Confimred new owners of Raeding Footbal Club

[Royal Rother]

Victor, Victor, Victor.... You whine on and on and on about how the club have fcuked up time and time again and people just find it tiresome.

8 years ago Madejski said that he had done his bit, didn't want to put any more money in and explained his vision was that the club should become self-sufficient as that was the only long-term recipe for survival and relative success.

And the Academy was to be a large part of that vision / plan.

As shown by my post above that has been a spectacular success.

I don't understand why you would want to brush that off and focus on what you perceive as the fcuk ups of recent years.

Nobody gets it right all of the time and some things would have been done differently with hindsight but overall the pluses of developments and achievements in recent years continue to outweigh the negatives on a massive scale.

You want to place responsibility for the financial challenges the club faced recently on SJM, rather than where they really belong. Well ok, that's your prerogative but forgive me if I call bullshit. Drenthe and Pog were AZ signings not SJM's.

But if we are looking to apportion blame / credit, what about the Academy? That clearly is / always was where the future of RFC would be securely established and the responsibility of its success lies fairly and squarely with SJM because that was always his vision.

Do you accept that?

[Victor Meldrew]

In reply to both Rother and nameless I just don't buy into the view that Anton is the villain and responsible for all the ills.
He wasn't around for the first relegation from the Prem and Madejski was chairman of the board then and when Anton became involved.
He is party to the foul-up of the finances and must share responsibility for our relegations and the finances-it is jus too easy to blame the football managers and Anton.

Hearing him yesterday before the game talking of the "Reading Way" as if it was a blueprint for success made me cringe-the clb was in such bad straits that it had to sell a player to pay a tax bill which I feel I a terrible state of affairs.
We have lagged behind so many clubs with our poor youth development in the past but eventually saw the light when we ended up with the Walcott that isn't very good when Southampton had taken his brother from our doorstep.

All clubs have youth set-ups and/or academies, this is not something new, It is just an area that we have failed to develop and at last are finally catching up.
It is definitely the way forward for ALL clubs but don't confuse this with the "Reading Way" which IMHO is a myth.
I look forward to more and more players coming through combined with signings that will surely be forthcoming with the new money from those deep pockets that the mad man goes on about ad infinitum.
I won't be discussing this matter any further as obviously we see things so differently.

[Martin41]

Christ there have been a lot of posts today , mainly by Victor.
Now everyone has the right to an opinion , but thank god he has said he won't be posting anymore about it.......although I'm not so sure!
For what it's worth, I believe sjm has always done what is best for the club.
Anton had most of the power so I'm guessing if he wanted to do something....end of story!
Hopefully we do finally have the right people, only time will tell. Christ even Bill Gates could buy us, and screw us over!

[Royal Rother]

Once again - every sentence from Victor's latest / last post on the subject diligently ignores the fantastic achievements I've highlighted.

You could have said - "I have to admit that I never thought I would see the day when RFC fielded a team + subs featuring 12 out of 18 from the Academy. That gives me a huge amount of pleasure and I am so pleased that the investment made over the last 10 years is paying off so handsomely."

Instead you chose to be so grudging in your acknowledgement of this brilliant piece of news that it hardly even registers...

We have lagged behind so many clubs with our poor youth development in the past but eventually saw the light when we ended up with the Walcott that isn't very good when Southampton had taken his brother from our doorstep.

All clubs have youth set-ups and/or academies, this is not something new, It is just an area that we have failed to develop and at last are finally catching up.

It is definitely the way forward for ALL clubs but don't confuse this with the "Reading Way" which IMHO is a myth.

I look forward to more and more players coming through combined with signings that will surely be forthcoming with the new money from those deep pockets that the mad man goes on about ad infinitum.

Frankly that's pathetic.

[Royal Lady]

I'll tell you what is pathetic on here - people on here who should know better, who, because they do not agree with a poster's views, resort to puerile name calling. I don't agree with everything Victor is saying, but I would never even consider insulting him because of it.

If you can't put across your point of view, without name calling, you're not the clever know-it-alls you make out to be and you certainly have no respect for other people.

[Royal Rother]

Well ok - I'm not sure "daft old goat" is quite in the same arena as "paedo" but point taken.

[winchester_royal]

Well ok - I'm not sure "daft old goat" is quite in the same arena as "paedo" but point taken.

Lol.

Coming from RL in particular that was priceless.

[Nameless]

Jacob is not Theo's brother, unless you were using the term in a hip, street fashion.....

Victor no one in their right mind would think Anton was in any way involved in our first relegation from the Prem. We got relegated because we lost the team spirit that had and had served us well, and we spent money on the wrong players. It wasn't especially SJM's fault, we could have spent another 20 million and still gone down (see QPR and others). We know SJM has never liked throwing money around (either his own or money the club hasn't got) so it was hardly a surprise he didn't go crazy. Does that make him a villain ?

If I thought you were reading the responses to your post I'd be tempted to keep discussing, but it's fairly clear you aren't. Nothing like approaching an argument with a firmly entrenched set of views and a determination not to change . Despite RoyalBlues attempts to rewrite history no one thinks SJM has never made a mistake, or that we are a perfectly run club. Neither is true. But we have been a well run club, and it is a fact that other clubs saw us as the model for the way a small, old fashioned, lower division club could evolve without imploding. Sadly attempting to take the next step that you want is what has derailed for the time being our stability.

[Royal Lady]

Well ok - I'm not sure "daft old goat" is quite in the same arena as "paedo" but point taken.

Lol.

Coming from RL in particular that was priceless.

I don't insult people on here as a matter of course because I don't agree with them. In fact, I rarely insult people and only do if I'm insulted first. Ian Royal once apologised by PM for the way he insulted ME however, and many others insult me, but it doesn't make it right, or even slightly amusing.

[SCIAG]

We have lagged behind so many clubs with our poor youth development in the past but eventually saw the light when we ended up with the Walcott that isn't very good when Southampton had taken his brother from our doorstep.

All clubs have youth set-ups and/or academies, this is not something new, It is just an area that we have failed to develop and at last are finally catching up.
It is definitely the way forward for ALL clubs but don't confuse this with the "Reading Way" which IMHO is a myth.

We have lagged behind many clubs, but we're as good as most now and have been for a while. I agree that academy development is not yet "the Reading way" and is probably more like "the Crewe way" or "the Palace way" or...

Our change in philosophy has nothing to do with Theo Walcott (and fwiw, Jacob is his (distant) second cousin). It had more to do with our failure to sign the likes of Tom Soares or Hayden Mullins - we did get the lesser Soares brother... Getting Geoff Warner to the club was important for reversing this and has seen a big turn around in our recruitment of local youngsters, otherwise Jack Stacey would probably be playing right wing for Palace right now. We also did good work developing the likes of Cox, Henry and Pearce from a young age, and with Karacan, Sigurdsson, HRK etc. from 15-20.

Warner's left now, we've continued to improve and I think we'll continue to improve (last season's U14s are a very good side, for example) but don't be surprised when we sign a couple of Reading-born players from Chelsea after they fail to displace their latest multi-million pound import.

[Ian Royal]

Well ok - I'm not sure "daft old goat" is quite in the same arena as "paedo" but point taken.

Lol.

Coming from RL in particular that was priceless.

I don't insult people on here as a matter of course because I don't agree with them. In fact, I rarely insult people and only do if I'm insulted first. Ian Royal once apologised by PM for the way he insulted ME however, and many others insult me, but it doesn't make it right, or even slightly amusing.

Yeah, I was out of order on that occasion so I apologised. I believe I may have said I'd do it on the boards if you wanted too, but I may be mis-remembering.

I'll happily have a pleasant discussion / argument with people about things. But when someone refuses to acknowledge even the most basic things and spends their entire time criticising the club, I take exception. And if you read this thread back, you'll see that it was Victor who insulted me first. By claiming I don't follow Reading. And by trying to make my cheery post about him and his stupid anti-Madjeski message. Not the other way around.

I've tried to enlighten him on where he's got no idea - the club's finances, where we've gone wrong and under who's watch. But like RoyalBlue, he's too wrapped up in his delusional SJM hate for anything resembling sense to get through to him. There's been excellent posts by many others on here along the same lines and he's ignored them all to spew more bile. So yeah, I tossed a few relatively low level jibes his way. Sue me.

[SCIAG]

It's fair to say Hector, Edwards and Kuhl are supposed to be the best of the recent crop yet they struggle to impress or even make an appearance,

I went back to read the whole Victor-Ian-RR beef and found this. Seriously, nobody tore that to shreds?

Michael Hector is four years older than Aaron Kuhl so they're hardly part of the same crop. Jordan Obita is halfway between them...

Ryan Edwards is just hitting form at the right time, he's fairly average by the standards of our youth teams.

Right now our first team contains three Academy graduates who are Hector's age or younger, and our bench has six.

[Ian Royal]

It's fair to say Hector, Edwards and Kuhl are supposed to be the best of the recent crop yet they struggle to impress or even make an appearance,

I went back to read the whole Victor-Ian-RR beef and found this. Seriously, nobody tore that to shreds?

Michael Hector is four years older than Aaron Kuhl so they're hardly part of the same crop. Jordan Obita is halfway between them...

Ryan Edwards is just hitting form at the right time, he's fairly average by the standards of our youth teams.

Right now our first team contains three Academy graduates who are Hector's age or younger, and our bench has six.

Missed it sorry.

[Mr Angry]

Maybe the new Reading way is to blather on about our history as if that gives us some sort of right to be Champions; to complain that other teams "buy" the Championship whilst at the same time spunking several £100' Million's on crap players, and treat as a Demi God a psychopath who clearly wants to leave our club.

Victor will be happy with that I suspect.

[BR2]

Maybe the new Reading way is to blather on about our history as if that gives us some sort of right to be Champions; to complain that other teams "buy" the Championship whilst at the same time spunking several £100' Million's on crap players, and treat as a Demi God a psychopath who clearly wants to leave our club.

Victor will be happy with that I suspect.

[Yellowcoat]

Regret my comments were misunderstood. I was talking about Victor/BR2 not SJM. Fed up with his constant stream of ill informed negativity about every aspect of RFC.

[windermere_royal]

Are we there yet?

[Nameless]

Are we there yet?

Judging by the number of Thais in the directors box on Saturday the consortium now numbers several hundred, the Football League have had to recruit more assessors and the FPP test is scheduled to complete sometime after the Qatar World Cup.

[Royal Rother]

Didn't they all look absolutely bloody delighted at the final whistle?!

(And I don't think that was because they could head straight for the airport.)

[leww_rfc]

Bryan Swanson did not look pleased