winchester_royalcmonurz I'm just not convinced, but then I assume our respective definitions of 'good in the long run' are different. Your way is fine if you fancy being a Crewe, I look at the club and what to see us sustain in the top division. I don't see how getting relegated, signing a few more like Roberts, and giving Lawson D'Ath a career contribute to that.
Build a new, better team in a league which is more forgiving to younger players which will allow us to compete properly next time we come up a la West Brom. Not suggesting we become a Crewe at all.
Sometimes you need to take a step backwards to then take 2 steps forward.
Not ideal of course, but relegation might not be the end of the world.
Doing that is pretty difficult though, the only real club to have done the yo-yo club thing well and is in the Prem now is West Brom, although Middlesbrough, Bolton and Charlton did fairly decent efforts around 10 years ago.
Right now, I'm unconvinced that Anton would spend the type of money that West Brom did to get them to the place they are now.
After relegation in 2005/06 (after two years in the PL) WBA spent wisely and cheaply, only spending about £2.5m on new players with a few good frees like Hartson,Koren, McShane and Kiely.
However they flopped in the play-offs and so decided to go on a bit of a spending binge before 07/08 and added nearly £13m of talent to the squad, including long term prospects like Brunt (£3m), Morrison (£1.5m) , Barnett (£2.5m) and Luke Moore (£3m). Admittedly this was helped by big sales of Koumas and Kamara.
Then when they went back up they spent another £14.5m on players, before another £4m was spent in the year they finished runners-up to Newcastle and finally started to establish themselves.
West Brom also weren't afraid to change managers, going through Bryan Robson, Tony Mowbray, Roberto Di Matteo and Hodgson in the space of 5 years.
Back to Reading and IF we go down, even with a bit of cash generated for the likes of Pog, could you see this club spending £15.5m on new players in the space of 2 seasons in the Championship, when they've only committed roughly £5m so far in the Premier League?
West Brom have rightly been lauded for being able to establish themselves in the top division but they didn't exactly do it on the cheap and they didn't do it sticking with one manager....