tidus_mi2Strandedtidus_mi2 Definitely if you consider the hypothetical income we could have gained from the likes of Loader and Richards going for nothing and Olise going for below market value due to major incompetence with the ownership, the academy has been very successful.
Whilst I take your point for the 4,654,564,622nd time - Olise would never, ever, ever have played for Reading FC if we didn't agree to the contract and the relevant clauses. So we made 8m (soon to potentially be about 12m) for a player who would otherwise have been shifted off to another club if we hadn't accepted.
That would have been incompetence on a grand scale.
Damn you're annoying.
Who's to say we wouldn't have been able to negotiate a higher release clause in exchange for higher wages? Certainly seems Palace were able to do something similar.
Yep, cause this argument is fcuking annoying.
He was a player in our Academy who had not played a single minute of football for us when he signed the deal. However, we saw the potential and wanted to tie him down - as has been shown by the case that got the club in trouble, we bent the rules to get him to even sign the thing - else his agent would have moved him on.
We had very little leverage, we may have already offered more than we should wages wise and in case you hadn't noticed, the club has been haemorraging money for some time.
Can you imagine the outrage if we had offered an untried player large wages and then he had got seriously injured first game of the season?
Given his career path, it is of course disappointing we only got what we got for him but I'm sorry there is so much crap to hit the club with a deal that meant we will have had the pleasure of seeing a probable top world class talent play about 70 games for us is not one of them.