Review of the season so far

[andrew1957]

Although In am one of those who choose to be positive about our chances - and am fairly sure that however much of a struggle this season turns out to be there will be at least 3 teams worse than us at the end of the season - I do think that there are concerns for all to see. These are not just about RFC but also about football in general.

1/ Money and the increasing gap.

The more money that comes into the Premier League - the greater the gap between a small number of teams and the rest. Apart form the big 4 only teams like Pompey and Aston Villa that find super rich sugar daddies will be able to compete for Europe in future the way things are going let alone the title.

It looks like the big 4 will contest the title for the foreseeable future - with an odd champions league entry by another team making the top 4 as a one off - like Everton did a few years ago. Maybe one of Pompey, Blackburn or Man City will break into the top 4 this year - but this is unlikely to be a regular feature.

The UEFA places will be contested by these teams and perhaps a few others with rich owners.

This all means that the best any promoted club or the likes of Reading can achieve is survival year on year - until one year when everything goes wrong and inevitable relegation results. A run of 5 or 6 years in the premiership is all that the rest can seriously achieve.

The only way of breaking into the elite clubs will be to spend £100M plus on payers and tens of millions on wages.

2/ Young English players.

Under the current system what hope is there for the young players of the future like Henry, Pearce, Cox, Church. In the past they may have had an opportunity to break straight into a Premier League team but only a tiny minority will now achieve this. Instead interminable loans to lower league clubs and maybe 1 in 10 of them will be deemed to make the grade. Instead ever greater numbers of foreign players will be recruited as a quick fix solution.

3/ Reading's achievement last year.

Perhaps now we can realise just what a fantastic achievement 8th place was last year. Without huge spending it is very unlikely Reading will ever achieve such a high place again.

4/ Reading players this season from last season.

I am now sure that last year many of our players were giving 130%. This year reality has dawned and they simply are not able to give the same again. This is the only explanation I can see for the drop off in form of many of our stars from last year.

Perhaps after two such fantastically successful years the reality has dawned that all they can look forward to this season is a survival battle and they have perhaps lost the edge of last season.

5/ Conclusion.

I have laways loved football but I am really concerned that in future we will end up with an elite league (possibly without promotion and relegation - as some have already proposed).

I think this is sad but at this time I can see very little that can be done to stop it.

[floyd__streete]

Floyd's review of the season so far:

Reading are ****ing terrible and we're going down.

[rob the royal]

my view of the league this year is that it is most likely going to be an exciting year.

for a start who's going to win the title? with chelsea losing moronio and arsenal playing well again who knows. man u still look strong and liverpool will always believe they have an outside chance of causing an upset.

as for the rest of the table, i think last year clearly a lot of teams were in transition periods for all or part of the season which partly explains why we were able to gain so many points.

this year a lot of money has been invested or new managers have stamped their authority on their teams. looking at the table i would say the top 12 at the end of the season will be the same as it is now, except reading will be replaced by spurs surely?

i cannot see any of the clubs below reading coming higher than 13th apart from spurs. i suppose realistically the way we are playing we will drop into the 13-20 mini-league, but i still have hope that if we can turn things around soon, and i mean REALLY soon (i.e. from the next game) we still have the opportunity to try and sustain our comfortable position because the teams below probably won't be picking up a lot of points.

i was a firm believer that the club new what it was doing when sidwell was left to see out his contract, although i had always hoped he would sign or the club would change it's stance, i could understand where they were coming from, but looking back perhaps in order to make the transition from premiership newboy-strugglers we should have signed him up and raised our self-imposed bar for wages. now we may have to pay even sillier prices to bring in players who may not even be better or as good as sidwell, and if we can't improve our performances who is going to want to come here anyway???

as i say i am hopeful that we will turn it around, but in hindsight i would have to say that as far as confidence and ambition goes, letting sidwell go was not a good sign for the players about the ambitions of the club, and really it was the first backward step this club has taken for several years. the fact is confidence comes and confidence and goes, and without it we are never going to be able to come anywhere near the success or performance levels we showed last year. one or two ambitious signings perhaps could give the squad a reminder of the ambitions we once showed.

[Kitsondinho]

We are about where I expected us to be...just shipping more goals. At the moment there are worse teams than us....Derby, Fulham, Bolton (even if we did lose to them!) I just wish everyone would stop being so negative. Yes we are playing shit, yes we could go down...but relegation places are not sorted in October!

[Handsome Man]

It's been bad, but we are still in the Premiership, getting a few wins and are currently clear of the relegation places. The Premiership is harder this year: £450 million was spent last summer. Normally, most of this goes on useless players, but this summer even teams who have historically bought badly, such as Liverpool and Man City, seem to have made good signings.

It is going to be exciting, battling out unitl the last day, and I hope that three of Sunderland, Bolton, Derby, Birmingham or Fulham will be worse than us - that's not too much to ask for is it? The biggest disaster that could hit us is if we go down having bought expensive rubbish players in January.

[Dirk Gently]

Floyd's review of the season so far:

Reading are ****ing terrible and we're going down.

Dirk Gently's review of the season so far:

Reading are ****ing terrible but there are at least 3 teams who are even worse, so we'll just scrape though.

Also, it'll be a long, hard season - painful at many times - and by the end of it we'll see who are the real fans and who are the glory-hunters.

[Victor Meldrew]

It's been bad, but we are still in the Premiership, getting a few wins and are currently clear of the relegation places. The Premiership is harder this year: £450 million was spent last summer. Normally, most of this goes on useless players, but this summer even teams who have historically bought badly, such as Liverpool and Man City, seem to have made good signings.

It is going to be exciting, battling out unitl the last day, and I hope that three of Sunderland, Bolton, Derby, Birmingham or Fulham will be worse than us - that's not too much to ask for is it? The biggest disaster that could hit us is if we go down having bought expensive rubbish players in January.

Er..Two of those have already beaten us and we scraped home against Derby
Last season we were beating teams (other than Watford) in the lower reaches and this time we are not-it's going to be a long old struggle.

[Denver Royal]

It'll be a long, hard season - painful at many times - and by the end of it we'll see who are the real fans and who are the glory-hunters.

Lemme guess Dirk...you'll be one of the 'real' fans, right?

[Ian Royal]

It'll be a long, hard season - painful at many times - and by the end of it we'll see who are the real fans and who are the glory-hunters.

Lemme guess Dirk...you'll be one of the 'real' fans, right?

I'd expect a large number of Hob Nobbers to be left.

We're actually higher at the moment than I expected us to finish this season, so It can't be going too badly. We're looking diabolical at the moment and shipping loads of goals, but we're still picking up points, and more importantly we're still scoring.

Very few teams who score consistantly like we are doing go down, it's teams like Derby and Watford who can't score to save their lives who get relegated.

We may well go down, and we may look awful, but we will not go down bottom and will not be the whipping boys. ANything better than relegation this season was always going to be a success as we look to establish ourselves and rebuild from the promotion push.

[LUX]

the Observer has us at 33-1 to finish bottom.

to be brutally honest, that seems generous.

[Ian Royal]

the Observer has us at 33-1 to finish bottom.

to be brutally honest, that seems generous.

With Derby and Bolton around I'm not much surprised.

[shadesrwrf]

the Observer has us at 33-1 to finish bottom.

to be brutally honest, that seems generous.

Have any of the bookies?

[Dirk Gently]

This season is shaping up to be a very strange one - there don't seem to be many teams doing well away from home.

Although there are actually proportionately more away wins than last season (29% this year compared to 26% across last season) they don't seem to be as spread out across the teams. In fact, 8 teams haven't won a match away from home - and at this stage last season it was only 4 who hadn't.

If things carry on like this, the table will be much more spread out - with much bigger gapes between the top teams and the bottom teams - and the survival target will be much lower. At the moment, extrapolating the results so far, the bottom of the table looks like this :

15. Spurs 30 pts (GD -8)
16. Wigan 30 pts (GD -23)
17. M'boro 30 pts (GD -30)
=============
18. Fulham 29 pts
19. Derby 27 pts
20. Bolton 19 pts

We're currently on track for 38 points, which on current perfromances would put us in 12th!

[winchester_royal]

i cant see us being relegated, we are 12th at the moment, and as long as we stay out of trouble till jaunary, when coppel has promised to spend money, we will finish mid table somewhere

[Royalee]

Floyd's review of the season so far:

Reading are ****ing terrible and we're going down.

Amen to that.

[Old Biscuitman]

Sub par to poor so far. We will finish 16th with 42 points. Derby, Bolton and Wigan will go down, with Fulham in 17th place. I have money on that and, if it all comes good, stand to be considerably richer than I am today.

[PEARCEY]

Sub par to poor so far. We will finish 16th with 42 points. Derby, Bolton and Wigan will go down, with Fulham in 17th place. I have money on that and, if it all comes good, stand to be considerably richer than I am today.

The same three that I thought would go down...and still think that way but we need to cut out so many silly mistakes and giving the opposition so many soft goals.

[RoyalBlue]

the Observer has us at 33-1 to finish bottom.

to be brutally honest, that seems generous.

With odds like that maybe the Chairman can make some money out of this game after all!

Keep a look out for some character with dodgy hair cut, big ears and a suspect looking beard doing the rounds of all the bookies!

[readingbedding]

Floyd's review of the season so far:

Reading are ****ing terrible and we're going down.

Dirk Gently's review of the season so far:

Reading are ****ing terrible but there are at least 3 teams who are even worse, so we'll just scrape though.

Also, it'll be a long, hard season - painful at many times - and by the end of it we'll see who are the real fans and who are the glory-hunters.

True, I still think that we are a better team, than 3 teams.

If we do go down, the people from woodley, wokingham or wherever the hell they came from 18 months ago can clear off back to supporting Chelsea, Basingstoke or Hockey etc etc.

Which they will, so every cloud...

[Uke]

Uke's Review of the Season so far

We're 12th, 40% of teams are below us