The owners - what went wrong for them

[stealthpapes]

Going back to the no baseline point, how different is

“ 75-25 in favour of ‘yes’”

From

“60-40”

[MartinRdg]

I'm sorry but drawing a result from your poll that 40% of Reading fans do not trust the owners when it's an open poll published on Twitter is not a fact. You cannot determine the demographic of those who voted so cannot logically come to the conclusion you have.

[Brogue]

I'm sorry but drawing a result from your poll that 40% of Reading fans do not trust the owners when it's an open poll published on Twitter is not a fact. You cannot determine the demographic of those who voted so cannot logically come to the conclusion you have.

it's almost as if i posted this in the op

The poll is not a scientific survey, obviously, but with more than 800 votes, it should still give us a reasonable indication of the current mood among the fanbase.

i never said it was fact I said a 'reasonable indication' of the current mood.

It's now about 1000 votes and the percentages have remained the same. Who is voting in the poll then? Why can't I conclude? are you saying the russians have infiltrated the poll on the reading fc hashtag ?

[Sutekh]

I'm sorry but drawing a result from your poll that 40% of Reading fans do not trust the owners when it's an open poll published on Twitter is not a fact. You cannot determine the demographic of those who voted so cannot logically come to the conclusion you have.

it's almost as if i posted this in the op

The poll is not a scientific survey, obviously, but with more than 800 votes, it should still give us a reasonable indication of the current mood among the fanbase.

it's now about 1000 votes nd the percentages have remained the same. Who is voting in the poll then? Why can't I conclude?

If people can't vote more than once and you know they're all Reading FC supporters and not fans of other clubs "having a bit of fun" then you can reasonably conclude, otherwise you need to caveat any conclusions.

[Royal Ginger]

Do we not inherently distrust the owner class? I’m personally surprised it’s that high.

What is considered an appropriate baseline?

[Marcel]

I'm sorry but drawing a result from your poll that 40% of Reading fans do not trust the owners when it's an open poll published on Twitter is not a fact. You cannot determine the demographic of those who voted so cannot logically come to the conclusion you have.

it's almost as if i posted this in the op

The poll is not a scientific survey, obviously, but with more than 800 votes, it should still give us a reasonable indication of the current mood among the fanbase.

i never said it was fact I said a 'reasonable indication' of the current mood.

It's now about 1000 votes and the percentages have remained the same. Who is voting in the poll then? Why can't I conclude? are you saying the russians have infiltrated the poll on the reading fc hashtag ?

Not on twitter but if I was I would vote No purely because they’re Americans

[RG30]

This was a good article published on TTE recently:

https://thetilehurstend.sbnation.com/20 ... -questions

[windermereROYAL]

I don`t think it`s a well kept secret that Brogue hasn`t been a fan of the owners since day one.
Don`t think any debate will change that reasoning.

[blythspartan]

I think part of the problem with the owners is that from the beginning quite a sizeable proportion of the fanbase didn’t want them as they felt Rob had prevented a sale to Platek. I remember the fanbase wanting Dai to win his court case, in part, due to Dellor being Howe’s messenger on BBCRB. Then, if you add in the word “spectacular”, that frustrated a lot of fans once the summer window closed last year.

Personally, I’d prefer honesty, and if the money to strengthen the squad isn’t there just stop all of the bollox about going for promotion. All our squad needs is a bit more depth and I think we’ll have a squeak. I suspect Rob’s tenure will be over before the end of the season.

[Royalwaster]

My own prejudices aside, something has clearly gone wrong for the new owners of Reading Football Club.

I’m currently running a poll on Twitter. It still has another eight hours or so to run, but the results so far are quite astonishing.

Before getting into them, let’s address the inevitable response:

“Yeah, but it’s Twitter. Everyone on there is a frothing-at-the-mouth weirdo.”

There is some truth in that. There are certainly some very vocal negative nellies on there, and I’ll happily admit that I can fall into that category myself at times. However, they are generally a minority who simply shout louder than everyone else. There are also plenty of perfectly reasonable Reading fans on Twitter.

I’d also argue that the Reading FC community on Twitter contains a significant proportion of the supporters who regularly attend matches. The poll is not a scientific survey, obviously, but with more than 800 votes, it should still give us a reasonable indication of the current mood among the fanbase.

Very few Reading-related polls receive that level of engagement, so the subject has clearly struck a nerve.

The question itself was deliberately simple:

“Do you trust the owners?”

The only options were yes or no. There was no additional context or leading commentary that might influence the result.

As of midday, 837 votes had been cast, and 40% of respondents said they did not trust the owners... 40%?

I find that astonishing. When I posted the poll, I didn’t think for a second that the number voting no would be anywhere near that high.

So what has gone wrong?

You would imagine that almost anyone replacing Dai Yongge would receive an extended honeymoon period. The bar could hardly have been lower. Yet, despite that, after just over a year in charge, four out of every ten people responding to the poll already say they do not trust the new owners.

Regardless of whether the final figure moves slightly before the poll closes, that should concern them. To have lost the trust of such a sizeable section of the fanbase this quickly suggests that something has gone badly wrong.

Sounds like a completely unbiased survey. A bit like Reform running a survey asking if you trust the government on immigration.

[andrew1957]

In my opinion the owners still have a lot of credit in the bank for saving the club. It could have been so much worse.

Having said this, I do think this summer's transfer business is a tad disappointing so far. The not so good news is that the squad looks a little weaker this season as compared to when the transfer window closed last season - but there might of course be more signings to come. If not - then our season will depend on the injury list. If we have a good season with few injuries, then we have an outside chance of top 6. But if we have a repeat of the last few seasons, with multiple injuries throughout the season, this squad is unlikely to be deep enough to cope well and we will end mid table at best.

The better news is that we have had a more settled pre season this time round. Last summer was a shambles and so it was no surprise we started poorly. This time we have had a good and settled pre season.

The owners are not going to spunk millions - which is fair enough - but this does mean there is a real risk of us turning into a lower League 1 - top League 2 level club rather than pushing towards the Championship.