News and Views
Tommy Elphick Arrives On Loan
29 January 2018
By Hob Nob Anyone?
Reading have completed the loan signing of centre back Tommy Elphick from Championship side Aston Villa. Elphick will stay with the Royals on loan until the end of the season. Elphick arrived at Villa from Bournemouth in the Summer of 2016 for a three million pound transfer fee, but after 26 appearances for Villa last season he has featured just six times this campaign. After two league cup appearances, including a red card in the home defeat to Middlesbrough, he played just four Championship games before arriving at Reading hoping to secure more first team football.
The loan arrival of Elphick follows the earlier season-long loan departure of winger Adrian Popa. Popa has now agreed a move to Al-Taawoun in Saudi Arabia after also finding first team football hard to come by at Reading. Popa has been at Reading for a year, making nine starts in all competitions.
After a busy summer in the transfer market, the January transfer window is expected to be much quieter for the Royals. Under-fire Reading manager Jaap Stam is not expected to have any budget for new signings and Elphick's arrival could be one of very few transfer movements either in or out. Any incoming transfers are likely to be loan-only deals as Reading face a relegation battle.
Discussion On This Story:
TiagoIlori
Hound
Ahead of the 2016–17 season, Elphick was appointed as the club's new captain.[93] It came after when Birmingham Mail urged the club to appoint Elphick as the new captain, due to his inspiration towards his teammates and the way he connects well with the clubs' supporters.
could certainly do with a bit of that
TiagoIlori
Paving the way to accept a bid for Moore?
Moore to do with a long term McShane injury tbf, considering Liam Moore played in the FA cup it looks like he could be staying for now
GazzTheSpaz
I would question that, even though a striker is obviously high priority we need to stop leaking goals. 5 clean sheets in 28 games is just not good enough.
Having to score 2 or 3 goals to win games will not be solved by just getting one striker in.
Absolutely, that is not a great clean sheet record, maybe if we had an attack that could do something with the ball then we wouldn't be relying on our last line of defence to be passing it around all game, let's face it, when the defence makes a mistake you're normally up sh*t street. We need not to be looking for cracks in their defence but creating them
Victor Meldrew
A bit surprised that he hasn't featured much for Villa.
A steady Eddie old-fashioned no-nonsense centre-back and was captain of Bournemouth for some time.
Seems ideal for a relegation fight-he's probably a mate of Yann's which has led to the deal.
I wonder if he has the same agent as Yann and Grabban and also wonder if Richards is destined for Bournemouth-there have been murmurings for a while about that happening and Eddie Howe has bought 3 players in recent times from lower division (Leeds, Sheff Utd and Blackburn all for in excess of £1 million) that are still very young but had shown potential.
Back to Elphick-pleased about this one as he is a leader, something that our defence needs with McShane no longer up to it and Moore badly in need of help.
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