On paper Reading have one of the strongest squads in the league, and one of its most highly rated managers, but they’re teetering on the brink of a prolonged Championship stay because of uncertainty upstairs.
The fixture between these two sides at the Madejski Stadium last year was just about as horrific as football can get. One team not good enough, the other completely disinterested, plaing out a limp 0-0 draw which relegated both and was followed — typically — by QPR player Jose Bosingwa and manager Harry Redknapp laughing as they went down the tunnel.
It was a Sunday morning spent cleaning the dried vomit from around the seat of your toilet. It was clearing a drain of matted hair and fat. It was cleaning up your elderly grandmother's piss. It was multiple wisdom tooth removal. It was stubbing your toe on the end of the bed on a cold day. It was paying £17 for two cinema tickets, sitting down and realising it's a bloody musical. It was taking your seat for a five course dinner at a posh function and noticing the name plates in the seats to your left are your ex girlfriend and her hunky new beau. It was a letter from the GUM clinic requesting an urgent follow up appointment. It was purgatory. It was no different to the vast majority of Reading v QPR games Sky have televised in recent years. And it was apparently not enough to put the satcaster off choosing this fixture yet-a-bloody-gain this Sunday to, laughably, try and distract viewers from Arsenal v Liverpool on BT Sport — one wit suggested last week that Sky showing Yeovil v Leeds while BT aired Liverpool v Arsenal was a sign of things to come.
Had you asked the masochist neutrals who did tune in for that debacle how they thought the freshly relegated sides would do in 2013/14 I dare say most would have tipped Reading for a better season than QPR. Rangers were in a total mess, with a slew of big earners to shift on, a wage bill to hack into, a team and team spirit to rebuild, and a manager who few expected to stick around to do it. Reading still had the crux of the team that had promoted them just eight months previous, hadn't broken the bank to try and stay in the top flight, and seemed to have started preparing for a Championship season well in advance of everybody else by snatching the much sought after managerial talents of Nigel Adkins after his harsh sacking by Southampton.
And it might still turn out that way. QPR have been top two all season but are now third and hamstrung by several long term injuries to their key players — crucially, the players who provide youth and speed to an ageing team, and who contribute almost all of the goals. Reading are sixth and a seven goal demolition of Bolton recently shows the firepower they have to offer in the closing weeks of the campaign.
But, as we'll hear from our Reading fan in a moment, the Royals are looking over their shoulder rather than off into the distance. A 2-0 defeat at home to Sheffield Wednesday — completing a double for the struggling South Yorkshire outfit — highlights the inconsistency of the team.
The whole thing seems to have been weighed down by uncertainty in the boardroom. Anton Zingarevich was the stereotypical rich Russian when he took over from long serving owner John Madejski last season but his grand business plan seems to have been built entirely on staying in the Premier League and financing the team with the television money.
Relegation saw him shrink back into the shadows and a September deadline to buy the remainder of Madejski's shares came and went. Reading are apparently now looking for a third party to buy them out and as we've seen at Portsmouth and, more recently, Leeds — you're far more likely to attract chancers than genuine Sheiks in that situation.
Which is a bit awkward really because parachute payments only last so long. The boardroom situation threatening to keep Reading in this division is exactly the reason they need to get out of it, because long term contracts signed in times of plenty don't often belong to players willing to tear them up and walk away. Relegated teams that don't bounce back require extensive financing — Bolton currently £168m in the red and increasing — and at the moment Reading don't seem to have anybody willing to do that, or even anybody serious on the horizon to offer hope. They need Adkins to work his famed motivational skills and drag them back to the land of BT-boosted cash cows now or potentially face the dark path QPR, Forest, Leeds, Southampton, Bradford and others have all trodden before after overreaching themselves and relying on individual money men making big promises.
Reading, for so long one of the best run and most stable clubs out there, seem to be in a state of flux and it's showing.
The opposition fan we seem (and in fact have) spoken to more than any other over the past 18 months, David from the Royals Rendezvous website, is back again this week, helping LFW out with the latest goings on at Reading . Thank you to David for his time as always.
Assess Reading's season so far on the pitch. Is sixth above or below what you expected? Do you think you're going to win promotion straight back to the Premier League?
Baffling is the word. Surely one of the strongest squads in the division — on paper at least — but it hasn’t gone smoothly. Too many points have been dropped in games we didn’t expect — for example Sheffield Wednesday have done the double over us despite being at the wrong end of the table with a goals tally of F7 A2. I honestly believe that although we as fans are not an arrogant bunch by nature (most of us anyway) we really expected somewhat better than sixth, at least that’s the impression I get just having browsed through our pre-season predictions once again. Promotion straight back? Well, the odds are now turning against that. We hardly ever do well in play-offs, a very poor record. What’s more, many feel we’re more likely to go seventh or eighth rather than fifth or fourth, especially as the points for the top teams are really stretching out on a line now, as you’ll know to your own comfort.
Run us through the current boardroom situation - it seems to be in a state of flux with the rich Russian keen to leave but no obvious replacement. What's the best and worst case scenarios there?
Again that’s a difficult one to answer because the truth is that we know not much more than yourselves — unfortunately the Reading board speaks of "one happy family” when we’re skating towards automatic promotion but seem to forget we exist in a ‘normal’ season. Well, Anton Zingarevich hasn’t actually been seen at the club for months. At first we sort of excused him — just had his first baby, getting the accounts sorted out etc - but it came to the moment of buying Sir John Madejski’s remaining shares (49%) and he got cold feet, or even had hoodwinked us all along. I personally believe he’s a good lad; I may be wrong here but I feel wanted to be connected to the club in part due his knowledge of the area (remember he went to school here), but somewhat foolishly believed he’d be able to sail along and the Premier League big money would pay for the club without further personal additional expenditure. Therefore relegation put a scupper to those plans. About three weeks ago we had the new big news: "The Royals are in takeover talks with a consortium from the United States , and a group from Oman are also said to be interested in buying the club”. Now that’s gone quiet, the latest from Madejski is: "the club have no firm offers on the table as the search for new owners and investment continues.” All this has led to fan frustration — we missed out in the January sales as these takeover talks drag on. Best case — someone super rich buys the club. Worst case — no-one buys, and SJM gets older and older with no new taker, or a takeover goes very badly (impossible to predict of course).
How do you rate Nigel Adkins performance during his first year in charge? What's the general consensus among the Reading fans?
Rarely for us over the years has the attention has been more off-field than on-field, such was the stability that Madejski has offered during his 20-plus years at the club. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote before our last meeting about Adkins, but it won’t have altered much. He is widely respected, we are conscious of his unblemished record as a manager up to this point, but he does find it a little difficult to win some over with his eloquent speech rather than the sleeves-rolled-up straight talking approach that we had from Brian McDermott previously. I do not foresee any problem with his continuing future at the club even if play-off positions are not reached at the end of the season, but maybe there might be more pressure next season, depending on what kind of chairman comes in — if one comes in. Yep, we’re in a bit of no-man’s land at present.
You seem to have gone a little goal crazy of late - what's brought that on?
The previous replies might well have some bearing on this. I feel that Adkins dearly wanted to buy in the winter transfer but funds were not forthcoming. If I tell you the truth, I — nor most other lifelong RFC fans - cannot understand our run of scores this season. Just take the last five results: victories by Blackpool — (5-1 H), Bolton (7-1 H) and Millwall (3-0 A) and yet two lacklustre 0-2 defeats to Ipswich (A) and Sheff Wed (H). We never know which team will turn up, but do seem to get punished when we perform below par. Of course we’d prefer lots of boring 1-0 and 2-1 wins like Leicester are doing. Another personal hunch; I believe the 0-6 trouncing away at Peterborough in the League Cup did more damage to team morale and psychology than some would admit — it put the seeds of doubt amongst the players. In this I must pay my full respect to QPR, who despite having substantial criticism at the end of the last campaign (perhaps more than us, we weren’t expected to stay up) have quietly gone about your business, and without a fuss are staring automatic promotion in the face once again — yep, Reading has a lot to learn yet, maybe we’ve still a lot of joys and tears as a yo-yo club of the future, who knows?
Who have been the stand out performers for you this season? Where are the weak links in the team?
More exact answers might be produced by those who are on the spot every weekend, but the winter transfer window interest in Alfie (Adam Le Fondre) and Alex McCarthy is a fair reflection of good — but perhaps expected — form. Alfie is leading club scorer with 13 already, and Alex has saved us on countless occasions. A welcome stand-out performer for me has also been the Pog (Pogrebnyak); to be honest I thought his heart wouldn’t be in playing for a Championship team without any guarantee of promotion but hats off to him, he’s knuckled down under Adkins and is second top scorer now nearly into double figures. But himself and Pearce are the worst carded players by a mile, 11 yellows and two reds split pretty evenly between the two.
Danny Guthrie seems to have improved, or at least is far more interested in proceedings, and fantastic to see the young Jordan Obita shining through into the first team at last. As you’ll know, Kebe made his exit, Jason Roberts still doesn’t figure — will he ever be back? — and Drenthe is annoyingly injured. But I don’t feel that there are terrible weak links as such; it’s a general clicking together which hasn’t quite yet come together — as is obvious when you look down at our list of results.
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