NH on Radio Berkshire

[ManchesterRoyals]

We have a weaker squad now than last season.

Perhaps the reason for that is because we got relegated?

Anyone who sees Nicky Hammond as the problem here is a bit of pcunt.

And why did we get relegated? We didn't do enough in the transfer windows. Can u see a pattern forming?

[ManchesterRoyals]

So NH said we were talking to a player that's never going to sign for us and we can't afford a striker great. So by selling 2 players and freeing up more wages, we still couldn't afford a Striker.

I SMELL BULLSHIT

[LoyalRoyalFan]

So NH said we were talking to a player that's never going to sign for us and we can't afford a striker great. So by selling 2 players and freeing up more wages, we still couldn't afford a Striker.

I SMELL BULLSHIT

Isn't that resonating from you?

Perhaps if you listened to the interview you would have understood that the club won't pay over the odds for a striker. The right deal is the only deal would be the gist of the interview.

[Hoop Blah]

...The elephant in the room is that we are still really operating a tried and failed Reading Way with strict wage structures and transfer policies that make progress difficult for us.

I'm no club apologist on here, but that's a ridiculous comment.

Tried and failed? We've won promotion to the Premier League twice in a short space of time, more than can be said for the likes of the two big Sheffield clubs, Leicester, Derby, 'Boro, Leeds, Forest, Ipswich and many others.

In that time we've been one of the top paying clubs outside the Premier League so where this idea of strict wage structures comes from is beyond me. We don't pay out the biggest in transfer fees but, in comparison with our peers at Championship level, we've spent pretty decent sums in the past when attracting the likes of McAnuff, Mills, Rasiak, Legiertwood and Gorkss to the club.

[ManchesterRoyals]

So NH said we were talking to a player that's never going to sign for us and we can't afford a striker great. So by selling 2 players and freeing up more wages, we still couldn't afford a Striker.

I SMELL BULLSHIT

Isn't that resonating from you?

Perhaps if you listened to the interview you would have understood that the club won't pay over the odds for a striker. The right deal is the only deal would be the jist of the interview.

Pay over the odds? Shouldn't that read unless there free were not interested.

[Cypry]

Oh come on cypry. It's bad enough that the club lie to us without having a hobnob propaganda campaign too!

It's not "propaganda" - I just refuse to be sucked into slagging the club off in the, frankly embarrassing, way that a significant proportion of the so called fans are at the moment. You need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, rather than simply shout SPEND SOME MONEY ad nauseum

You were harping on that the reason we didn't splash cash in January was that we were saving up for a cat1 academy. Then allegedly we hear there WAS money so that was nothing to do with it. Now you're saying ok there is money but this time it's just that we actually couldn't get anyone.

I have never said we didn't spend in January BECAUSE of the academy - I used the academy spending as evidence that we were indeed spending money where we needed to. And, oh look, we now have a CAT1 academy, so that was obviously not a figment of my imagination. I was told by a very reliable source that money was available for transfers, and it wasn't spent - just as this time, money was available, but it wasn't spent. I'd suggest that we would have had a similar problem in both January and this Summers window in that it was never going to be easy to attract players to a side which looked nailed on for relegation / has just been relegated - recently relegated sides don't exactly have a great recent track record in the Championship do they?

The excuses keep changing in a rather boring and pathetic manner. Other teams managed to bring who they needed in. Yes they might have recycled money that they'd already spent but at least they spent it to begin with! Even if we forget the money the fact is they were able to find and attract players.

But like it or not, QPR and Wigan are both a more attractive proposition to many players than we are - it's just the way it is

Adkins, as a newbie nobody manager managed to attract a whole Premier League team to a league 1 side who were a laughing stock.

Now that's not strictly true is it?

To say we just couldn't get players is yet another excuse which is always the case from our resident RFC/TSI apologists.

I'm not apologising for anyone, just have the understanding that FM bears no relation to real life when it comes to running a football club.

Surely we knew that its relatively difficult for champ clubs to get players, it's not exactly hit us out the blue FFS. We knew we would be a champ club this season did we not? Yet we harped on about how we'd strengthen but were arguably with a weaker squad having spent less than we got in transfers.

But the majority of that income (which I don't believe to be anywhere the £5M that some would like us to believe) was finalised in the last day of the transfer window - we obviously felt that Mariappa was going, but what if he'd failed to agree personal terms with Palace, and we'd already spent the money? If you look at Drenthe as a capable replacement for Kebe (IMO he could be considered an upgrade), then the only area where we're really weaker is at CB and up front - I think you described Mariappa as a STAR yesterday - well, he might have been our better CB last year, but to describe him as a STAR is rather overdoing it don't you think? As for strikers, the only player I wish we'd held on to was Hunt, but you can bet your bottom dollar that even if we had kept him there would still be a clamour to sign another stirker...

The excuses keep chopping and changing and contradicting each other and are wearing thin. The elephant in the room is that we are still really operating a tried and failed Reading Way with strict wage structures and transfer policies that make progress difficult for us. And/or we have an incredibly inept chairman/DOF and/or our scouting network is just not up to scratch.

So, in your opinion, while we've been operating in the Reading Way we've made no progress? Quite plainly that's rubbish. Yes, we should have bought more quality in last Summer, and we've suffered as a result, but it seems to me that somehow people want the club to make amends by spunking a load of cash this year, when we're in a completely different financial climate (Championship vs Premiership) and that expectation is completely unrealistic. I agree with those who make the point that the biggest stick you can beat the club with is that they have not anticipated the expectations of a proportion of the fans, and dumbed down those expectations sufficiently

Still lets hope we get someone in on loan with a view to a permanent move.

The club can still salvage this.

Agreed....

[LoyalRoyalFan]

So NH said we were talking to a player that's never going to sign for us and we can't afford a striker great. So by selling 2 players and freeing up more wages, we still couldn't afford a Striker.

I SMELL BULLSHIT

Isn't that resonating from you?

Perhaps if you listened to the interview you would have understood that the club won't pay over the odds for a striker. The right deal is the only deal would be the jist of the interview.

Pay over the odds? Shouldn't that read unless there free were not interested.

The only strikers good enough to have an impact at this club would command big transfer fees - Charlie Austin, Gary Hooper etc. What is the point of bringing anybody in just to appease the fans? They had targets, they couldn't secure those targets, and they then don't just splash the cash on Deadline Day because the fans want it.

[Huckleberry Hound]

Or as that great philosopher once said:

"Do, or do not. There is no try".

Ah good old Spock.

Wrong franchise you have, hmmmm?

[Esteban]

So NH said we were talking to a player that's never going to sign for us and we can't afford a striker great. So by selling 2 players and freeing up more wages, we still couldn't afford a Striker.

I SMELL BULLSHIT

That's hard to justify, isn't it? Sissoko made the journey over here and spent a day and a half talking to us. Doesn't sound like a guy who had no intention of signing.

Had we moved on Pogrebnyak, I'm sure that we'd have brought another striker in. There's no point spending for spending's sake to bring in a mediocre striker.

[St. Brynjar]

You could say its rather inspired.

You could also say it's fucking lazy. Saggy Harry is allergic to buying anyone who isn't either his best mate from a former club, a journeyman, a really fucking well known player, or all three.

If you can't tell, I don't like Harry Redknapp.

[Royal Lady]

So NH said we were talking to a player that's never going to sign for us and we can't afford a striker great. So by selling 2 players and freeing up more wages, we still couldn't afford a Striker.

I SMELL BULLSHIT

That's hard to justify, isn't it? Sissoko made the journey over here and spent a day and a half talking to us. Doesn't sound like a guy who had no intention of signing for us.

Had we moved on Pogrebnyak, I'm sure that we'd have brought another striker in. There's no point spending for spending's sake to bring in a mediocre striker.

But Pog clearly doesn't have his heart in it - so I presume now NA will tell him to up his blooming game. Perhaps he could try starting him and ALF up front together. Presume Pog had the arse he wasn't ahead of Blackman in the pecking order and who can blame him.

[NewCorkSeth]

Or as that great philosopher once said:

"Do, or do not. There is no try".

Ah good old Spock.

Wrong franchise you have, hmmmm?

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Yoda.

[Pepe the Horseman]

Or as that great philosopher once said:

"Do, or do not. There is no try".

Ah good old Spock.

Wrong franchise you have, hmmmm?

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Yoda.

"Every man dies, not every man really lives" - William Wallace

[floyd__streete]

"Never before was so little owed by so few to such twats" - STAR st8ment on transfer policy.

[NewCorkSeth]

"Never before was so little been owed by so few to such twats" - STAR st8ment on transfer policy.

grammar is all over the place..

[floyd__streete]

"We live in a greedy little world that teaches every little boy and girl to earn as much as they can possibly then turn around and spend it foolishly" - Shania Twain.

[RoyalBlue]

So NH said we were talking to a player that's never going to sign for us and we can't afford a striker great. So by selling 2 players and freeing up more wages, we still couldn't afford a Striker.

I SMELL BULLSHIT

Isn't that resonating from you?

Perhaps if you listened to the interview you would have understood that the club won't pay over the odds for a striker. The right deal is the only deal would be the gist of the interview.

No the bullshit and possibly lies are coming from Hammond and the club. How can saying that the other two relegated clubs are operating in a similar financial manner possibly be a true statement?! There is no way on this earth that QPR are operating in the same financial way as RFC!

As for not being prepared to pay over the odds, the issue appears to be the definition of 'over the odds'. Numerous transfer windows seem to suggest one thing - RFC view 'the odds' as being much lower than clubs they are trying to compete against.

And if RFC don't want to pay 'over the odds' , why did Hammond waste so much time on Monday talking to Sissoko when anyone could have told him that the player would want 'over the odds' in RFC terms and that his asking price was likely to rise still further when he became a free agent, due to likely interest from other clubs.

And the final bit of insulting bullshit from Hammond? The claim that we still have a strong squad when we have a pathetically weak strike force that consistently struggles to get a decent number of efforts on target, let alone score, and when his transfer dealings have left us with just two decent central defenders plus a back up who has reached, if not passed, his best before date.

[Royal Lady]

Still don't think you can put the blame on Hammond - he's only able to work with the money he's given shirley?

[Davezk]

I'm bored of the club telling us one thing then doing another.

As others have said, I could accept if the club said 'Ok we may need to sell a few players if they're unhappy but we can't reinvest all the money due to x, y, z'.

Why do people within the club tell us we are going to sign 3-7 more players and then we sign none? There's so much contradiction between what is said and the reality. I think the fans would take it better if the hopes weren't built up in the first place.

NA has already said he doesn't want to really consider the loan market, but now NH is saying we will use it. Another contradiction.

I just wish the club would be more honest instead of taking us all for fools...

[Hoop Blah]

Since relegation QPR have sold, let go or loaned a shed load of players and removed a large portion of their wage bill.

The money they've spent has been generated by those savings and sales. They've not spent mega money on new signings but have probably invested pretty highly in wages.

It sounds pretty similar to me.