Thais OUT!!!!!!!!

[One8Seven1*]

Oh joy - we have 4 months of this ...

New season starts in 3.

How depressing. That's far too soon!

[floyd__streete]

Latest I have heard from a source who is close to one of the directors:

Ian Wood Smith will imminently be resigning from the Board.
SJM will imminently no longer be chairman but will hold a purely ceremonial role as Club President.
Many interested parties keen on buying the club or investing have been put off by the current ownership structure.
The Thais are adamant they want to make a profit on the club.

[trueroyal1871]

Latest I have heard from a source who is close to one of the directors:

Ian Wood Smith will imminently be resigning from the Board.
SJM will imminently no longer be chairman but will hold a purely ceremonial role as Club President.
Many interested parties keen on buying the club or investing have been put off by the current ownership structure.
The Thais are adamant they want to make a profit on the club.

I've heard similar as well.

[Longhorn1970]

Latest I have heard from a source who is close to one of the directors:

Ian Wood Smith will imminently be resigning from the Board.
SJM will imminently no longer be chairman but will hold a purely ceremonial role as Club President.
Many interested parties keen on buying the club or investing have been put off by the current ownership structure.
The Thais are adamant they want to make a profit on the club.

+1 sounds positive

[Ian Royal]

Latest I have heard from a source who is close to one of the directors:

Ian Wood Smith will imminently be resigning from the Board.
SJM will imminently no longer be chairman but will hold a purely ceremonial role as Club President.
Many interested parties keen on buying the club or investing have been put off by the current ownership structure.
The Thais are adamant they want to make a profit on the club.

Fair play to you floyd, this sort of thing is at least easily provable simply by waiting a couple of weeks.

[RoyalBlue]

Now they bring in a Thai Monk to bless the club! Seriously, cringeworthy songs, interfering with the away kit when one was just beginning production, priests.. what else? Why can't they stop with the nonsense and just focus on running the football club?

Same Thai monk as regularly blessed Leicester, I should add.

Not according to what I read, it isn't.

No doubt the Leicester monk's price has risen far higher than we can afford/are prepared to pay! No doubt we made what we thought was a very good offer though!

[JIM]

It looks now as READING RUMORS are about to be a popular site for 3 months. along with NEWS NOW READING.

[tee peg]

The clue is in Nicks departure.

[Royal_jimmy]

The players aren't working together and nor are the Thai's. So my verdict is Thai's out!!!!

[The Cap]

Had to smile, after the Blackburn game, when one of the post match callers referred to the Thais as being Chinese. Oh, the irony. I know they've been silent.....a silence that means certain supporters have even forgotten their ethnicity now.

[loyalroyaldaz]

Glad to see SJM did his due diligence again on this lot....

"I will only sell to someone with very deep pockets who will take the club forward"

Roughly translates to:
" I couldnt give a toss as long as i get my hard earned back"

[Maneki Neko]

that statement came before SJM was disgracefully Booood at a home game by morons chanting "where has all th emoney gone", and "SJM out"
at that point i imagine he thought, not sure why im breaking myself year on year trying to keep these cnuts afloat, oxf*rd em.

and rightly so.

['lista]

what have they actually done wrong?

This for starters.

[Vision]

Glad to see SJM did his due diligence again on this lot....

"I will only sell to someone with very deep pockets who will take the club forward"

Roughly translates to:
" I couldnt give a toss as long as i get my hard earned back"

Where do you think we'd be now if he hadn't sold and was still the owner?

Bearing in mind just before the Thai's bought us we were forced to sell Le Fondre just to keep the Taxman at bay.

There are plenty of concerns around the Thai's of course but Madejski had to sell for the good of the club as well as his own. The Thai's pockets are demonstrably deeper than Madejski's.

[loyalroyaldaz]

Glad to see SJM did his due diligence again on this lot....

"I will only sell to someone with very deep pockets who will take the club forward"

Roughly translates to:
" I couldnt give a toss as long as i get my hard earned back"

Where do you think we'd be now if he hadn't sold and was still the owner?

Bearing in mind just before the Thai's bought us we were forced to sell Le Fondre just to keep the Taxman at bay.

There are plenty of concerns around the Thai's of course but Madejski had to sell for the good of the club as well as his own. The Thai's pockets are demonstrably deeper than Madejski's.

The point being that it all started when he sold out to the only broke Russian Oligarth in the world !!

[tidus_mi2]

I still don't get the level of criticism aimed at the Thais. So they haven't invested in playing staff as much as people would like, there really isn't anything wrong with that, living within our means was always SJM's mantra after all, if anything, they should lower their short term expectations if they don't want to invest heavily. They've made the right noises about improvements to existing infrastructure, hopefully they go through with it.

The criticisms I see often are:

1) They just want to develop the surrounding area then sell off the club.
2) They want out now.
3) They are going to asset strip the club.

All based on rumours and then people start seething at the mouth admittedly I had a similar laid back attitude towards AZ but even with him he wasn't really doing anything malicious intentionally, he was very naive on what it takes to run a club and really left us in the shitter.

[genome]

I still don't get the level of criticism aimed at the Thais. So they haven't invested in playing staff as much as people would like.

Except for equalling our club record fee last summer

[Rollerbob]

So they haven't invested in playing staff as much as people would like,

Not even sure this argument stands up.
Vydra, Sa, Kermogant, Rakkels, Al-Habsi, Quinn, Liburd, Hector, McShane, Evans, Piazon, John, Fernandez, Hurtado, Bond, Taylor.....

That is a LOT of movement. And on paper, most of those signings are absolute quality - hence why so many of us were so excited at the start of the season.

I can't really fault the Thais. They've got us out of financial trouble, backed both managers, brought in quality coaching and scouting staff, invested in the stadium (screen etc), gave us a hilarious new sponsor (better than Waitrose), invested in the area around the ground, invested in the training pitch.........

People moan because they are a little quiet?? Mental.

I love the Thais. They even wrote us a fabulous song.

[Vision]

Glad to see SJM did his due diligence again on this lot....

"I will only sell to someone with very deep pockets who will take the club forward"

Roughly translates to:
" I couldnt give a toss as long as i get my hard earned back"

Where do you think we'd be now if he hadn't sold and was still the owner?

Bearing in mind just before the Thai's bought us we were forced to sell Le Fondre just to keep the Taxman at bay.

There are plenty of concerns around the Thai's of course but Madejski had to sell for the good of the club as well as his own. The Thai's pockets are demonstrably deeper than Madejski's.

The point being that it all started when he sold out to the only broke Russian Oligarth in the world !!

The point you made was about "this lot". I'm merely pointing out that your translation is bollocks.

However AZ wasn't an Oligarth and never claimed to be. Outwardly he had the money and invested immediately. This was the chief reason we won our 2nd Championship but seems to get conveniently forgotten. He also had local connections which made him more attractive to Madejski and the majority of fans too. They also lapped up the fact that unlike JM he knew about football and was a genuine football fan.

Could he have heeded the concerns of his mate Kenright at Everton who pulled out of a possible deal with TSI a few years earlier? Perhaps but I'd suggest that hindsight is a wonderful thing and you simply cannot legislate for what individuals will do a couple of years down the line. Given the set of circumstances in front of him I'm pretty sure 9 out of 10 owners would have made the same decision as Madejski.

What makes me laugh is that it's usually those fans that were baying for him to sell up and claiming he'd taken us as far as he could that are the most vociferous when it comes to criticising him when he does what they've been demanding for years.

Again though I'll say that whilst it's given us some tough, worrying times The AZ legacy isn't all bad. The commitment to CAT A and the new training ground will be positive attributes for us moving forward. Not to mention the impetus which brought about that wonderful 2nd Championship win.

The bottom line is that like pretty much any team we lose money hand over fist in the Championship. Until the landscape of football changes (and that's not going to happen anytime soon) then in order to stay afloat and remain even remotely competitive you have to accept that there will be always be question marks over the motivations of those that choose to take a club on.

[Hoop Blah]

Exactly, the Thai's might not be spending vast sums on players like Derby, Boro or Burnley (who basically just reinvested) but they've supported the club enough financially that we're still in business and will still have had one of the largest wage bills in the division and no doubt one of the largest wages to revenue ratios too.

The one thing I can understand criticising them for though is their involvement in recruiting players the manager hasn't requested. Obviously they hold the purse strings so will always have the final say on money being spent but I'm not keen on the idea that they're picking players for the manager instead of just giving him the funds to buy who he wants.

As McDermott himself has said though, that is the reality of football these days so we can't expect it to be any different here I guess.