by RoyalinBracknell »
22 Dec 2013 22:00
I've said before that McDermott is my favourite ever Reading manager.
That said, at the time of his sacking I could appreciate and even agree with the argument that to establish ourselves in the Premier League - which I suppose you could say has been the glass ceiling that we've not quite managed to break through for the past decade or so - we needed to modify our style so that it placed more emphasis on possession and generally having control of games.
However, this was in part based on the presumption that significant funds would be available for an overhaul of our squad and that we would now be in a position to invest relatively decent sums of money to get promoted again and then to attempt to stay there. As of yet I'm not convinced this is going to happen, and if we are to essentially go back to our previous way of doing things from 2009-Jan 2012 (i.e. look to be a club which balances the book, maybe brings in a few players each window but faces limitations in doing this, and which just generally is a Championship club which hopes if it gets lucky it might make a run for the play-offs) then I can't help but wonder if we might not have been better just preserving with McDermott. (I would actually be interested to see how we'd do with this current squad.)
At the moment we seem slightly trapped between the ideal of Adkins's vision and the reality of his current playing squad, particularly the defence. Our passing in this part of the pitch currently looks manufactured and done simply for the point of doing it. I get the sense the players themselves are unable to take responsibility themselves and to apply Adkins's ideals to a realistic match day situation. When we go forward we have at times looked half decent, probably because these players are more comfortable on the ball and also as there is just a more natural use of the ball when attacking. Perhaps this is just the transition we have to go through - but I can't help thinking we will need some significant changes for Adkins to effectively impose the style he'd like upon the team. As above, I'm not sure whether this will be possible under the current ownership and it will be interesting to see how many players we lose should we not get promoted this year.
Quite apart from wanting to see more attacking football, more crosses, more possession or anything like that, what I'd really like to see - or more accurately feel - is a connection building again between the fans and manager, and just generally the team. I couldn't honestly say that I care too much about the whole thing right now or that I particularly look forward to going. By and large I haven't felt such an apathy in the past - last season was tough but I certainly still felt emotively connected to the club and our results. That said, I think such a connection takes time to build; it is the result of a long-term process, often one which involves success. I remember threads on here from autumn 2011 about a lack of connection with those players and that was improved once we went on that title winning run.
