by The Goat was fed »
18 Nov 2015 18:36
floyd__streete Gr8 news. Hopefully the Board will provide more generous funding in January so that SC can complete the task of transforming us into a midtable Championship side.
I'm all for hilarious negativity, but you are a touch harsh on Clarke. If we don't finish in or around the play-offs this season, I'm fairly certain we'll go up next season. A huge team transition (which any Reading fan with any sense was calling for after Adkins) isn't going to pay dividends in one season.
I know you're going to point out that he has barely improved us post-Adkins, but in reality he can only be judged on this season and he's given us a lot to be positive about. The only thing I think you can be critical of is his constant tinkering with the team. This is partly down to injuries, but I suspect he's not 100% convinced on his best team and he's compounded this by missing opportunities to leave sides unchanged when his hand wasn't forced. I attribute this to three things; he's not sure what his best team is (his fault), injuries (not his fault) and 'over-loaning' (a mixture of his fault and DoF for me).
You've been a Reading fan long enough to know how important consistency is. Our two title winning teams were fantastically fortunate with injuries to the extent that I can still reel of the starting XI's of both sides because it was pretty much the same every week. Both those sides also benefitted from having played together a fair bit before their success too, the same cannot be said of this group yet. In fact, it's laughable how little they've played together when you also throw in most came in on deadline day too!