Where has £3.95 million gone?

[No Fixed Abode]

From an outsiders point of view you are being mugged off by the club.

How can Reading not afford Charlie Austin for just over 1m is beyond me.

If Long gets injured(He's just limped off at half time in the WBA game), then where are your goals coming from?

[Wycombe Royal]

If Long gets injured(He's just limped off at half time in the WBA game), then where are your goals coming from?

He's still playing in the second half.......

[Royal Rother]

It's excruciating reading this stuff.

Don't read it then if it affects you so much.
That is exactly the point-for probably over 100 years people have been saying the club doesn't want promotion.
Just because it happened in 2005, after which the chairman appears to have lost interest/bottle/desire,doesn't mean to say that now the club wants promotion and all the hassle that goes with it.
Don't you live overseas somewhere?
Maybe you don't get to games so take it from me this is what people are saying-whether it is correct or not is another matter.
I hope this has not been too excruciating for you-I dread to think how you react to anything at all serious in life if a few words on a message board cause you so much angst.

Victor, my children periodically whine like spoiled brats, and it drives me up the wall. That doesn't mean I never pay attention to them. It's in the nature of internet message boards that sometimes you have to listen to people whining like spoiled brats, and it's fantastically irritating, especially in January and August which are high season. I guess it's the price I pay for what's essentially my only serious option for following my team.

Excellent. These are grown men though. I usually get involved in these "where has all the money gone" type discussions but just can't be bothered anymore.

Arnie called them spacktards. Bit lenient that. The longer the essay, the bigger the prat.

[Agent Balti]

Yeah...speaking your mind in 10 words or less is sure to get your point across much, much better. And prat? Wow...such vernacular.

[SpaceCruiser]

Ideal, I want a Ferrari too, do you know where I can get a cheap one that doesn't cost much to insure?

[who are ya?]

Who needs Austin anyway??? BWP is the future.......

Funerals are more exciting than Reading's activity in the transfer market. Austin out of our reach? not having that!

YAWN

[FiNeRaIn]

From an outsiders point of view you are being mugged off by the club.

How can Reading not afford Charlie Austin for just over 1m is beyond me.

If Long gets injured(He's just limped off at half time in the WBA game), then where are your goals coming from?

Agreed, I'm not going to list the financial ins and outs of the club, the fact of the matter is we can afford it, the club are just making excuses not to spend. Its down right disgusting.

Guys, STILL waiting for the day the other 90 odd league clubs go bust and Reading win something by default, been waiting a while now...any updates?

[PEARCEY]

I'm trying to do the Maths as well. Selling Siggy should have cleared the black hole and left a tidy surplus.

[Pseud O'Nym]

Some top notch hindsight on display in this thread!

Of course Madejski shouldn't have sunk his liquidity into Station Hill, but if anyone on here knew at the time what Lehman were doing in the US subprime market, the exposure of our banks through obscure derivatives or the catastrophic effects that would have on our economy, it would have been nice if they'd warned him/us/the Bank of England/the Government etc.

Coppell shouldn't have hung on to Shorey when he wanted away, should have spent the funds available to him to freshen up the squad, should have noticed the stresses building in the dressing room and defused them. He was just doing what seemed was best for the club at the time, which is all any manager can ever do.

Ironically the biggest mistake made in the past few years was pouring millions down the drain in an attempt to go straight back up in 08/09, just what those currently moaning would have wanted us to do.

[FiNeRaIn]

Ironically the biggest mistake made in the past few years was pouring millions down the drain in an attempt to go straight back up in 08/09, just what those currently moaning would have wanted us to do.

Uhh, pouring millions down the drain? lol what?

I hope you aren't attempting to refer to already existing wages as the issue? We certainly did not go on a spending spree on players.

[Svlad Cjelli]

Ironically the biggest mistake made in the past few years was pouring millions down the drain in an attempt to go straight back up in 08/09, just what those currently moaning would have wanted us to do.

Uhh, pouring millions down the drain? lol what?

I hope you aren't attempting to refer to already existing wages as the issue? We certainly did not go on a spending spree on players.

But we did not economise as quickly as we should have done - we spent way over what we should have done that first year.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Have the accounts covering that year been released yet?

[Ian Royal]

Have the accounts covering that year been released yet?

Does it matter? The "where's the money gone" brigade never paid any attention to the accounts other than to selectively quote them ignoring the realities they showed anyway...

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Thing is when the club say they spent big trying to get back to the prem at the 1st attempt they say it was wages, will be interesting to see how much was spent on wages that season.

[Ian Royal]

I'd certainly be interested to see what our wage bill was compared to the Prem years and the Champ ones before that. And for the last couple of seasons as well.

[FiNeRaIn]

I'd certainly be interested to see what our wage bill was compared to the Prem years and the Champ ones before that. And for the last couple of seasons as well.

So would I, because the way we are managing our finances now consistently talking about wages from yesteryear, we must have been paying our players more than chelsea's in all honesty.

[paultheroyal]

From an outsiders point of view you are being mugged off by the club.

How can Reading not afford Charlie Austin for just over 1m is beyond me.

If Long gets injured(He's just limped off at half time in the WBA game), then where are your goals coming from?

In answer to your question - Bradley Wright Phillips!

[Ian Royal]

It's well documented our wage budget was ~£30m and ~£33m resectively in the Premier League. A reasonable guesstimate would be a reduction to about £18m - £20m for our first Champ season, probably down to about £15m the next and now hovering around the £10m - £12m area which I think is about average.

[Pseud O'Nym]

I'd certainly be interested to see what our wage bill was compared to the Prem years and the Champ ones before that. And for the last couple of seasons as well.

According to the financial statement of 01/10/2009 "our wage bill was double that of the last time we were in the Championship". If you consider that wages were 80.2% of turnover in the promotion season then, even when you nail 11.2 million parachute payment onto C. 16 million receipts, you're looking at some pretty horrific numbers.

[Ian Royal]

I'd certainly be interested to see what our wage bill was compared to the Prem years and the Champ ones before that. And for the last couple of seasons as well.

According to the financial statement of 01/10/2009 "our wage bill was double that of the last time we were in the Championship". If you consider that wages were 80.2% of turnover in the promotion season then, even when you nail 11.2 million parachute payment onto C. 16 million receipts, you're looking at some pretty horrific numbers.

That'd put it at more than £20m wouldn't it?