How loyal will Stam be?

[Nameless]

He's only been here five minutes and his disciples are already proclaiming him as the next Guardiola. No one is going to poach him yet.

Simply a useful counterbalance to those who, after the same 5 minutes, announce that Stam is on a personal crusade to drive anyone who isn't Dutch out of the club....

[tidus_mi2]

In this day and age of manager lifecycles being incredibly short, I wonder if clubs actively keep track of potential replacements in case of a sudden need of a change in management.

[leon]

When Stam goes I think he'll torch the stadium and smash up all the cars.

[Z175]

Surely no one would consider Stam while he has less than 1 season in charge unless we are clear at the top?!

I genuinely think he sees us as a project and will stay 3 years. After that, if it has worked out and other teams are tempted, then we wouldn't need to worry as long as we got the right replacement to continue his work. Swansea went through 3 or 4 managers after establishing their way of playing and ended up in the PL.

If it doesn't work out, he'll be gone by Christmas and the Thais will try something else!

[maffff]

He'll have the Reading FC Crest tattooed over his face by the end of the season.

Once he reaches 90 he'll use DNA genetic engineering technology stuff to clone himself back his late 40's so he can stay knowledgeable and at the highlight of the first time he won the Premier League with us forever,

He'll also make two further clones of himself from the peak of his career which will line up in central defence. We'll never concede a goal again.

[Big Ern]

Any manager taking the Reading Job sees it as a stepping stone . We are not exactly at the pinnacle of world football so every manager has it in their mind to use this to move up. Given that Stam has played for some of the biggest clubs in the world , I am sure he is desperate to get back into that environment . If he can get us up in the process then leaves to join another club , then that would be a good trade off for me .

[floyd__streete]

He's only been here five minutes and his disciples are already proclaiming him as the next Guardiola. No one is going to poach him yet.

BUMP.

Good start to the season but a -3 goal difference says a lot about (a) the progress of the implementation of a new style (b) the chances of Stam being lured away at this stage

[genome]

Interesting that you've been quiet recently floyd, then pop up when we've had a heavy defeat.

[Franchise FC]

Interesting that you've been quiet recently floyd, then pop up when we've had a heavy defeat.

He's right though - it may be decent, but that's all at the moment.

Didn't we have a good patch last season ?

[Ian Royal]

Given that we're pretty tight at the back, bar two bad games which account for -6 of our -3 GD, we all knew there was a hell of a lot of rebuilding to do and there's no surprise we're not exactly overburdened with goals, I don't think there's a lot to fix.

And of course, as I said elsewhere, I would (and I expect most everyone else would) take getting regularly thumped, providing we're still winning half our games by 1 goal margins. Because it's points that count, unless you're right on the cusp of autos (we won't be), play offs (seems unlikely) or relegation (seems very unlikely). And realistically, we're far too much of a raw work in progress for going up to be a positive anyway. So what we really want is a vastly improved season on recent years, with a strong finish taking us to 7/8/9/10.

And then we can look at completing the (re-)building work and making a team ready to progress to challenge for promotion and have a chance to make it stick.


Our good patch last season was largely down to one player being on fire, and we had a very loose squad of players without any vested interest if things started to slide. And we won 6 out of 7. I don't think that's really comparable, our results have been based on more of a team performance, the squad is more invested in us regardless of how we do this season and our results are more balanced and spread.