Lowest spenders

[Avon Royal]

2 games

Yup, and in neither of those did we look totally outclassed, even against the current Champios of Europe...

Who looked amazing tonight........

[RoyalBlue]

Plus Everton have sold a number of players for high values - remember this is their NET spend.

It's not so much how much we spend, as who we get for our money - and, on paper, we've made some astute signings this season - time will tell. There's always January if it's all going tits up.

Sadly January could well be too late.

Last time we were in the PL, Madejski said the time would come when we would need to spend serious money and he meant serious money to stay up. That time came, we didn't spend because he said we didn't have the money and we didn't stay up. The time may well have come around again. We hoped the money was here this time, but even if it was, serious money (in PL terms) has not been spent.

[Ian Royal]

Anton's never said he'd spend big money on transfers. All his talk has been about keeping our best players, being able to still buy decent players (Pog & Guthrie - way out of our league previously), and spending big to improve our infrastructure.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

I thought the money was there for Coppell though, but he chose not to spend it.

The main point seems to be that Jm said to stay in the Prem you need to spend big. Well we haven't so lets take the ride and see what happens.

Though according to the Mail Anton said this,

The Barclays Premier League's next mega-rich Russian owner insists he is ready to spend big this summer to make Reading a major force.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... z25BrvSXwk

[Royal Lady]

Anton's never said he'd spend big money on transfers. All his talk has been about keeping our best players, being able to still buy decent players (Pog & Guthrie - way out of our league previously), and spending big to improve our infrastructure.

Well I'd rather know we have a team that can compete in this league, than have a great infrastructure - but I suppose it depends on what they're priorities will be. I don't know if we have tried to get any more players before the deadline, but I would hope that we did. I fully understand that splashing the cash doesn't necessarily buy you success, but I think we might have made a mistake in thinking that what we have now is enough. I hope I'm proved wrong - the next few games will tell. As I said in another thread, I think 3 points from the next 3 games will be an achievement.

[Ian Royal]

Anton's never said he'd spend big money on transfers. All his talk has been about keeping our best players, being able to still buy decent players (Pog & Guthrie - way out of our league previously), and spending big to improve our infrastructure.

Well I'd rather know we have a team that can compete in this league, than have a great infrastructure - but I suppose it depends on what they're priorities will be. I don't know if we have tried to get any more players before the deadline, but I would hope that we did. I fully understand that splashing the cash doesn't necessarily buy you success, but I think we might have made a mistake in thinking that what we have now is enough. I hope I'm proved wrong - the next few games will tell. As I said in another thread, I think 3 points from the next 3 games will be an achievement.

A team that can compete, well, I think we've got that anyway. One or two players won't make a particularly big difference. It's possible they'd make a significant small difference of course. And a team that can compete only lasts so long. And you have to keep spending to maintain a competing team every season. Infrastructure is a bigger front end investment, but it starts to pay for itself after a while. It offers the ability to increase revenue streams, improve the players you've got a little more, and home grow better replacements.

So I'll take the long view over tossing the dice to bring in a couple of extra players at inflated prices which only add a few percentage points to our chance of survival in one, maybe two or three seasons. Because relegation isn't the end of the world.

Our overriding aim is to continue to exist at a decent level of football. Second to that is establishing ourselves as a top half PL team. Now obviously we want to do that over the next 5 years, without being relegated, sooner rather than later. But with the more we spend to try and achieve that through chucking money at players, the higher the risk of implosion and slipping into League One or going out of business there is if we get unlucky despite that spending. It's not like we haven't seen that bigger money necessarily means better chance of success. Fae, Halford, Lita, Matejovsky, Rosenior, Seol, Mills, none really delivered value to match their cost, with some worse than others obviously. Possibly harsh on Seol, but we only had him one season.

So I'm not frightened of relegation. I enjoy the Championship a lot. I have ironclad confidence that barring utter disaster we can stay at least mid-table competitive at that level under our current regime. And probably mount more promotion campaigns and get back up within a 5 to 10 years.

TBH we're realistically ahead of the TSI schedule having got promotion unexpectedly almost last year.

We've already brought in six potential first team players. There's not much point in bringing in expensive players to be cover, and replacing much more of our first team is likely to effect our biggest strength. Our unity, organisation and spirit. We've seen nothing in the league to suggest we're in bigger trouble than anyone sensible expected. In fact we've actually look better, without picking up the points to reflect it.

Goals were a big worry, but Pog is already firing and looking good. ALF is off the mark and Guthrie looks excellent. So it's far less worrying that it could have been. Feds is the biggest concern and most would have said going into the season that 'keeper was by far our strongest area. He'll pick up and if he doesn't, we have McCarthy and Taylor. If Pearce and Gorkss isn't working, well we've got Mariappa, who plenty thought should be starting anyway.

Room for concern, but the sort of herdlike panic and bitching showing is horrifically premature and blinkered.

[westendgirl]

I thought the money was there for Coppell though, but he chose not to spend it.

The main point seems to be that Jm said to stay in the Prem you need to spend big. Well we haven't so lets take the ride and see what happens.

Though according to the Mail Anton said this,

The Barclays Premier League's next mega-rich Russian owner insists he is ready to spend big this summer to make Reading a major force.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... z25BrvSXwk

Are you assuming spending big is only transfer fees? We have no real idea what the wage structure is and whether we are spending big now.

At the fans forum when there was a remark about assembling the team on frees, Brian made some comment about the players not being free so who knows what has been spent to assemble this team, with maybe relatively little on transfers.

[windermere_royal]

The Pog came on a free, but you can but your life there were 7 digits in his signing on fee.

[Royal Lady]

And if he wasn't on a free, would he still have had a signing on fee?

I'm of the opinion that we only got these players because they were on a free - had we had to pay a few million plus their current wages, we wouldn't have gone for them.

[melonhead]

I thought the money was there for Coppell though, but he chose not to spend it.

The main point seems to be that Jm said to stay in the Prem you need to spend big. Well we haven't so lets take the ride and see what happens.

Though according to the Mail Anton said this,

The Barclays Premier League's next mega-rich Russian owner insists he is ready to spend big this summer to make Reading a major force.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... z25BrvSXwk

hes already spenty more than i would have

[melonhead]

And if he wasn't on a free, would he still have had a signing on fee?

.

of course not.

[Royalupnorth]

We are not the lowest spenders. WBA are.
We are the second lowest spenders.

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... adline-day

[Cypry]

A couple of thoughts:

As was said above, spending big doesn't necessarily equate to big transfer fees exclusively - Pogs signing fee will have been significant, I imagine we paid signing fees to most of the freebies. We obviously still have some funds available (to make an offer for Zaha), so one assumes that the potential to strengthen in January if needed will exist. The "spending table" only takes transfer fees into account - I suspect if you take into account nett spend on transfer fees ans signing fees we're a bit higher up the table than second bottom...

I also wonder how much the reported wealth of our new owners has hamstrung us in the market - we seem to have repeatedly gone in for players with what appear to be fair offers, only to have had the selling club ask for significantly more.....I wonder if there's been a bit of an attitude of "we'll try it on, they can afford it" from selling clubs?

[Ian Royal]

I'd be far more interested to see where we lie in the wage table as that's a much better indicator of where we'll finish.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

prefer to watch the league table, as is the final indicator.

[Ian Royal]

prefer to watch the league table, as is the final indicator.

Yeah, but that's pretty meaningless as of right now in terms of predicting the end of the season league table. Whereas a wages league table would be pretty good at that.

[Ian Royal]

prefer to watch the league table, as is the final indicator.

Yeah, but that's pretty meaningless as of right now in terms of predicting the end of the season league table. Whereas a wages league table would be pretty good at that.

I think that if you use a wages table, you will be even more depressed!

But you don't actually know. Given we've signed Guthrie and Pog, I think you might be surprised.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

prefer to watch the league table, as is the final indicator.

Yeah, but that's pretty meaningless as of right now in terms of predicting the end of the season league table. Whereas a wages league table would be pretty good at that.

Tell that to West Ham fans, relegated couple of times now, and they pay mega bucks. Or the big payers in the Championship, who failed to go up while little Reading stormed away, in the quiet way we do things.

[Royal Lady]

Ian - where do you think Leicester City were last year in the "wages table" and where did they end up? The wage table is no real indicator of future performance at all.

[RoyalBlue]

Ian - where do you think Leicester City were last year in the "wages table" and where did they end up? The wage table is no real indicator of future performance at all.

But high wages and a quality manager do tend to bring success.