really much to say, as i don't think much will go on. However, i only see my source in the summer transfer window so i will only really be able to confirm if there was contact or whatsoever.

However, it does sound like we've been priced out. The Gylfi deal made us stable as a club for the forseeable future, which is more important than paying £1.5m for a player we released as we never thought he'd make it. Looking at it, unless we're really lucky to find a bargain then i can see the only deal being done is Leigertwood

[Royals-lad14]

one million isnt exactly a huge amount of money? hes young got bags of potential i think its ludricous if we dont at least attempt to get in.
However it really does show how little ambition SJM has got if he doesnt even want to spend 1 million on him?

[gazzer, loyal royal]

one million isnt exactly a huge amount of money? hes young got bags of potential i think its ludricous if we dont at least attempt to get in.
However it really does show how little ambition SJM has got if he doesnt even want to spend 1 million on him?

lack of ambition=debt free club

i'd much rather having the club run on a financially prudent basis rather than doing a leeds or a portsmouth

imagine if Gylfi never developed, where would we be now? Without Mills, Karacan, Kebe, Federici etc and going back to where we were later 90s

[Sir Dodger Royal]

If we lose four on the spin coupled with our complete lack of any ambition then we will heading to the 1st Division.

Read Facts.

[roadrunner]

one million isnt exactly a huge amount of money? hes young got bags of potential i think its ludricous if we dont at least attempt to get in.
However it really does show how little ambition SJM has got if he doesnt even want to spend 1 million on him?

lack of ambition=debt free club

i'd much rather having the club run on a financially prudent basis rather than doing a leeds or a portsmouth

imagine if Gylfi never developed, where would we be now? Without Mills, Karacan, Kebe, Federici etc and going back to where we were later 90s

Spot on Gazza, but, John Madejski needs to stop talking up promotion and his ambition to get the club back to the Premier League when he doesn't want to invest the money to achieve that. Yes Ok we may, just may scrape into the Play-offs with the squad we have, but lets face it, it's the smallest of chances with the shot-shy forwards we have currently.

[rfcjoe]

Done deal.

[gazzer, loyal royal]

one million isnt exactly a huge amount of money? hes young got bags of potential i think its ludricous if we dont at least attempt to get in.
However it really does show how little ambition SJM has got if he doesnt even want to spend 1 million on him?

lack of ambition=debt free club

i'd much rather having the club run on a financially prudent basis rather than doing a leeds or a portsmouth

imagine if Gylfi never developed, where would we be now? Without Mills, Karacan, Kebe, Federici etc and going back to where we were later 90s

Spot on Gazza, but, John Madejski needs to stop talking up promotion and his ambition to get the club back to the Premier League when he doesn't want to invest the money to achieve that. Yes Ok we may, just may scrape into the Play-offs with the squad we have, but lets face it, it's the smallest of chances with the shot-shy forwards we have currently.

I think he talks as a supporter. When he has invested as much money and yime as he has in the club then it comes out as supporter talk rather than anything else

[joe999]

1-1.5 million is a "steep asking price"?!

With the exception of the way coppell did things here (which we will most likely never see again), a championship side won't get a half-decent player for any less than that. That's really not steep.

[andrew1957]

Frankly if we can get Austin for £1M and do not do so it would be an absolute joke.

Bearing in mind we were told there was a shortfall of £4M at the start of the season (which was why we had to sell players) and yet we recouped around £8M from the sales of Gylfi, Matejovsky, Henry and Cisse plus releasing Rasiak then we have £4M to spend on players now. I am not expecting the club to reinvest all that £4M - but a couple of million to buy Legs and Austin would be good business and give us a genuine chance of promotion. Without new blood our chance of even playoffs is limited.

In truth I am sure that we have worked out that the Chairman is no longer supportive of the club and has probably withdrawn that excess £4M - so now doubt next season (if we don't by some miracle get promoted) we will be told that yet again we have a £4M shortfall which will be used to justify the sales of Long, Kebe etc.

Ambitious club - LOL.

[DOYLERSAROYALER]

one million isnt exactly a huge amount of money? hes young got bags of potential i think its ludricous if we dont at least attempt to get in.
However it really does show how little ambition SJM has got if he doesnt even want to spend 1 million on him?

lack of ambition=debt free club

i'd much rather having the club run on a financially prudent basis rather than doing a leeds or a portsmouth

imagine if Gylfi never developed, where would we be now? Without Mills, Karacan, Kebe, Federici etc and going back to where we were later 90s

With due respect, spending £1m on a player that will improve the club, be an investment and possibly allow it to make a final push for promotion should not be compared with the activities of Leeds and Portsmouth...

..whilst I understand the sense in having a club on a good financial footing, I cannot see how spending £1m would change us overnight from being a sensible prudent club to one showing careless recklessness.

..if we are not able to spend £1m without making our financial situation perilous, then as others have said on here, the chairman needs to be upfront with supporters and make it clear that the club stategy is to survive/maintain the status quo , and stop the sham of saying the amibtion is to get back to premiership, which it clearly isnt ...

but I guess as a chairman if you dont make those statements, then you wont get the attendances....chairman is strangling the club at the moment and im not sure McD has many other rabbits he can pull from hat to keep club moving forward