Opposition fans back from the game

[South Coast Royal]

11k is a ridiculous capacity to try to entertain those wages

Were they going to expand?

They never made great attempts to build a new ground as if they knew that the stay in the Premier League might only be temporary and they surprised themselves for how long they did stay there.

The club doesn't own this ground but does own a massive area where the training ground is but that could never be the site for a new ground for so many reasons.

[AthleticoSpizz]

Used to be (and probably still is) a great display at The Reading museum

Including tin boxes from Huntley Bourne and Stevens (Once of Southampton Street Reading...or something like that)

[skipper]

11k is a ridiculous capacity to try to entertain those wages

Were they going to expand?

They never made great attempts to build a new ground as if they knew that the stay in the Premier League might only be temporary and they surprised themselves for how long they did stay there.

The club doesn't own this ground but does own a massive area where the training ground is but that could never be the site for a new ground for so many reasons.

I thought their ground was a new ground?

[oldebiscuit]

What actually defines a ‘Big Club’? The size of your stadium? The size of the average crowd? The noise generated by your home crowd? Did your fans get a reputation during the hooligan ere of the 70’s? The capacity of your stadium? The contents of your trophy cabinet? The history of your success? The size of the Owners wallet? How many fellow celebrities has your Owner/ former Owner bedded? How many celebrity or high profile fans you have? How often are your team on television?

What ever the criteria, Bournemouth is not a bigger club than Reading, and you wouldn’t have difficulty arguing that they are a smaller club than us. What they can claim to their credit is that their Manager Eddie Howe kept his feet firmly on the ground, didn’t get self opinionated and think that he was destined for a big club (like a few of our previous managers have done based on a couple of half decent seasons). Eddie was a credit to himself and the
Club.

Bournemouth as a town, apart from the Pokesdown area has the reputation of being a sleepy place where older people go to retire and then forget to die, and that reduces the need for expansion at the (don’t laugh) Vitality Stadium, where as Reading is a place of hustle and bustle, it’s where you move to for work and possibly leave when you have made your money or burnt yourself out, or just simply stay. The vibrancy of this is reflected in the pre-COVID demand from fans for the 2nd tier on the East Stand.

[Snowflake Royal]

What actually defines a ‘Big Club’? The size of your stadium? The size of the average crowd? The noise generated by your home crowd? Did your fans get a reputation during the hooligan ere of the 70’s? The capacity of your stadium? The contents of your trophy cabinet? The history of your success? The size of the Owners wallet? How many fellow celebrities has your Owner/ former Owner bedded? How many celebrity or high profile fans you have? How often are your team on television?

What ever the criteria, Bournemouth is not a bigger club than Reading, and you wouldn’t have difficulty arguing that they are a smaller club than us. What they can claim to their credit is that their Manager Eddie Howe kept his feet firmly on the ground, didn’t get self opinionated and think that he was destined for a big club (like a few of our previous managers have done based on a couple of half decent seasons). Eddie was a credit to himself and the
Club.

Bournemouth as a town, apart from the Pokesdown area has the reputation of being a sleepy place where older people go to retire and then forget to die, and that reduces the need for expansion at the (don’t laugh) Vitality Stadium, where as Reading is a place of hustle and bustle, it’s where you move to for work and possibly leave when you have made your money or burnt yourself out, or just simply stay. The vibrancy of this is reflected in the pre-COVID demand from fans for the 2nd tier on the East Stand.

What ever you can come up with to pretend you're better than other clubs.

For Bournemouth it's recent PL history.
For Derby, Forest, Wednesday et all it's having won something in the far distant past or attendance etc etc

[72 bus]

What actually defines a ‘Big Club’? The size of your stadium? The size of the average crowd? The noise generated by your home crowd? Did your fans get a reputation during the hooligan ere of the 70’s? The capacity of your stadium? The contents of your trophy cabinet? The history of your success? The size of the Owners wallet? How many fellow celebrities has your Owner/ former Owner bedded? How many celebrity or high profile fans you have? How often are your team on television?

What ever the criteria, Bournemouth is not a bigger club than Reading, and you wouldn’t have difficulty arguing that they are a smaller club than us. What they can claim to their credit is that their Manager Eddie Howe kept his feet firmly on the ground, didn’t get self opinionated and think that he was destined for a big club (like a few of our previous managers have done based on a couple of half decent seasons). Eddie was a credit to himself and the
Club.

Bournemouth as a town, apart from the Pokesdown area has the reputation of being a sleepy place where older people go to retire and then forget to die, and that reduces the need for expansion at the (don’t laugh) Vitality Stadium, where as Reading is a place of hustle and bustle, it’s where you move to for work and possibly leave when you have made your money or burnt yourself out, or just simply stay. The vibrancy of this is reflected in the pre-COVID demand from fans for the 2nd tier on the East Stand.

What ever you can come up with to pretend you're better than other clubs.

For Bournemouth it's recent PL history.
For Derby, Forest, Wednesday et all it's having won something in the far distant past or attendance etc etc

To be fair if we had two European cups in the cabinet we would be banging on about it as well.

[WoodleyRoyal]

It’s a great question oldebiscuit, for me I personally think the best measure to define a ‘big club’ is support. Size of stadium and how many tickets you sell each week. For instance take Sunderland in league 1 been consistently lower than us now for a number of years but still draw bigger crowds to their games than us. Despite them being in the division below us I would class them as bigger club. Bournemouth? Struggle to fill 11k capacity even in the prem. we are bigger than them.

As I say this is just my personal view on what defines a big club. It’s subjective and others I’m sure will use different measures to prove their points.

[oldebiscuit]

It’s a great question oldebiscuit, for me I personally think the best measure to define a ‘big club’ is support. Size of stadium and how many tickets you sell each week. For instance take Sunderland in league 1 been consistently lower than us now for a number of years but still draw bigger crowds to their games than us. Despite them being in the division below us I would class them as bigger club. Bournemouth? Struggle to fill 11k capacity even in the prem. we are bigger than them.

As I say this is just my personal view on what defines a big club. It’s subjective and others I’m sure will use different measures to prove their points.

I take on board what you say, but when we played at Sunderland 2004ish and Dave Kitson put us 2-1 up, the stadium was empty after 80 minutes, sow what does that say about the home fans? How big is the club after 80 minutes? Where was the so called famous ‘Roker Roar’?

[From Despair To Where?]

The Roker Roar died in 1997 with the ground. Replaced with the Wearside Whine.

Sunderland fans walking out early is nothing new. The season they got 12 points, MOTD would regularly feature them walking out whenever they went 2-0 down. The funniest one was the time they went 2-0 down after 20 minutes with 2 own goals and there was a mass exodus. I think its rooted in playing second fiddle to the most comatose of sleeping giants. When its Newcastle taking the piss, there's only so much misery you can take.

IMO, there's no one thing that makes you a big club,, or a bigger club. Its a mixture of history, fanbase and resources.

If I had to rank the Championship, it would be something like, in no precise order

Biggest
Norwich, Derby, Forest, Sheffield Wed, Middlesbrough

Bigger
Swansea, Watford, Reading, Blackburn, Bristol City, Stoke, Huddersfield, Cardiff, QPR, Birmingham


Smaller
Brentford, Preston, Barnsley, Millwall, Coventry

Smallest
Luton, Bournemouth, Rotherham, Wycombe

I'd say Brentford are upwardly mobile and Middlesbrough, Blackburn, Birmingham and QPR are going in the opposite direction.

[South Coast Royal]

11k is a ridiculous capacity to try to entertain those wages

Were they going to expand?

They never made great attempts to build a new ground as if they knew that the stay in the Premier League might only be temporary and they surprised themselves for how long they did stay there.

The club doesn't own this ground but does own a massive area where the training ground is but that could never be the site for a new ground for so many reasons.

I thought their ground was a new ground?

No they turned it around and tarted it up a bit and changed it's name but it is still the lower league standard and size of ground.

[paultheroyal]

Sheffield Wednesday

Reckon the Bournemouth manager won't last much longer, imagine they'll be expecting to be in contention for the automatic spots this season. Reading the surprise package again, it's incredible how that club keeps turning it round, they were a shocking side 18 months ago.

Forest

Reading are this season’s Forest. Everyone else saying “What are they doing up there?”

They're a bit like last season's Forest in that they had a good first half to the season without being all that convincing. Difference is, is that they've kicked on and started to play well, whereas our luck ran out.

Having Swift, Ejaria & Olise in the same midfield helps, I suppose.

Blackburn

Strong and powerful all over the pitch. They completely bullied Bournemouth in the first half through a combination of power and fast attacking football then in the 2nd half they saw the game out comfortably. They have also improved defensively from what I saw of them earlier in the season. Also I don't think at the moment there is a better all round striker in the Championship than Lucas Joao. He's playing like a Championship Drogba this season.

I didn't see all the game but I heard Andy Hinchcliffe praising Readings fitness levels. In fact he said they were the fittest team he has seen this season and were able to keep up a high intensity game for its duration. Sometimes fitness and its importance can be really understated.

How have Reading gone from relegation battlers to automatic promotion contenders in a matter of a few months during Covid, a short summer and without substantial spending?

Answers on a postcard for Mowbray to be delivered next time he starts bleating about budgets or slow builds.

I have to say I am very surprised as Reading really looked a mess the last couple of years. It makes mockery of TMs project time. Even if they fall away a bit they have achieved in one season what we have achieved in three.

Reading look brilliant under this manager. I do wonder if Bournemouth regret or are putting any pressure on Tindall, with the squad at his disposal you would expect them to be far closer to Norwich at the top.

[WoodleyRoyal]

lovely stuff, an interesting point on the fitness levels, not something I've seen talked about on here.

[Hound]

Yep all look very fit. Hinchcliffe mentioned that he’d never seen Swift press and move like he was - though he did visibly tire in the second half - obvs not long back from injury

Ovie never stops, neither do Rino and Laurent. Olise and Aluko very hard working where not always been the case

[Nameless]

Interesting that our lack of spending is acknowledged.
Our biggest spend this season has been on Bowen’s compensation package. Looking like money well spent !

[Hendo]

Championship Drogba

[Sutekh]

Are you sure they get fined for overspending to get promotion (I assume you are as you tend to be well informed)
FFP for EFL clubs is governed by EFL rules and once a club is not an EFL. Member they aren’t subject to those rules. Hence QPR driving a coach and horses through the rules but getting promoted and not being held to account until they got relegated again.

They were fined around £12 million IIRC.

If they were, it wasn't until they got relegated back to the EFL. Also, I think at least part of their 'punishment' was that a loan had to be written off, which would seem to have helped them out rather than punished them.

Presume Bournemouth overspent to get themselves promoted? Presuming so, how much were they fined on relegation?

[South Coast Royal]

They were fined around £12 million IIRC.

If they were, it wasn't until they got relegated back to the EFL. Also, I think at least part of their 'punishment' was that a loan had to be written off, which would seem to have helped them out rather than punished them.

Presume Bournemouth overspent to get themselves promoted? Presuming so, how much were they fined on relegation?

See an earlier post that might have been in the Rivals thread or earlier here.
Despite doubting Royal Blue, they were fined and I have a figure of £12 million in my head but it could well have been £9 million.

I have reminded some Bournemouth fans from time to time that they cheated their way to promotion with dirty Russian money (at the same time a bit envious because our Russian didn't have any money, clean or dirty).

[NewCorkSeth]

Cheers for all the digging Paul.

Some very fair analysis in there. Obviously I am biased but I do think we underachiever the last few seasons. Not saying we deserved to be higher but the squad we had was certainly capable of more.

On fitness we did have a nice break but we can't ignore that Rinomhota and Laurent seem capable of playing a full season at this intensity. They have both got very large engines and seem to relish their roles in the team despite being technically capable of having a more advanced role.

Also Morrison has played every minute. Moreso he has managed it while playing at a very high standard. It's easy to get swept up in the "Laurent is the best free transfer" talk that goes on but christ, I don't think you can talk about value for money without considering Morro. Absolute warrior.

[TiagoIlori]

I remember Eddie saying during the international break Paunovic would spend the first week doing gruelling fitness sessions which made the players so tired the rest of the day was a write off. It’s been a long long time since we’ve had a considerable edge on our opponents physically.

[Snowflake Royal]

Yep all look very fit. Hinchcliffe mentioned that he’d never seen Swift press and move like he was - though he did visibly tire in the second half - obvs not long back from injury

Ovie never stops, neither do Rino and Laurent. Olise and Aluko very hard working where not always been the case

Ovie always has bags of energy because he has a rest any time he gets the ball.