Reading Preview: Coppell Has What It Takes
Posted 07/08/06 12:30EmailPrintSave
Last season: First, Championship; FA Cup - fourth round; League Cup - fourth round
Major players in: Seol Ki-Hyeon (Wolves, £1.5m); Sam Sodje (Brentford, £350,000)
Major players out: None
In March, I bumped into an old friend who supports Reading. They were long since running away with the Championship so I went to offer tentative congratulations on promotion, but he cut me short. Understandably, given my status as a Reading Jonah: the only game I'd ever seen of theirs was the 1995 Division One play-off final, when they were 2-0 up, with a penalty to come and Jason McAteer about to be sent off. Only McAteer was (wrongly) not dismissed and led Bolton's second-half comeback after the penalty was missed.
Of course, 1994-95 was also the only season since the 19th century when coming second in the second division did not guarantee promotion. Truly, Reading's luck sucked. I watched it all unfold with my friend and his wife and was truly lost for words as we sloped out of Wembley. I've made a point of never going to a play-off final with a committed fan of a participant ever since.
Eleven years on, whatever jinxing powers I have had faded because a few weeks later promotion was done and dusted and, for the first time, Reading were in the top flight. But has it been worth the wait? Or are Reading doomed to simply endure an embarrassing tour of the Premiership grounds before slipping back?
Coppell is a good coach. He has taken unfashionable sides to unlikely heights, even if he has failed to defy gravity in the long run. Had the game opened up differently - say had Manchester United gone out in the early rounds of the 1990 FA Cup and Crystal Palace won the competition against other opponents instead of losing the final - then he may have wound up in charge at Old Trafford. Instead the, err, massive jobs have always eluded him, bar that tragi-comic 30 days at Maine Road, when the pressure of taking charge of the game's foremost basket case turned him into one.
Winning the title is no guarantee of success upon promotion, as Sunderland showed last season. But Reading do not come with the baggage of failure that meant that Mick McCarthy's old side came up believing that winning was virtually impossible.
And Reading's efforts stand up well in comparison to the Wearsiders' campaign of 2004-05. They won 12 more points, scored 23 more goals and conceded 11 fewer.
Coppell had identified the shortage of goals as the reason his side failed to sustain their challenge the year before. Only Dave Kitson reached double figures. Last season he was joined by Kevin Doyle, Leroy Lita and, from midfield, Steve Sidwell, who was the most highly rated player in the division in a survey of fans of rival clubs I saw in one national paper.
Coppell has not added much to the promotion squad and there has been the inevitable talk of the difficulty in persuading players to join a club. But what matters more, with such a strong suit to start with, is holding on to the players he has. If Reading reach the end of August with the squad intact then the transfer window system will protect Coppell from predators for a potentially crucial few months.
Chairman John Madejski - who made his fortune from Auto Trader, by selling magazines rather than cars - was never likely to be extravagant, not least because he is thinking about selling up. Reading have debts of £10m; a decent season in the Premiership could clear those, but Madejski is determined not to add to them. If Reading to get into trouble then I don't expect them to try to spend their way out of it.
Reading don't get huge crowds and have a capacity of around 24,000, but their average, more than 20,000, was only four hundred short of that achieved by Wigan in the top flight; Wigan averaged fewer than 12,000 in their promotion season.
The fixture computer has not been unkind: Middlesbrough at home, Aston Villa and Wigan away constitutes a decent August programme. That's followed, after the international break, by meetings with Manchester City and Sheffield United. Playing positively worked for West Ham and Wigan last season and with a start like this Coppell should be able to take significant strides towards establishing his team in the top flight by the time his former club, Manchester United, visit on 23 September.
It may not last beyond this season as the key players will surely get better offers, but at the risk of once more becoming the Reading Jonah, I'm backing them to survive.
Philip Cornwall
The Sheffield Utd one is pretty funny
Title "Warmock out of his Depth!!" LOL
http://www.football365.com/story/0,1703 ... 71,00.html[/url]
