TSI - The Promises, Policies & Progress Thread

[SPARTA]

TSI thread.

[SPARTA]

I was surprised to learn yesterday that Reading are currently the Premier League's biggest spenders on both travel and hotel expenditure. Even for the London games we foot the bill for a nights stay in a hotel. Arsenal for example travelled on the morning of the game here at the Madejski Stadium. It does seem very wasteful, and there are one or two people at the club who aren't very happy about it.

It only feels like yesterday when Marcus Hahnemann caused a stir when he spoke out about the club refusing to fly to Sunderland and instead the team had to sit on a coach for several hours.

Didn't the team fly up to an away game recently? Can't understand what is wrong with them getting the train to some games even if they are going the day before. Hardly going to make that much of a difference surely, and will be much cheaper for the club then chartering a whole plane every time!

This is really not very important. It won't cost more than £400,000 a year if that, and if that makes a crucial difference come the end of the season (even if it's only a point or two) then its completely worth it.

Sorry? Staying in a hotel the night before a London game is worth it and might make the difference of a point or two come the end of the season? Someone should tell Arsene Wenger, because those poor buggers got the coach on the morning of the game. Some 40 odd miles too. I don't know how they managed.

[Whore Jackie]

I was surprised to learn yesterday that Reading are currently the Premier League's biggest spenders on both travel and hotel expenditure. Even for the London games we foot the bill for a nights stay in a hotel. Arsenal for example travelled on the morning of the game here at the Madejski Stadium. It does seem very wasteful, and there are one or two people at the club who aren't very happy about it.

It only feels like yesterday when Marcus Hahnemann caused a stir when he spoke out about the club refusing to fly to Sunderland and instead the team had to sit on a coach for several hours.

Sorry? Staying in a hotel the night before a London game is worth it and might make the difference of a point or two come the end of the season? Someone should tell Arsene Wenger, because those poor buggers got the coach on the morning of the game. Some 40 odd miles too. I don't know how they managed.

8pm kick-off may well have influenced Arsene's decision though. Suspect we'll do the same on the 29th January.

[AthleticoSpizz]

or fans just need to stop chucking money at S$y and E$pn to watch (what once was either free or) get to their local games

[SPARTA]

The new TV deal for next year has been almost ignored by most of the contributors to this site. It makes our need to avoid relegation much more intense (although few seem to have noticed) and it has totally changed the landscape. If RFC get relegated this season they will need to be promoted next season or virtually accept that they are are perrenial second-bests! The teams relegated from the Prem next year will have so much money, it is difficult to see any promotion candidate other than them.

Gets said every time the TV money goes up. It's amazing how the likes of Wigan, Norwich, Blackpool, WBA, Reading etc manage to get promoted...

[Alexander Litvinenko]

the reality of the TV money is that it just increases the financial gaps .

All of the increase is very likely to be taken up with increases to player wages, but where it will be most seen is in two places :

- the clubs who finish higher in the Pl will get more money than the clubs who finish lower in the PL, so it'll increase the financial gap (and teh differential in spending power) between the biggest clubs and us if we do stay up

- the gap between PL clubs and Championship clubs. It's massive already, but this will only make it get bigger. In some ways this is partly covered by parachute payments (2 years at £16M and 2 years at £8M), but really that's just a drop in the financial ocean compared with a PL wage bill. But the new TV deal means that parachute payments will probably go up for clubs relegated after this season, so if we do go down there'll be a differential between us and clubs relegated the following year. It's also worth noting that as parachute payments now last 4 years, there'll almost certainly be more clubs receiving them than there are promotion slots, so they'll bring an advantage over other clubs but not over other relegated ones.

[Alexander Litvinenko]

The new TV deal for next year has been almost ignored by most of the contributors to this site. It makes our need to avoid relegation much more intense (although few seem to have noticed) and it has totally changed the landscape. If RFC get relegated this season they will need to be promoted next season or virtually accept that they are are perrenial second-bests! The teams relegated from the Prem next year will have so much money, it is difficult to see any promotion candidate other than them.

Gets said every time the TV money goes up. It's amazing how the likes of Wigan, Norwich, Blackpool, WBA, Reading etc manage to get promoted...

A reasonable point but a moot one! The past is not a mirror of the future and money somehow mostly wins! I take your point but, the whole idea of this, I would guess , is to ensure that the same 20 clubs remain in the driving seat.

Or rather the some "pool" of around 23-25 clubs, with the ones at the bottom yo-yoing.

[LightwaterRoyal]

TheSiege actually taking on board peoples opinions, it must be a cold day in hell

[AthleticoSpizz]

Just keep feeding that fire that will burn you in hell

[murof]

Happy new year everyone

So the transfer window is here and everyone who knows anything about football knows that the Royals need some good quality, experienced players, ideally from the premier league.
So what do we have so far, a player for £650k and a possible player from the Aussie league, which probably equates to League 1 quality. Mcdermott said he was looking to get Danny Graham from Swansea who scored for them yesterday, why the hell would he want to come here and why would they even let him go?

I thought we'd be off the blocks like Usain Bolt and getting in deals with some big experienced player now that we have a supposedly rich owners who want to take us to a different level?
Call me a cynic, but if this guy from Porto Carico is so good and only 24 years old, why have none of the big clubs shown the slightest bit of interest? What do we know about this guy that no-one else does?

Will we be able to buy players who cost say more than £1m? Who knows what restrictions we place on wages?

Surely we must be able to get some good quality players on loan, but then again if players have heard about how Brian has long term spats with his players then maybe they don't think its worth their while coming here?

People have criticised QPR for their spending and then to justify us not spending money. But if the QPR players start playing as a team, they have so much in reserve that will have no problem staying up. With out current players, we are playing at 100% and with nothing left to give in terms of quality improvement. The only way we can stay up is if we have an amazing amount of good luck or we bring in a few good players very quickyly.
Personally I think we will need huge doses of both

[Alexander Litvinenko]

Just what we need, another thread saying exactly the same thing.....

[murof]

Just what we need, another thread saying exactly the same thing.....

If we keep saying it, maybe someone will listen and do something

[Fox Talbot]

Sporting Lisbon are one point off relegation

That said, if the owners have a Five Year Plan (it's the Russian way) they won't want to be spunking all their money away in the first 6 months chasing a pretty hopeless cause - ie us this year.

[murof]

Sporting Lisbon are one point off relegation

That said, if the owners have a Five Year Plan (it's the Russian way) they won't want to be spunking all their money away in the first 6 months chasing a pretty hopeless cause - ie us this year.

A five year plan to achieve what exactly? Does the plan include relegation? How will the plan control the 23 other Championship teams who will want promotion from the Championship, will they just let us win because we have a plan?

Didn't know the position of Sporting Lisbon, that is very surprising.

[creative_username_1]

Sporting Lisbon are one point off relegation

That said, if the owners have a Five Year Plan (it's the Russian way) they won't want to be spunking all their money away in the first 6 months chasing a pretty hopeless cause - ie us this year.

Five year plan = total waste of time

[RobRoyal]

Just what we need, another thread saying exactly the same thing.....

If we keep saying it, maybe someone will listen and do something

1) Nothing you or I or anyone on here say will ever make a difference to anything.

2) It's January 7th. Can you at least shut up and come back at the end of the transfer window please?

[cmonurz]

It’s clear from the various statements that the new owners have ambition – but I remain unconvinced how deep their pockets are, how readily they are prepared to invest in Reading as a Premier League club, and in the scale of investment in the Academy alongside attempting to stay in the top flight.

The price we are paying now is that having endured an awful start to the season with the players in which the manager and owners have shown faith (with some additions of debatable quality), we will now struggle to attract to the club the sorts of players who could make a real difference in our fortunes and keep us up – except for, potentially, the likes of Arshavin on expensive, short-term loan deals. Taking a step back from things, it’s pretty clear that the likes of Carrico (once considered of huge potential but has suffered from injuries) and Rogic (all potential) are the sorts of signings left available to us. I’ll be delighted if we pull off the Graham transfer, but just can’t see him opting for us over Norwich, or indeed anyone else in the Premier League.

If you have a five-year plan for stability in the top flight, it’s short-sighted imho to take the approach that our surprise promotion was a ‘bonus’ that we can afford to gamble with. I criticised the club for a lack of investment in 06-07 and 07-08; the players were incredible in our first season in the top flight, but eventually fell behind always having to play out of their skins just to compete. We nearly qualified for Europe in 2007; imagine what sort of status the club might have had we invested £10-15m in the team that summer? Who knows.

Imho to have enjoyed such an incredible run of results and got promoted out of nothing – to have just thrown that away by not learning the lessons of last time we played at this level, that’s the biggest disappointment. Back to that five-year plan, if we don’t bounce straight back next season, we’re in year 3 in the Championship, and that’s a long, long way from Premier League stability in 5 years.

[Silver Fox]

murof sounds a bit like bore off the way I'm pronouncing it in my head

[ZacNaloen]

The plan will include not spunking money away chasing an impossible task.


We'll improve the squad and if that isn't enough we'll go back to the championship with a stronger team and a bigger budget, for at least 4 years.

[ZacNaloen]

it’s clear from the various statements that the new owners have ambition – but I remain unconvinced how deep their pockets are, how readily they are prepared to invest in Reading as a Premier League club, and in the scale of investment in the Academy alongside attempting to stay in the top flight.

The price we are paying now is that having endured an awful start to the season with the players in which the manager and owners have shown faith (with some additions of debatable quality), we will now struggle to attract to the club the sorts of players who could make a real difference in our fortunes and keep us up – except for, potentially, the likes of Arshavin on expensive, short-term loan deals. Taking a step back from things, it’s pretty clear that the likes of Carrico (once considered of huge potential but has suffered from injuries) and Rogic (all potential) are the sorts of signings left available to us. I’ll be delighted if we pull off the Graham transfer, but just can’t see him opting for us over Norwich, or indeed anyone else in the Premier League.

If you have a five-year plan for stability in the top flight, it’s short-sighted imho to take the approach that our surprise promotion was a ‘bonus’ that we can afford to gamble with. I criticised the club for a lack of investment in 06-07 and 07-08; the players were incredible in our first season in the top flight, but eventually fell behind always having to play out of their skins just to compete. We nearly qualified for Europe in 2007; imagine what sort of status the club might have had we invested £10-15m in the team that summer? Who knows.

Imho to have enjoyed such an incredible run of results and got promoted out of nothing – to have just thrown that away by not learning the lessons of last time we played at this level, that’s the biggest disappointment. Back to that five-year plan, if we don’t bounce straight back next season, we’re in year 3 in the Championship, and that’s a long, long way from Premier League stability in 5 years.

We aren't in year 3 in the championship, because year 2 (actually year 1) was never supposed to be in the premier league.

Whatever plan they had last year will have changed, and a plan that includes potential relegation will have been formulated and probably already has been.