Issue 14 - November 1999
Some supporters were more than a little disgruntled...

John Madejski has obviously got a grudge against the Whiff: not only did we not get the manager's job recently, when surely we were the best qualified candidates, Madejski also made the appointment after we'd gone to the printers. Hence, by the time Issue 13 was on sale, it was already out of date.

Assuming that Pardew hasn't been sacked by the time you read this (and also assuming that anybody does read this, which might be a bit presumptuous), it's safe to comment on the next chapter in the fascinating history of Reading Football Club.

Madejski's insistence on taking his time before making the appointment has two unfortunate consequences. Firstly, it encourages endless speculation in the local press about who is, and is not, a candidate and secondly, as a corollary, this encourages the fans to believe that a high profile name will get the job.

Therefore, when the announcement is finally made and it turns out to be a man with very little experience of managing at this level (I say "very little" because "no experience" would not be entirely accurate as Pardew did take charge of the Royals for one game before Burns took over), some supporters were more than a little disgruntled.

This is unfair on Pardew as he's being judged before he's even begun. Lack of experience doesn't make him a bad manager and look what happened the last time we appointed a high profile manager.

On the other hand, it does make him something of a gamble. As he has no record, he may prove to be astute and successful á la McGhee or he may a bit of a lame duck like a certain taxi driver. Quite simply, we won't know until he's been in the job for a few months.

This itself raises the question of just how such an appointment is made. In any other business, when senior people within the organisation need to fill a role, they have a damn good idea exactly what it is the new person needs to do. At a football club (and particularly Reading at the moment) the senior people i.e. the board of directors, often don't have much of a clue about how to manage the team. How then, do they select the best candidate?

Madejski's insistence that he will only interview those who apply for the job also limits his choice. It may seem commendable that he doesn't want to poach from other clubs but this is strangely at odds with what is fairly common business practice these days. Many employment agencies use head hunters to identify the best candidates in any particular field and then match them with vacancies when they appear.

To find the best football managers however, this might not be so easy. Many people will judge a manager purely on results but only the best achieve consistently good results over a period of years with different clubs and different sets of players and those managers are almost certainly working in the Premiership.

As fans, we might say we prefer one candidate over another but how do you know unless you've talked to them? A manager may have appeared to be successful at another club but how do you know that it wasn't down to the head coach or some other factor?

It appears that Pardew was the popular choice amongst the players but this might not necessarily be a good thing. After all, a manager who encouraged his players to go out on the piss every night would undoubtedly be popular but would he be the right choice for the club? However, after a few years of rather miserable failure we are desperately short on team spirit and so a bit of team bonding wouldn't go amiss.

Many thought that one of the other candidates would have been more suitable. This, however, is where the press speculation was distinctly misleading and unhelpful. Two of the names in the frame were Hoddle and Kinnear and the latter certainly had his supporters amongst the fans. However, it appears that neither even applied for the job - they simply happened to be out of work at the time.

Of the candidates that did apply (or so I'm led to believe), none really stood out as the obvious choice. Pardew may not be a high profile name but he's surely preferable to Graham Souness or Bobby Gould. The appointment of the latter may even have tipped me over the edge and I may have been forced to sell my season ticket. Well, not sell as such, since a sale requires demand as well as supply, but I may have used it to prop up the wonky table in the kitchen or to break into my house when I've got pissed and lost the front door keys somewhere.

Old has-beens are far worse than untried newcomers. With an experienced coach in John Gorman, Pardew has someone to share the responsibility. His immediate task will be organisation and motivation: get the team to play as a unit and to believe in themselves.

On the day of his appointment, I happened to see Hunter and Caskey in a town centre drinking establishment. Not wanting to appear like a sad, drunken hero-worshipper (sad and drunk may be accurate but they'll get no hero worship from me - I help to pay their wages for Christ's sake, they should be asking for my autograph!), I had a brief conversation with Hunter about Pardew. He was qualified in his approval, by which I mean he was positive but not overly enthusiastic, a sign perhaps that the players are not yet too sure what to expect.

Hunter did, however, make one very revealing comment. He said that it would be nice to be treated like men again and not constantly told that you weren't good enough. I took this to be a reference to Burns' constant talk of players at this level not having the ability to understand and implement his instructions and that players bought for less than £100,000 were only stop-gaps. Such comments are hardly likely to instil confidence and Hunter's comments tend to bear this out.

Pardew has made a reasonable start. He's switched from the wing-back system which patently wasn't working and, up until the Oxford debacle, the team was looking more solid and consistent. The Oxford result was a blow because, whilst the result was bad enough, the performance was worse and very worrying. Much more of that and we'll have a real relegation battle on our hands.

As he well knows, a left-sided player is a must. Evers looks good in a more central role but out on the left he struggles to get into the game. Murty may have to pick up that role whilst he regains match fitness.

Up front, Scott has lost form and looks like the great lumbering oaf I always suspected he was. Forster's fitness is vital, as is some cover in a shape other than that of MacIntyre and Brayson. Unfortunately, the purse strings seem to be tied again and Pardew may have to sell first. As already stated, selling is well nigh impossible when you've got something that nobody wants so he may have to make do for now.

Pardew has a two-year contract, for what it's worth, but he will be in the job until at least the end of this season, whatever happens. What he desperately needs is some consistency in the shape and make up of the side and an end to the habit of gifting goals. Even in game at Brentford, which was as good a performance from the Royals as I've seen for some time, we gave away what looked like a sloppy goal, this time from a goal-keeping error.

We have to hope to that Pardew is the man to get the best out of what is a reasonable squad. Unfortunately, we'll all need patience now as re-establishing morale is not going to be an easy task. The next few months will be extremely testing both for him and us as he sets out to put the Royals back on course.