if we won the play offs in 95

[Katie Marsden]

How can anyone say not going up, then spending the next 5 years getting beaten on a regular basis was a good thing? Those that say that are probably fans that weren't around back then and only started supporting the club in 2002.

Some clueless halfwits about.

At the very worst the club would have been relegated and made a lot more money than we did from staying down, kept the best players and been in Division One when the new ground opened. That would really have been a disaster and set the club back years.

Talk of it being for the best does nothing except highlight the small time attitude people have. The same was said about missing out on Europe.

[papereyes]

At the very worst the club would have been relegated and made a lot more money than we did from staying down, kept the best players and been in Division One when the new ground opened. That would really have been a disaster and set the club back years.

I just don't believe half of that would have happened. Its not that what you're saying would have been a disaster, but that you're 'at the very worst' isn't some worse case scenario, and things could easily have been much worse.

1) Very limited chance of staying up. Bolton, in 1995/6, were first team down and well adrift of survival.

2) I'm even not sure how much more money there was. This was during the first TV contract, so the money would not have been astronomical. Also, increased costs would have been incurred - bonuses on contracts, increased wages, increased staff, stewarding whatever. But there was little room for expansion, so income from other sources would have been less. That doesn't even take into account whether we may have had to groundshare.

3) We didn't keep our best players for the following season so how we'd have kept them with one season of Premiership football to impress, I'm not sure. They'd have gone, unless we'd stayed up or found a lot of money to spend on wages etc.

4) It doesn't even guarantee that we were in Division 1 when the new stadium opened. You yourself say that the next 5 seasons were spent getting beaten on a regular basis, but how does getting promoted, getting beaten on a regular basis, losing the players that got there and then spending a few more years, with a markedly bigger wage bill, also getting beaten regularily make much difference?

5) No club from that sort of background got promoted in the 90s and didn't suffer. Bradford, Barnsley, Swindon, Watford. All suffered for the raised expectations that came in the following seasons. In each case, the better players either left, or stayed on contracts the clubs couldn't afford. Money was spent trying to repeat the feat and, if unsuccessful, expensive players were brought in who achieved little.

Its hindsight, admittedly, but the club is better for having to take the slower path.

[Coppelled Streets]

How can anyone say not going up, then spending the next 5 years getting beaten on a regular basis was a good thing? Those that say that are probably fans that weren't around back then and only started supporting the club in 2002.

Some clueless halfwits about.

We could so easilyy have been another Swindon town. Then we could be here now talking about our return to the heady heights of League 1.
This is all hypothetical anyway. We don't know where we would have been. But it was way to early for this football club!

[RG30]

Yet we could have been another Bolton or Middlesborough, 2 established Premiership clubs with bigger fanbases

[Katie Marsden]

The one factor the other clubs didn't have was John Madejski, he wouldn't have let the club go the same way as Bradford, Swindon etc.

[papereyes]

Yet we could have been another Bolton or Middlesborough, 2 established Premiership clubs with bigger fanbases

Did we have the resources? the fanbase? the stadium?

I don't think so.

[Skin]

If....

[Victor Meldrew]

Would we not have got the stadium at about the same time and would it have been bigger?
Don't forget that Mr Mad was always prepared to spend money on new players,Jim and Mick had some,Bullivant had some and both Burns and Pardew had a lot more.

I agree with Katie and RG30 that we might have become more of a Bolton (the team that beat us) than a Barnsley or Swindon,neither of whom had wealthy chairman nor arguably as high a potential fan base.
Shaka,Adie,Archie,Ossie and Taylor had plenty miles left on the clock at that stage so we MIGHT have survived and become a Bolton or Charlton or a Southampton,clubs that have tended to stick around at the top level.

What will be interesting in the seasons ahead is whether we do become an established club at Premier level or a yo-yo club like Watford,Sheff Utd or West Ham or a Championship club like Coventry and Southampton,Norwich and Ipswich have now become and whether our newly acquired fans will continue to fill our 36,000 ground.

[Ian Royal]

How can anyone say not going up, then spending the next 5 years getting beaten on a regular basis was a good thing? Those that say that are probably fans that weren't around back then and only started supporting the club in 2002.

Some clueless halfwits about.

At the very worst the club would have been relegated and made a lot more money than we did from staying down, kept the best players and been in Division One when the new ground opened. That would really have been a disaster and set the club back years.

Talk of it being for the best does nothing except highlight the small time attitude people have. The same was said about missing out on Europe.

What would you know, you don't even support Reading... And most of the people saying it would have been bad are exactly those that have been around since then.

When I said the desire wouldn't have been there as much, I mean with the fans, who play a big big part in motivating the team. Obviously regardless we'd have all wanted to get to the prem, but without coming so close and having your hopes dashed with about 5 mins to go it would not have been the all consuming burning desire that it had been.

[Daniella]

[quote="Ian Royal
What would you know, you don't even support Reading.quote]

Yes katie does support reading, and judging by the posts made, knows a lot more than you.

[Ian Royal]

[

Katie is a man u fan and everyone knows it.

[Blue_Elm]

Wasnt it tagged that had we gone up, we'd of had to play in the sheeps County Ground. I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than see my Reading have to play there week in week out

[Daniella]

[

nope, previous STH at madejski. Has a big respect for united, thats all.

[Ian Royal]

[

like i care what you say, you're as big a bullshitting wind up merchant as Katie. I don't care how many season tickets he's had he's still more a united fan than he is a reading one.

[Daniella]

Ian royal you're actually the biggest bore on HNA. You only ever state your views when you know they'll be backed up elsewhere. You could give lessons in bandwagon jumping. Someone makes a post, others condem, followed by ian royal 10 mins later when he know he'll fit in like a sheep, its cringeworthy.

[Ian Royal]

Ian royal you're actually the biggest bore on HNA. You only ever state your views when you know they'll be backed up elsewhere. You could give lessons in bandwagon jumping. Someone makes a post, others condem, followed by ian royal 10 mins later when he know he'll fit in like a sheep, its cringeworthy.

Yes thats exactly right.. Do be a nice chap and go away.

[Behindu]

At the very worst the club would have been relegated and made a lot more money than we did from staying down, kept the best players and been in Division One when the new ground opened. That would really have been a disaster and set the club back years.

1. We would have made very little money had we been promoted and then been relegated. This was pre the stupidity of Sky, we had no earningc apacity of our own yet would have had to pay higher wages, make huge changes to the ground (or pay to play elsewhere),

2. When we lost the playoffs we lost our best players. Even if we had gone up we would have lost Osborn and quite possibly Shaka too. Had we then been relegated we would have seen a mass exodus.

You need some perspective to work out if things have happened for the best. I'm sure if we had gone up JM would have given it a good shot but there was no way we would have managed to compete - apart from anything else the players weren't good enough.

It wasn;t a 'good' thing that we lost as such, but in hindsight we are now somewhere we would not have been had we taken that step too early.

[Rev Algenon Stickleback H]

2. When we lost the playoffs we lost our best players. Even if we had gone up we would have lost Osborn and quite possibly Shaka too. Had we then been relegated we would have seen a mass exodus.
.

we didn't lose them - we sold them. They wanted to play premiership football and offers from the premiership came in, and we decided to take the money.

Had we been in the premiership they might just have been more inclined to want to stay, and we'd have been less keen on selling them.

I do think we'd have dropped right back down though, but it would have been great to have had that one year of premiership football at Elm Park.

[TheLawnMowerMan]

I got divorced about the time we missed out on the Premiership in the play-offs, and as I look at the current Mrs LawnMower and my LawnMower children I feel very fortunate - but at no point do I think I was lucky to get divorced, or that it was a good stroke of luck.

It happened, and at the time I wished it hadn't happened.
Nobody knows what would have happened if it had been otherwise.

[Behindu]

we didn't lose them - we sold them. They wanted to play premiership football and offers from the premiership came in, and we decided to take the money.

Had we been in the premiership they might just have been more inclined to want to stay, and we'd have been less keen on selling them.

From what I understand at least 1 player was leaving whether we won the playoffs or not.
We didn't 'decide' to sell the likes of Shaka and Scott Taylor, they decided to go and we had very little choice. We weren't keen on selling anyone !

Even if we had gone up we would have found it very tough to keep players, we would just not have had the resources to pay wages anything like enough to compete and other clubs would have snapped them up.