Trust Steve

['lista]

It is good to have a rich grandmother, but surely it is better to sit on the elbow of a Spanish fiddler?

Eric Cantona

[brendywendy]

I'm depresssed at the moment anyway.

Me too.

I was always brought up to believe that you should always grasp every opportunity and give it your best shot. If you give 100% and fail, at least you can look at yourself and feel proud for giving it a go.

I wish we'd been brave enough to give the Premiership 100%.......

gay gay gay

its three games in, and having seen all three, id say weve given 100% in every game

[Bowman's Quiver]

Not necessarily. you can have a team packed full of talent, but if the wrong players get injured you can go down. Look at Birmingham. What about West Ham. They had a pretty good team when they were relegated.

If you think that all of Sidwell, Kitson, Lita, Doyle, Harper, Shorey, Seol and Sonko amongst others will stay should we get relegated then I think you're living in a dream world.

You can take that arguement to the Nth degree if you want and include Chelsea and Manchester United in the equation. If enough of their players got injured they would surely go down and none of them would want to play in the Championship either. I am being flippant I should add but my point is valid to a degree. Where do you draw the line?

I think your point was that in your opinion we haven't strengthend the squad enough to cope with the inevitable injuries we will incur over the course of the season. But we're not dealing with a full season in that respect. In January the transfer window reopens and we have the opportunity of adding to a squad that's shown it's true colours by that stage.

As we stand at the moment we have a virtually fully-fit squad to select from (one that we both believe are good enough in their own right to stay in the Premiership) and although their will undoubtedly be causualities on the way to January it's the scale of the injuries we will pick up that's the great unknown.

This begs other questions of course. Do we play a weakened team in the Carling cup to minimise the risk of injuries to key players? Do we rest key players from games in the league where we in all likelyhood we don't have a prayer of winning; Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd?. Unpalatable thoughts maybe but perhaps we need to save our powder for the Fulham's and Bolton's of this world.

[Dennis the Butler]

Dennis the Butler wrote:

FFS ... WHY IS THERE THE NEED FOR ANYONE TO BE DEPRESSED / RESIGNED TO THE ( in their eyes ) OBVIOUS ... WE HAVE ONLY PLAYED THREE GAMES FOR CHRISTS SAKE ... IF I WAS A PLAYER READING THIS LOT I WOULD WONDER WHY THE FCUK I BOTHERED IN THE FIRST PLACE


Avon Royal wrote:

If you didn't have your head in the sand then you wouldn't have to SHOUT.

I don't have my head in the sand ... it's called being "confidently optimistic", enough to know that my team will do what's required this season ...

[Platypuss]

I'm depresssed at the moment anyway.

Me too.

I was always brought up to believe that you should always grasp every opportunity and give it your best shot. If you give 100% and fail, at least you can look at yourself and feel proud for giving it a go.

I wish we'd been brave enough to give the Premiership 100%.......

gay gay gay

its three games in, and having seen all three, id say weve given 100% in every game

So would Oxford United.

Somehow, just somehow, I don't think Avon Royal was referring to the players' efforts on the pitch.

[shadesrwrf]

I think this could be one of those threads that get dragged back up come the end of the season. Let's hope it's to prove all the doom-mongers wrong.

The thing that will irritate me if we are relegated is the number of people who will no doubt describe this season as a failure. It's our first season in the Premiership and, stay up or go down, we will learn a valuable lesson from it. It can only be good for the long term future of the club. A club I will support whether in the Prem or Conference.

[Royal Lady]

IF we were to be relegated, as someone else has pointed out, we'd lose an awful lot of our current players. Yes we'd have money left over from any unspend this season and we'd have a parachute payment - but to be honest, if we can't attract many players now, rebuilding a team in the Championship could prove equally difficult. I also would hazard a guess that Steve Coppell would resign at the end of the season. I don't believe we would automatically go back up to the Prem. I think it would take us a good few seasons to get ourselves in anything like the shape and form we had last season. Therefore, this historic season should be viewed for what it is, possibly the only time we get to see Premiership football in some of our lifetimes. No one thought we'd be straight up there with the big boys - we will struggle, we will lose games. But we're in the Premiership and time will tell if we can manage to stay there. So let's just cross our fingers and will the boys on and hope we can enjoy this season, win, lose or draw - remain up or be relegated. We can do all this moaning and "what ifs" at the end of the season if necessary. And, believe me, I shall be one of the most vociferous if it appears at the end of the season that we were relegated as a result of a combination of players not giving 100% and lack of money spent. Until then, I'll cheer them on.

[Avon Royal]

I'm depresssed at the moment anyway.

Me too.

I was always brought up to believe that you should always grasp every opportunity and give it your best shot. If you give 100% and fail, at least you can look at yourself and feel proud for giving it a go.

I wish we'd been brave enough to give the Premiership 100%.......

gay gay gay

its three games in, and having seen all three, id say weve given 100% in every game

So would Oxford United.

Somehow, just somehow, I don't think Avon Royal was referring to the players' efforts on the pitch.

Indeed - players' efforts on the pitch (and the fans' efforts off it) are not in question.

In fact, I don't mean to have a pop at anyone or anything specific really. I guess I was just hoping that somewhere behind the scenes a major transfer coup was being sorted. When this didn't happen I just felt a little disappointed and it got me questioning a few things, that's all. It's no big deal and I'd be amazed if I was the only person feeling the same way.

I'll admit I'm feeling a little depressed about our prem adventure at the minute, but I'm still ecstatic that I'm able to say that! I've been involved with our club for a long and feeling down in the top flight is still much better than feeling optimistic about our division 4 chances.

[Avon Royal]

I think this could be one of those threads that get dragged back up come the end of the season. Let's hope it's to prove all the doom-mongers wrong.

The thing that will irritate me if we are relegated is the number of people who will no doubt describe this season as a failure. It's our first season in the Premiership and, stay up or go down, we will learn a valuable lesson from it. It can only be good for the long term future of the club. A club I will support whether in the Prem or Conference.

Relegation would equal a failure in so far as we failed to acheive our target of survival.

However, I think the point you are making is that we could emerge from the ordeal a stronger side, learning from our experiences and building upon them for the future - that the year would not have been a total write off. If so, you are spot on and I couldn't agree more.

Don't mistake concern and anxiety with doom-mongering!

[Gordons Cumming]

FFS ... WHY IS THERE THE NEED FOR ANYONE TO BE DEPRESSED / RESIGNED TO THE ( in their eyes ) OBVIOUS ... WE HAVE ONLY PLAYED THREE GAMES FOR CHRISTS SAKE ... IF I WAS A PLAYER READING THIS LOT I WOULD WONDER WHY THE FCUK I BOTHERED IN THE FIRST PLACE

Because you were being paid alot of money for the priveledge of kicking a football about.


I agree with your point though.

[Philly Flyer]

Trust Steve? Yes, but that's based on hard, objective assessment of his ability and track record, rather than speculation about his motivation and whether he has enough resources to do what he wants: none of us know what he was given to spend and, as a number of other HNs have pointed out, every manager always wants more players/cash to spend.

Do we have to make a couple of changes to the starting 11 to compete? Probably(right back, CH, central midfield) but the existing squad plus the 5 additions this summer will do the job.

I'm really looking forward to Man City and the 34 other games this season. I personally think we will stay up but if we don't I am going to enjoy this priceless season and hope all the other loyal Royals do likewise. I know it was a bugger to lose 2 on the trot but really don't understand the negativity on this thread and many others over the past week.

Any chance of discussing something a bit more postive now that the transfer window is closed until January?

[Adrian's Fool]

How did a thread entitled "Trust Steve" turn into YET ANOTHER whinging thread????????

Seriously everyone, let's give this a rest (or at least restrict it to one thread), please, I'm bored already.

[BonBoh]

Reading will struggle to be consistent this season but I think we will stay up.
We didn't get the players we wanted in the summer and we bid a lot of money for them. Sadly, the Prem has moved on a notch and clubs are offering well over £5m for reasonable players.

I think the signing of 3 defenders for free in a week, all of whom are internationals, is good business. 2 of those players are in definitely in the mould of what Reading is looking for. Young, hungry and bags of potential.

Having watched the Royals at Villa, whilst sat in the Doug Ellis Stand with a load of die-hard Villa fans, I really do think we will survive this season.
We lost that game due to a harsh sending-off of Sonko.
Before they went 2-1 up, Villa fans were seriously asking which team was playing with 10 men. We were good but sadly lacked penetration with a man missing.

Seoul looks absolutely fantastic and so does Doyler. Sidwell and Harper can handle this division, too.
We will gel and we will get it right. With extra defenders in we will put an end to the problem of not having strength in-depth.
Once we lost Sonko we were always struggling - even vs Wigan.
That won't happen again.

I firmly believe that we will get 3 points at Sheffield Utd and then hope we survive the onslaught of the big-boys coming to town. If we are not bottom at X-Mas we will survive the season.

[shadesrwrf]

Therefore, this historic season should be viewed for what it is, possibly the only time we get to see Premiership football in some of our lifetimes.

I know you're considerably older than me but I expect this to be the first of many Premiership seasons for Reading Football Club during my lifetime.

[Royal Lady]

Therefore, this historic season should be viewed for what it is, possibly the only time we get to see Premiership football in some of our lifetimes.

I know you're considerably older than me but I expect this to be the first of many Premiership seasons for Reading Football Club during my lifetime.

Which is why I said "possibly the only time....in some of our lifetimes" - much love.

[BonBoh]

Do we play a weakened team in the Carling cup to minimise the risk of injuries to key players? Do we rest key players from games in the league where we in all likelyhood we don't have a prayer of winning; Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd?. Unpalatable thoughts maybe but perhaps we need to save our powder for the Fulham's and Bolton's of this world.

Any team that takes that approach deserves to be relegated to non-league football.
Ask Kitson, Murty, Doyle, Hahnemann, Sidwell, etc. if they would like to sit out against Chelsea, Man Utd, Liverpool or Arsenal because we can save them for games we think we might be able to win.
That is a loser's mentality.
Those players will want to go out there and compete against the best players in the country - they will want to beat them and perhaps they will.
I, as a Reading fan want us to do that, too! At least try. Not roll over and die.

[Avon Royal]

Any chance of discussing something a bit more postive now that the transfer window is closed until January?

Protons.

[Philly Flyer]

Any chance of discussing something a bit more postive now that the transfer window is closed until January?

Protons.

Arf arf!!

[shadesrwrf]

Therefore, this historic season should be viewed for what it is, possibly the only time we get to see Premiership football in some of our lifetimes.

I know you're considerably older than me but I expect this to be the first of many Premiership seasons for Reading Football Club during my lifetime.

Which is why I said "possibly the only time....in some of our lifetimes" - much love.

I'm sorry, you seemed to be suggesting you didn't think you'd see much Premiership football in your lifetime. As I'm a similar age to yourself I was suprised. I fully realise there are some who are considerably older for whom this may be their only hope. My condolences to Schards.

[Royal Lady]

1. Schards is younger than me.

2. My point was and still is, that if we get relegated there will be an awful lot of people, I believe, for whom this season will be the ONLY season they see us in the Premiership.