Hard to see any progress for the forseeable future

[PEARCEY]

Posted in contemplation of tomorrow.

Am I right saying we have no had a forward score a single goal away from home this season?

[Ian Royal]

As many have suggested for a long time, it is going to be a long hard slog of a season, so this thread is going to run and run and run with negative nancy's occasionally getting excited that their predictions might come true and Reading will slip out of the play offs / top 10. Only for us to keep accumulating points at a decent rate despite our inconsistency.

It's just not worth bothering with much anymore.

[Schards#2]

As many have suggested for a long time, it is going to be a long hard slog of a season, so this thread is going to run and run and run with negative nancy's occasionally getting excited that their predictions might come true and Reading will slip out of the play offs / top 10. Only for us to keep accumulating points at a decent rate despite our inconsistency.

It's just not worth bothering with much anymore.

Then don't.

Do what I did after Preston, Burnley and QPR, i.e nothing, rather than posting in a fit of frenzy within minutes of a result that backs your argument.

[The 17 Bus]

Get over to the back from the game thread Schards, lets see your views.

[Schards#2]

Get over to the back from the game thread Schards, lets see your views.

I'm a very happy man tonight.

My two sons were down from Glasgow and this was one of about five or so games they are able to see this season so I was desperate for a good result and performance for them and it couldn't have been better.

No doubt there will be people shaking their head as muttering that they know I was really sat there willing Bristol City on but there's not a lot I can do about that even if I gave a toss.

[Ian Royal]

As many have suggested for a long time, it is going to be a long hard slog of a season, so this thread is going to run and run and run with negative nancy's occasionally getting excited that their predictions might come true and Reading will slip out of the play offs / top 10. Only for us to keep accumulating points at a decent rate despite our inconsistency.

It's just not worth bothering with much anymore.

Then don't.

Do what I did after Preston, Burnley and QPR, i.e nothing, rather than posting in a fit of frenzy within minutes of a result that backs your argument.

Nothing frenzied about my posting Schards. I'm not predicting a cake walk fo no good reason, neither am I predicting mid table mediocrity against most evidence. And I have little intention of trying to keep this thread alive throughout the rest of the season.

[Schards#2]

As many have suggested for a long time, it is going to be a long hard slog of a season, so this thread is going to run and run and run with negative nancy's occasionally getting excited that their predictions might come true and Reading will slip out of the play offs / top 10. Only for us to keep accumulating points at a decent rate despite our inconsistency.

It's just not worth bothering with much anymore.

Then don't.

Do what I did after Preston, Burnley and QPR, i.e nothing, rather than posting in a fit of frenzy within minutes of a result that backs your argument.

Nothing frenzied about my posting Schards. I'm not predicting a cake walk fo no good reason, neither am I predicting mid table mediocrity against most evidence. And I have little intention of trying to keep this thread alive throughout the rest of the season.

History would suggest you will post on it within an hour of the final whistle of every win, as you have the last two.

[The 17 Bus]

Get over to the back from the game thread Schards, lets see your views.

I'm a very happy man tonight.

My two sons were down from Glasgow and this was one of about five or so games they are able to see this season so I was desperate for a good result and performance for them and it couldn't have been better.

No doubt there will be people shaking their head as muttering that they know I was really sat there willing Bristol City on but there's not a lot I can do about that even if I gave a toss.

you must have posted on it as I posted here.

[Ian Royal]

I'm hardly likely to log off and wait a couple of hours when my only source of information on the game is HNA? now am I.

I haven't been on much or able to follow the games in recent weeks prior to today either.

[Royal With Cheese]

As many have suggested for a long time, it is going to be a long hard slog of a season, so this thread is going to run and run and run with negative nancy's occasionally getting excited that their predictions might come true and Reading will slip out of the play offs / top 10. Only for us to keep accumulating points at a decent rate despite our inconsistency.

It's just not worth bothering with much anymore.

Then don't.

Do what I did after Preston, Burnley and QPR, i.e nothing, rather than posting in a fit of frenzy within minutes of a result that backs your argument.

No - you waited 17 hours after Ipswich to post your legendary "dull and uninspiring" comments.

To be fair I understand and empathise with 60% of your original post. It's just you've got yourself in a right old pickle with semantics - very frimmersesque.

[Quagmire]

Then don't.

Do what I did after Preston, Burnley and QPR, i.e nothing, rather than posting in a fit of frenzy within minutes of a result that backs your argument.

That's probably because we were still sat in the playoff places after each of those games whereas your original post stated we faced mid table championship football for the foreseeable future

[Sun Tzu]

I think we need to get used to mid table championship football at the very best until there is a sea change at this club.

Coppell - if the spirit of the championship had survived, he would definately have been the right man for the job, but it hasn't.

The golden team has long gone and we have to move on and build a new team. Coppell doesn't, IMHO, have the hunger to do this.

Had we known that the spirit of the championship side was already totally dead, in hindsight, we should have let Coppell go and started afresh.

Much as I admire and appreciete what Madejski has done, I don't see how the club can go forward with him at the helm and would now like to see someone new who wants to move things forward.

Can't see either leaving anytime soon so supporting Reading's going to be a whole lot duller and uninspiring than in recent years

This isn't a personal dig at Schards, and I'm sure there will be a curt response that one game is not enough to judge, but I just thought in the light of the fantastic, exciting, inspiring, spirited display of football from our new 'golden team' at Ashton Gate the above comments become more and more puzzling.
I've never quite understood how long the 'foreseeable future' lasted, or even when it started, but a couple of months on and I would have thought even the most pessimistic of professional WUMs would start back tracking on some of the comments made.

[brendywendy]

LOL

anyway

we all make mistakes,
ill agree to move on if he forgives me for thinking we'd be fine last year

[Woodcote Royal]

I think we need to get used to mid table championship football at the very best until there is a sea change at this club.

Coppell - if the spirit of the championship had survived, he would definately have been the right man for the job, but it hasn't.

The golden team has long gone and we have to move on and build a new team. Coppell doesn't, IMHO, have the hunger to do this.

Had we known that the spirit of the championship side was already totally dead, in hindsight, we should have let Coppell go and started afresh.

Much as I admire and appreciete what Madejski has done, I don't see how the club can go forward with him at the helm and would now like to see someone new who wants to move things forward.

Can't see either leaving anytime soon so supporting Reading's going to be a whole lot duller and uninspiring than in recent years

This isn't a personal dig at Schards, and I'm sure there will be a curt response that one game is not enough to judge, but I just thought in the light of the fantastic, exciting, inspiring, spirited display of football from our new 'golden team' at Ashton Gate the above comments become more and more puzzling.
I've never quite understood how long the 'foreseeable future' lasted, or even when it started, but a couple of months on and I would have thought even the most pessimistic of professional WUMs would start back tracking on some of the comments made.

But that's what makes this thread so wonderful (even when I read only highlighted quotes of what one sad individual has written )

Many of us where underwhelmed by Steve Coppell staying on given how, IMHO, he was mainly to blame for our needless relegation.................I even reached the point where I felt he would have to go.

His decision not to replace Shorey until he'd actually left was unbelievably stupid and gave Alan Pardew his best afternoon of what is fast becoming a nightmare season for him.

It wasn't hard after the final whistle at Ipswich to feel that things were not looking good.

BUT, only a silly little man, who would rather lose a limb than admit that he doesn't get everything right, would still be trying to pretend that things haven't panned out far better than many of us could have hoped for just a few weeks ago.

Will this thread last the rest of the season, of course

Along with "Should We Expand The Stadium" amongst others, here sits 44 pages of conclusive proof that Schards is indeed an idiot of the first order.

Was that an insult or personal in any way? Oh yes

[Huntley & Palmer]

I see tomorrow as a crucial game. When it finishes that will be one third of the season gone. We need three points to stay even in moderate touch with the top two. Otherwise there's a risk that the Midlanders will do what Reading and Sheff Utd did three seasons ago.

That 3-0 at Wolves seems a long time back now.

A freak result, much like the trouncing of the Wendys

the only freak about the Wednesday result was that they kept it to 6-0.

As the thread from the Wolves board highlighted, none of their fans thought it was a freak result.


The fact is, as inconsistent as we are away from home, suggestions that we are midtable at best are laughably negative. If anyone thinks half the sides in this division are better than us then they need their head examined.

I'd say at least two or three are in as good a position as us, with a further six making strides to keep up with the pace. I would have been happy with a playoff place at the start of the season as a target, I still think that is the more realistic approach and in reality will be our end position

[Royal Rother]

It's always interesting / revealing to read the comments of other teams' supporters and, from what I've seen, Swansea, Doncaster, Wolves, Burnley (twice), Bristol City and Sheff Wed all think we are the best team in the division.

Forest, Charlton and QPR for starters have good ground to think otherwise but I think most observers (particularly the fans of the 6 clubs aforementioned) would be very surprised to think that some of our own supporters still view play-offs as the most realistic aim.

It's a pretty meaningless statement without consistency but most would agree that we have shown ourselves to be the best team in the division on our day and, having already had several of those days this season, I think there are excellent grounds for continued optimism.

[Sun Tzu]

It's an interesting (but probably totally meaningless)fact that despite having a pretty poor away record we're actually the second highest scorers away from home in the division.

I guess we just don't quite score the goals in the right proportion to our opponents....

QPR have scored 2 away from home, we have 12 ! We've scored more goals away than Birmingham have at home.

[Alan Partridge]

It's always interesting / revealing to read the comments of other teams' supporters and, from what I've seen, Swansea, Doncaster, Wolves, Burnley (twice), Bristol City and Sheff Wed all think we are the best team in the division.

Forest, Charlton and QPR for starters have good ground to think otherwise but I think most observers (particularly the fans of the 6 clubs aforementioned) would be very surprised to think that some of our own supporters still view play-offs as the most realistic aim.

It's a pretty meaningless statement without consistency but most would agree that we have shown ourselves to be the best team in the division on our day and, having already had several of those days this season, I think there are excellent grounds for continued optimism.

I think your last paragraph sums it up fairly well, Reading on their best day in this league can hammer anyone. When Reading play well then other teams in this division will struggle to live with them, and when you think about it that should exactly be the case. The problem for Reading thus far is maintaining a consistency in particular away from home. They have been genuinely unlcuky at 1 or 2 places but that's coupled with some bad defeats and performances in others. They aren't anywhere near the side they were last time in this division but in all honesty they aren't likely to be, no one will be that good again so to judge them against that is slightly harsh. Reading aren't anywhere near the finished article and you look through the side/squad and think we could probably do better there or get another player in this position but with this squad they will almost certainly contest in the top 6. The problem will be the January transfer window, I just can't see Doyle or S Hunt being here after it, how they go about replacing these two willd efine how Reading's season goes. The answer isn't in the squad currently so they will have to spend a bit of dosh to replace these two key players.

[Vision]

It's always interesting / revealing to read the comments of other teams' supporters and, from what I've seen, Swansea, Doncaster, Wolves, Burnley (twice), Bristol City and Sheff Wed all think we are the best team in the division.

Forest, Charlton and QPR for starters have good ground to think otherwise but I think most observers (particularly the fans of the 6 clubs aforementioned) would be very surprised to think that some of our own supporters still view play-offs as the most realistic aim.

It's a pretty meaningless statement without consistency but most would agree that we have shown ourselves to be the best team in the division on our day and, having already had several of those days this season, I think there are excellent grounds for continued optimism.

We're a very good side if we get our noses in front. I think the doubts surround the fact that as yet we don't really convince that we can win enough of the tight games when the going gets tough. If i recall the Palace game is the only one in absolute ages that we went behind in and came back to win.

Theres just a certain fragility about us that makes me think play-offs are the more realistic hope. That said, I think we've adapted far quicker this season than i thought we would.

[Barry the bird boggler]

Now to the end of the year is critical for Reading, personally we have to look to get ourselves established in the top 2 to maximise keeping Doyle etc. in January.

If we don't manage that we we could be looking at a very different team in February together with all the problems that would bring.