I'm with this bloke...

[Ian Royal]

Lol at anyone deriding the 'reading way that gave us so much success
U saw. What happened in two seasons where we diverted from that way. We nearly went bust

How did we nearly go bust, out of interest? I mean, aren't other clubs able to run at a loss?

.

yeah, cos they have owners who could afford/were happy to pay for it
we didnt

Just in the last 10 years there have been five administrations in the top two divisions. Leeds, Saints, Palace, Pompey (twice). And plenty more clubs have been in danger of doing it or are currently in danger of doing it. There are a further 7 (SEVEN) in League One. Including former Championship clubs (at the time) Leeds (again), Luton, Plymouth and Coventry.

Some clubs don't have anyone willing to cover the big loses, run them up anyway and eventually come unstuck when they get a significant drop in income for a couple of seasons and they can't continue to service the massive debt they've built up.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Our problem was just the debt, it was the wages for a few star buys. Despite knowing the income would fall season on season they were signed. We had four players who this financial year would have swallowed up in the region of a third of our income, you can't do that without a sugar daddy. And ours oxf*rd off leaving us in the lurch

[Extended-Phenotype]

Righto, my mistake then.

I assumed that you were referring to the signing of (amongst others) Pog, Drenthe and Carrico in your initial comment, presumably the wages burden for whom played a significant part in the financial problems we faced a few months ago.

I merely pointed out that most would not have considered those acquisitions as "The Reading Way".

Guess I got that all wrong.

Lol at anyone deriding the 'reading way that gave us so much success
U saw. What happened in two seasons where we diverted from that way. We nearly went bust

How did we nearly go bust, out of interest? I mean, aren't other clubs able to run at a loss?

Oh and it wasn't the non-Reading way that cost us. It was the 'shit attempt at spending a bit of money to bring in players who then don't get played because they are shit, injured or looked at the manager in a funny way' way that screwed us up.

Yeah, you still aren't following.

My point about the eggs is just because we did something different that failed, doesn't mean what we were doing before was the best strategy and that any suggestion we deviate from that can be dismissed as equally unworkable.

[melonhead]

its the only strategy we can afford though. isnt it?

doesnt really matter how good it is.

[Extended-Phenotype]

its the only strategy we can afford though. isnt it?

doesnt really matter how good it is.

I'll take "we can't afford to do it any other way" over "other ways don't work and we shouldn't try it" or "we tried something different, it failed, never try anything different again".

I don't believe that is entirely true though. I doubt we are financially different from any other club or owner. Just a case of not wanting to take a risk of investment now in the hope of a return later. It's John's/new owners money, it's up to them whether they want to put money in or not. It's also up to me if I think for the sake of the club (and, for that matter, the owner of the club) we play it too safe.

It's that grey area between being tight as f/ck and spending yourself into administration that lovely but binary folk like you and Rother don't really like talking about.

[Maguire]

Everyday business deals are done something like this, Wednesday negotiate a deal to sell Antonio to Forest. Forest make an offer but Wednesday say it's not enough due to a sell on clause payable to Reading. Forest contact Reading to negotiate a deal to sign over Coxy (valued at £600,000 -"cough") and a season long loan for Mackie if Reading forego Antonio's sell on fee. Reading not wanting to spend CASH agree to the the deal for the 2 unwanted Forest players as payment for their contracted sell on fee/clause. Forest submit the deal to Wednesday highlighting their offer is now acceptable to Wednesday due reading CUTTING THE CLOTH in a different way... It's business, just every day business but dressed up through PR in a way that the masses can understand and club are all the better for being seen as spending money. But after all said and done it was a deal Reading would not have completed using hard cash... Antonio paved the way for this deal to happen. Personally I think Coxy will do well for us this time around. I hope Mackie shows some end product for all his endless running and hard work, time will tell. But the bottom line is this deal is lazy and with little imagination. Reading FC board MUST DO BETTER. New owners... Who r ya?

What's the obsession with CASH? RFC wouldn't do the deal if they didn't think it represented value to them. It doesn't matter if they get paid cash by Wednesday which they then invest in signings for Forest, or if they forego the cash and just take the players. Who cares? It's a ridiculous thing to complain about.

[Royal Rother]

its the only strategy we can afford though. isnt it?

doesnt really matter how good it is.

I'll take "we can't afford to do it any other way" over "other ways don't work and we shouldn't try it" or "we tried something different, it failed, never try anything different again".

I don't believe that is entirely true though. I doubt we are financially different from any other club or owner. Just a case of not wanting to take a risk of investment now in the hope of a return later. It's John's/new owners money, it's up to them whether they want to put money in or not. It's also up to me if I think for the sake of the club (and, for that matter, the owner of the club) we play it too safe.

It's that grey area between being tight as f/ck and spending yourself into administration that lovely but binary folk like you and Rother don't really like talking about.

When have we ever been tight as fcuk?

The evidence of the last few years (selling players to fill the black hole, and a close encounter with potential Administration) would indicate you are talking rubbish as usual.

Comparisons with what other clubs do are boring, futile and entirely ignore the the real world which RFC & SJM live in. Other clubs will spend more because they have owners prepared to fund the potential losses if the investment doesn't pay off. For most of the last decade we haven't been one of those.

Why is that so hard to understand?

[Extended-Phenotype]

its the only strategy we can afford though. isnt it?

doesnt really matter how good it is.

I'll take "we can't afford to do it any other way" over "other ways don't work and we shouldn't try it" or "we tried something different, it failed, never try anything different again".

I don't believe that is entirely true though. I doubt we are financially different from any other club or owner. Just a case of not wanting to take a risk of investment now in the hope of a return later. It's John's/new owners money, it's up to them whether they want to put money in or not. It's also up to me if I think for the sake of the club (and, for that matter, the owner of the club) we play it too safe.

It's that grey area between being tight as f/ck and spending yourself into administration that lovely but binary folk like you and Rother don't really like talking about.

When have we ever been tight as fcuk?

The evidence of the last few years (selling players to fill the black hole, and a close encounter with potential Administration) would indicate you are talking rubbish as usual.

Comparisons with what other clubs do are boring, futile and entirely ignore the the real world which RFC & SJM live in. Other clubs will spend more because they have owners prepared to fund the potential losses if the investment doesn't pay off. For most of the last decade we haven't been one of those.

Why is that so hard to understand?

Why do you always have to get so angry about it?

I mean, your 'evidence' isn't even consistent with your argument - you were saying our close encounter with Administration wasn't 'The Reading Way' only a few posts ago. And selling players to fill black holes? You mean losses? Plenty of businesses run at a loss in the hope that they position themselves for success later down the line.

And my point is that I disagree with SJM. I KNOW he hasn't been an owner who has been prepared to fund potential losses or to borrow to succeed later. That's why I'm entitled to give my opinion that he has played it too safe. The grey area is important here, yeah? Remember that, I know it's tricky though.

[melonhead]

its the only strategy we can afford though. isnt it?

doesnt really matter how good it is.

I'll take "we can't afford to do it any other way" over "other ways don't work and we shouldn't try it" or "we tried something different, it failed, never try anything different again".

I don't believe that is entirely true though. I doubt we are financially different from any other club or owner. Just a case of not wanting to take a risk of investment now in the hope of a return later. It's John's/new owners money, it's up to them whether they want to put money in or not. It's also up to me if I think for the sake of the club (and, for that matter, the owner of the club) we play it too safe.

It's that grey area between being tight as f/ck and spending yourself into administration that lovely but binary folk like you and Rother don't really like talking about.

binary my arse.

before we were different since we had no money at all, no owner of any use, and were losing loads of money on a weekly basis,
at that point i wasnt binary, i was onary....uniary...whatever. because the only course open to us was the one we had taken.

now we have new owners, who hopefully have a bit more money.
I have no idea how much they think they should spend, or whether that is enough to satisfy you though.
we are spending a bit more now....at least we can cover the wages, and are able to finance our own transfer activity, whereas before, every penny in had to go straight out to pay debts.


pre 2005/06 we used to lose 5 million a year, every year.
id imagine its way way above that now, what with the wages paid to pog, guthrie and drenthe etc
no ones just going to come in and say - yes i'm happy to throw 10 million a year away just to stand still, and on top of that ill give the team another 10 million a year to buy even more players and pay their wages-

id love it a dave whelan type to come in and did that. but it hasnt happened yet, and doesnt seem likely to me.

[Ian Royal]

SJM has lost approximately two thirds to three quarters of his personal fortune since we originally got promoted. He's had no option but to go with his preferred choice of not putting in more money. How can he be wrong and being too cautious about not putting in money he doesn't have, or spending money the club doesn't have.

We were prudently run before Zingaravich. We had a lot of saleable player assets so we were able to operate at a loss with a larger wage budget without a sugar daddy by making up the difference, thanks to outgoing transfer fees.

We then got Zingaravich in and started spending even further beyond our means on the basis he'd underwrite it (see 2 year deal [option to extend] for injury prone, waning Roberts). He then had us spend even further beyond our means when that paid off short-term and we got promoted bringing in the likes of Pogrebnyak, Guthrie and co. This led to us making a loss in the PL for the first time in our rather limited top flight history. And to compound that he then again authorised further spending beyond our means to bounce us straight back (see Drenthe etc).

Only to then turn around and say he couldn't afford it and his pals who said they'd put up half the money weren't actually interested so he's off. That's why we got in so much trouble. Because we stopped operating in the Reading Way, ostensibly to act in Reading Way plus some rich underwriting, only to find out with hindsight that what we'd actually done is spent a load of money that never existed, with ongoing liabilities to pay much more than we earnt.

We're now seeing the recovery from that position and it's involved some big sales and relatively limited buys, because we had such a big hole to make up. Having new owners doesn't miraculously increase our income, it just means that losses can be covered. They'll still eventually need to be paid.

Thankfully we haven't decided to take the oxf*rd's way out and accepted a 10 point deduction to screw our creditors. We seem to be actually honouring our debt. Hopefully that means we won't have to sit a few seasons out in the wilderness of League One or risk dropping further through the leagues or going bust completely.

It does mean we also can't just throw away all our problems and then build success on the foundation of chucking a load more debt at the problem in the hope that lightening doesn't strike twice (Hello Leeds and Pompey, I'm looking at your failed attempts at this). I'm pretty good with that thought thanks.

[Royal Rother]

Great post.