Vision What exactly are we reaping?
Seems to me a case could be made that we're seeing the benefits of our policy of investing in nurturing our own talent or polishing supposed turds and passing them off as gems.
Also I swear to hear people talk on here you'd think its been one successive season after another of abject failure. We've had one poor season in recent times and even that was a final day relegation from the heady heights of the Premiership, a Division some of the more vociferous complainers on HNA constantly predicted we'd never get to under JM.
Sure there are some disappointments but thats generally the lot of a football fan anyway. 2 play-off campaigns and 2 FA Cup quarter finals in 3 seasons is hardly armageddon.
Its 4 games into the season for oxf*rd sake.
I'll see your "reap what you sow" and raise you a "careful what you wish for"
It is also a common theme among football fans to moan.
Despite their regular success Man Utd fans still moan that they have only reached the European Cup final but not won it and that Fergie has only brought in 3 new players and not 4.
Chelsea fans moan that they have only come second and didn't actually reach the European Cup final last season and are only going to spend about £40 million in this window.
It is how it is with football fans and in the context of RFC quite a few people see the club selling our best two players and not doing much to replace them so they moan.
Football fans don't generally (other perhaps than some Arsenal fans) delight in thinking that their club is well run-they want to see top quality football from the team they support or at the very least be entertained in seeing a few goals and hope that their side can go on to a higher level where we can see the best players in the country performing every other week (as we had just a few years ago).
Obviously fans of most clubs will be disappointed as there are only a few winners but message boards and fanzines are outlets for the disappointed to have a moan and discuss what they would like their club to be doing.
One frustration for fans is the mixed messages that emanate from our club.
One minute it is all about our ambition to get back to the Premier League,the next it is that we have serious money problems and the next is that we have to sell our best players and we won't get as much as you fans think so don't raise your hopes for new players ( which in most people's eyes contradicts the stated ambition of promotion).So it goes round and round with the chairman and manager talking up players who this week have been poor and show no signs of being up there later on.
Also when you look at a team sheet that includes the likes of Harte,Hunt and Church you are bound to query whether this team has a chance of promotion as it is weaker than last season when we didn't get promotion.
It is very early in the season and we all want a good start but it takes a giant leap of faith to assume that the team will show the improvement of last season especially after two defeats AND the words from the club that there may only be one more player coming in.
Yes,for a little club in Berkshire we have done o.k over the past 2 seasons but they hardly compare with the position 4 years or so ago finishing 8th in the Premier League and fans,quite naturally,want more of that.
Incidentally I love it when people talk about reaching the quarter-finals of the FA Cup as if it is some massive achievement-reaching the quarter-finals IS massive if you start in round 1 but to be losing quarter-finalists having come in at round 3 is not IMHO sensational it should be round about the norm for a middle range Championship club when the Premier clubs nearly all put out weakened teams and of course in a knockout competition a number of Premier clubs will have been drawn against each other and be knocked out by round 5.
Somehow I do think our club has to cut down on selling it's best younger players if we have a genuine aspiration of reaching the Premier League again as the manager and staff cannot consistently pull rabbits out of the hat and apart from the untried Obita there is quite a gap between the 22 year olds (or thereabouts) in Church,Pearce,Karacan,HRK and McCarthy and players from the Academy to replenish our stock-where are the 21,20,19 and 18 year olds pushing for first team places that happens with most clubs?
Has the Academy supply line that the club now supposedly will rely upon now dried up?
Anyway for those of a low attention span or for those who can't be bothered to read the above, the message is that football fans like to moan so don't come on a message board expecting fans to just post appreciation threads for their clubs.
Why do you think fanzines and message boards exist?
Because in recent years we have had a lot more money coming in. In the 80s for example, even though we sold the likes of Webb, Dixon, Sanchez etc - we didn't expect to spend big to replace them - we knew our limitations and we knew we were making big losses then - but in just the last 12 months we've sold 3 players for millions - so expecting a small percentage to be re-invested without the usual "we have no money, we have to cut our cloth" diatribe isn't too much to ask shirley?
Wrong one.
