Sold 80 goals and bought 20.

[Svlad Cjelli]

Who, in the current squad, is regarded as the next "Black Hole" filler?

I'm not going to answer that, as I'm going to blog about it in the next day or so ....

[Terminal Boardom]

You tease

[M-U-R-T-Y]

You never know. This time last season I'm pretty sure we didn't have a black hole filler.

Kebe would probably walk into a top 6 Champ side... for a few games at least A lot of other clubs' fans I've spoken to say that they would love him in their team, I suppose because they only really see his great stuff.

[Hoop Blah]

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have cashed in but there is a fair argument that in the cases of Long and Sigurdsson we didn't have to sell them and that there was a possibility that neither were really pushing for that move you seem to say was unstoppable.

How hard did we try and stop them then?

If you really think that there is any way that Reading could have kept Shane Long there this summer - or even that it would be worth trying to do - then I'd like to send you an e-mail I received about a Nigerian inheritance ....

He was ready to go from a career point of view, he wanted to go - and I half suspect that one of the reasons he did so well was because he'd been promised he could go if the right offer came in and we didn't get promotion.

Ditto Gylfi - although different circumstances, an unexpected offer came in which he'd have been stupid to turn down at the time, and ditto for the club.

Firstly, the Gylfi offer wasn't that unexpected as the clubs had been in contact for a while, but I just get the feeling with both deals that we could've done more to keep them.

I think it was the right move for both to go, not suggesting it wasn't, just stating that although the writing was on the wall with Long after six months of good form, I don't think the club really tried to sell him on the idea of staying. They were far too accepting of the fact that he was going to go (and with the Bosman effect their hands are tied to a certain extent), in fact they seemed to be encouraging it if you read some of the press at the time.

I very much doubt we could've changed the situation, but giving up on the fight before it developed certainly didn't make it any more likely he'd stay.

The 'couldn't stop them leaving' line is the bit I ultimately disagree with. We could've stopped him but it might not've been the right thing.

[Hoop Blah]

Who, in the current squad, is regarded as the next "Black Hole" filler?

I'm not going to answer that, as I'm going to blog about it in the next day or so ....

As we further adjust to the financial limitations of being in theis division I'm presuming the black hole should be a bit smaller as years go by (never going away but whilst we try to replace with cheap options from within the wage bill should get closer to a sustainable level).

With that in mind I think the club would be looking at a goalkeeper or two being the main targets for other clubs (perhaps part of the reason for McCarthy's loan). Karacan and Obita will probably be the two the club are currently hoping will kick on and start attracting interest from elsewhere.

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Keeping any player is a gamble though, we offered Sidwell a mega deal, he would have been on top championship money, that guy played on for us, as did Long and Siggy. Could RFC have done more, well yes, but would it have worked. we could have given Siggy £1m a year deal, which may have matched the offer from germany. We would then need to get that money back to pay him, and it could have been too much of a risk, especially if McD was not sure how to play the team around and with him in it.

Sidwell I think we could have done better with, i think we should have upped his money to about £30k, possibly more, a week during the first season in the Prem, with a break clause of £6m, opportunity missed IMHO.

And it was not long after that we were paying Doyle and Hunt a similar figure, Hunt after Sunderland came sniffing.

[Mid Sussex Royal]

More and more we're consolidating ourselves as a Championship team.
From where we've come from, that's progress.
But will that be good enough for the fans post 2005?

Don't agree we are doing that.

This side from what I have seen is bottom 8 material and one bad run will see us really in it.

Yes we may well have enough this time around but when our last player capable of doing real offensive damage goes (Kebe) in January, coupled with next summer's black hole filling (Feds, McCarthy, any other player with ambition) next season will be a big struggle.

[Royal With Cheese]

Thing is, how many times did Shorey play in Long for any Reading goals?

How many times did you ever keep two fit birds on the go at one time?

[Woodcote Royal]

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have cashed in but there is a fair argument that in the cases of Long and Sigurdsson we didn't have to sell them

Sorry but this is complete and utter nonsense.

Week in, week out Long shows that he is more than good enough to play at the highest level and is, therefore, too good to play at our level or for the wages we are able to pay him. In Cloud Cuckoo Land they may have people who could persuade him and his advisers that this is not the case.........................meanwhile, back on planet Earth, reality bites.

[Wimb]

Nail Head Hit

Name any Premier League quality player that has stayed with a club for more than a season after he's shown his potential/the club's gone down.

Long is no different than Doyle, Andy Johnson, Adam Johnson, Tim Cahill etc all of them had long histories with their clubs and gave them perhaps longer than they should have but all left in the end. It's not just what the club wants it's just as much about the player.

As others have said in the past, it's our reputation for doing right by players that forms a part of a package that attracts players here in the first place and then keeps them here a bit longer then they otherwise might.

There will always be a conspiracy theory that our best players were forced to leave the club when they wanted to stay but it's just not the case.

[Vision]

Nail Head Hit

Name any Premier League quality player that has stayed with a club for more than a season after he's shown his potential/the club's gone down.

Long is no different than Doyle, Andy Johnson, Adam Johnson, Tim Cahill etc all of them had long histories with their clubs and gave them perhaps longer than they should have but all left in the end. It's not just what the club wants it's just as much about the player.

As others have said in the past, it's our reputation for doing right by players that forms a part of a package that attracts players here in the first place and then keeps them here a bit longer then they otherwise might.

There will always be a conspiracy theory that our best players were forced to leave the club when they wanted to stay but it's just not the case.

Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with the point (and I've never subscribed to the view that Gylffi was forced out) but Tbf those examples are not the same as Gylffi. Those players ,with the possible exception of Adam Johnson, as you say all had several seasons with their clubs. The fact that we sold Gylffi and to a slightly lesser extent Long as soon as they came good would as least give some credence to the perception Hoop Blah is talking about that we're more than happy to cash in at the earliest opportunity.

Thats always been my problem personally with the Gylfi transfer. I totally accept that it was too good to turn down but after waiting so long to see an Academy star really break through its soul destroying to see them sold off after barely a season. Palace and Millwall fans have several seasons of Johnson and Cahill to fall back on.

It's the curse of modern football i guess and in some way may go back to an earlier thread about why we dont seem to engage as much with individual players as we did in the past. It's not necessarily the players fault as its pretty difficult to form emotional attachments to players when essentially the club is saying they are little more than 11 price tags running around in a Reading shirt every week.

[Hoop Blah]

Woodcote, for starters they were both under contract so the reality is that we could have kept them if we wanted to. Would that [keeping them 'against their will] have made business or football sense? No, I'm not saying it would.

Wimb, Dirkers etc, I'm not saying we would've been able to keep them I'm just saying that I don't believe we tried to keep them at all. Do you think we sat them down and said we'll pay you the absolute maximum we can and we'll have another right good go and played on their apparent love for the club to get more out of them? I certainly don't get that impression. The impression I get is that we were just happy to be cashing in and getting the best deal possible.

Yes we have a business model to keep to, yes it would've been a gamble but I just don't think it's as simple as saying we had no choice in the matter (which is the point I'm not agreeing with, not the opinion that it's unlikely we'd have ever kept players who were perceived to be too good for us).

[Wimb]

I take the point Vision, but my point was more that as soon as they've established their quality or a season after the team gets relegated that they're sold on. Long could have gone a summer earlier and again in January but wanted to do everything he could to get Reading up. Once that didn't happen he decided that after 6 years it was time for a new challenge and to step up, fair play too him.

Andy Johnson like Long played for Palace in the Premier League and gave them a chance to get back up before he left. Cahill worked his way up from Tier 3 with Millwall and was a bit of a late bloomer, I certainly didn't have him tagged for a Premier League top 10 side when I first saw him for Millwall.

I accept that Gylfi was a bit of an odd situation in that we only had him for about 13 months around the first team, but he's gone for one of the highest transfer fees in second tier history, especially for a player who's never played at the top level before. I don't think that's cashing in at the first opportunity, it's more an overwhelming offer that no club could turn down.

Theo Walcott is perhaps the best comparison we have to Gylfi, in that he had about a year in the first team frame at Championship level before being snapped up by a much bigger club for a large transfer fee. Victor Moses would be another one who left his club after only around a year in the team, while Oxlade-Chamberlain could turn out to be the next example.

I've never understood why the club gets blamed more than the player that wants to move on. Gylfi had a good contract here for 4 years I believe and so if he really did love the club he was more than entitled to turn down the advances of Hoffenheim and stay with the club. Would we have been weaker financially? yes perhaps but we had budgetted for him to stay. Similarly if players really wanted to help build a winning team they could have volunteered pay cuts or players like Jimmy Kebe could take a deal he maybe wasn't 100% happy with for the sake of the club. Not saying they SHOULD do that but they have as much power as the club do.

Did we do all we could to keep those players? within our business model yes. It's a bit like saying did a Fireman do all he could to save someone from a burning building. They probably could run in when the place is actually collapsing and the flames are 100ft high, but there's a massive chance that they would die doing so and ultimately there's no point risking another life if the odds are against a successful rescue.

In the clubs case we had those players on good contracts and told them we'd love to keep them but at the same time probably said "we've been made a good offer, if you want to go the ball is in your court now' I doubt for a second that Gylfi and Long's departures had anything to do with the money they were on and everything about the level of football they could be playing.

Football is full of Darren Eadie's and Keith O'Neills who turned down moves to bigger clubs only to suffer big injuries and never reach the highest levels. it's up to each player to judge when is the right time to go. The only exception to that is when the club don't renew contracts or offer a contract that's completely unreasonable.

It's fair enough to want the club to speculate a bit more with the transfer fees recieved, but in terms of the sales themselves it's got as much if not more to do with the ambition of players rather than just a clubs desire to make a sale.

[melonhead]

Woodcote, for starters they were both under contract so the reality is that we could have kept them if we wanted to. Would that [keeping them 'against their will] have made business or football sense? No, I'm not saying it would.

Wimb, Dirkers etc, I'm not saying we would've been able to keep them I'm just saying that I don't believe we tried to keep them at all. Do you think we sat them down and said we'll pay you the absolute maximum we can and we'll have another right good go and played on their apparent love for the club to get more out of them? I certainly don't get that impression. The impression I get is that we were just happy to be cashing in and getting the best deal possible.

Yes we have a business model to keep to, yes it would've been a gamble but I just don't think it's as simple as saying we had no choice in the matter (which is the point I'm not agreeing with, not the opinion that it's unlikely we'd have ever kept players who were perceived to be too good for us).

no, disagree, we tried desperately to keep long and scceeded when he signed his extension to help us get up,cos he was told he could go if we didnt go up

[Svlad Cjelli]

Woodcote, for starters they were both under contract so the reality is that we could have kept them if we wanted to. Would that [keeping them 'against their will] have made business or football sense? No, I'm not saying it would.

Wimb, Dirkers etc, I'm not saying we would've been able to keep them I'm just saying that I don't believe we tried to keep them at all. Do you think we sat them down and said we'll pay you the absolute maximum we can and we'll have another right good go and played on their apparent love for the club to get more out of them? I certainly don't get that impression. The impression I get is that we were just happy to be cashing in and getting the best deal possible.

Yes we have a business model to keep to, yes it would've been a gamble but I just don't think it's as simple as saying we had no choice in the matter (which is the point I'm not agreeing with, not the opinion that it's unlikely we'd have ever kept players who were perceived to be too good for us).

To answer this specifically, can I just say that I don't believe that anyone, anyone at all, in the Football Club wanted Long or Gylfi to leave when they did, but they recognised that in the situation of each at the time it was inevitable that they had to leave then.

I suppose it's really a question of semantics - were they sold because the money was needed or were they sold because they couldn't be kept and the money solved a problem? From everything I've seen or heard at the time, I'd say it's definitely the latter.

[Vision]

Woodcote, for starters they were both under contract so the reality is that we could have kept them if we wanted to. Would that [keeping them 'against their will] have made business or football sense? No, I'm not saying it would.

Wimb, Dirkers etc, I'm not saying we would've been able to keep them I'm just saying that I don't believe we tried to keep them at all. Do you think we sat them down and said we'll pay you the absolute maximum we can and we'll have another right good go and played on their apparent love for the club to get more out of them? I certainly don't get that impression. The impression I get is that we were just happy to be cashing in and getting the best deal possible.

Yes we have a business model to keep to, yes it would've been a gamble but I just don't think it's as simple as saying we had no choice in the matter (which is the point I'm not agreeing with, not the opinion that it's unlikely we'd have ever kept players who were perceived to be too good for us).

To answer this specifically, can I just say that I don't believe that anyone, anyone at all, in the Football Club wanted Long or Gylfi to leave when they did, but they recognised that in the situation of each at the time it was inevitable that they had to leave then.

I suppose it's really a question of semantics - were they sold because the money was needed or were they sold because they couldn't be kept and the money solved a problem? From everything I've seen or heard at the time, I'd say it's definitely the latter.

I'd say that actually Gylffi is the former and Long is the latter.

McD made a big point of saying that Gylffi's sale secured the future of the club wahtever that meant. Thats not to say he was forced out of course but as Hoop Blah says it's not "cloud cuckoo land" to suggest he wouldn't have stayed if we'd have really convinced him we wanted him too. It was too much money for us to say no,it was desperately needed (black hole and all that) and it's not too much of a stretch to say that had some bearing in Gylffi's decision.

Long is different in that although we didn't desperately need the money we really couldn't stand in his way.

[Svlad Cjelli]

Woodcote, for starters they were both under contract so the reality is that we could have kept them if we wanted to. Would that [keeping them 'against their will] have made business or football sense? No, I'm not saying it would.

Wimb, Dirkers etc, I'm not saying we would've been able to keep them I'm just saying that I don't believe we tried to keep them at all. Do you think we sat them down and said we'll pay you the absolute maximum we can and we'll have another right good go and played on their apparent love for the club to get more out of them? I certainly don't get that impression. The impression I get is that we were just happy to be cashing in and getting the best deal possible.

Yes we have a business model to keep to, yes it would've been a gamble but I just don't think it's as simple as saying we had no choice in the matter (which is the point I'm not agreeing with, not the opinion that it's unlikely we'd have ever kept players who were perceived to be too good for us).

To answer this specifically, can I just say that I don't believe that anyone, anyone at all, in the Football Club wanted Long or Gylfi to leave when they did, but they recognised that in the situation of each at the time it was inevitable that they had to leave then.

I suppose it's really a question of semantics - were they sold because the money was needed or were they sold because they couldn't be kept and the money solved a problem? From everything I've seen or heard at the time, I'd say it's definitely the latter.

I'd say that actually Gylfi is the former and Long is the latter.

McD made a big point of saying that Glyfi's sale secured the future of the club whatever that meant. Thats not to say he was forced out of course but as Hoop Blah says it's not "cloud cuckoo land" to suggest he wouldn't have stayed if we'd have really convinced him we wanted him too. It was too much money for us to say no,it was desperately needed (black hole and all that) and it's not too much of a stretch to say that had some bearing in Glyfi's decision.

Long is different in that although we didn't desperately need the money we really couldn't stand in his way.

I agree that the timescales were completely different - with Long everyone knew it was inevitable that he would leave this summer for month, but with Gylfi the whole process took just a couple of days.

The offer came in for Gylfi (about a season earlier than was expected), the offer was put to him and he accepted it. He was offered good terms, a place with a team in the best League in Europe, and the best of coaching in a country famous for the quality of its youth development. He knew that he might break his leg the next week, and it's not as if he is a local lad brought up playing football on the streets of Whitley - we were only ever a stepping-stone on his career.

Why would he turn that opportunity down - and would you in his situation?

And would it really be right or ethical for the club to try and make him turn down such a phenomenal opportunity being offered to Gylfi. At the time it was clearly much better for his long-term career than anything we could offer. And if we had strong-armed him into playing, how would he have played for us the next season - Sidwellesque or Shoreyesque - no way of knowing that one.

[Vision]

I take the point Vision, but my point was more that as soon as they've established their quality or a season after the team gets relegated that they're sold on. Long could have gone a summer earlier and again in January but wanted to do everything he could to get Reading up. Once that didn't happen he decided that after 6 years it was time for a new challenge and to step up, fair play too him.

Andy Johnson like Long played for Palace in the Premier League and gave them a chance to get back up before he left. Cahill worked his way up from Tier 3 with Millwall and was a bit of a late bloomer, I certainly didn't have him tagged for a Premier League top 10 side when I first saw him for Millwall.

I accept that Gylfi was a bit of an odd situation in that we only had him for about 13 months around the first team, but he's gone for one of the highest transfer fees in second tier history, especially for a player who's never played at the top level before. I don't think that's cashing in at the first opportunity, it's more an overwhelming offer that no club could turn down.

Theo Walcott is perhaps the best comparison we have to Gylfi, in that he had about a year in the first team frame at Championship level before being snapped up by a much bigger club for a large transfer fee. Victor Moses would be another one who left his club after only around a year in the team, while Oxlade-Chamberlain could turn out to be the next example.

I've never understood why the club gets blamed more than the player that wants to move on. Gylfi had a good contract here for 4 years I believe and so if he really did love the club he was more than entitled to turn down the advances of Hoffenheim and stay with the club. Would we have been weaker financially? yes perhaps but we had budgetted for him to stay. Similarly if players really wanted to help build a winning team they could have volunteered pay cuts or players like Jimmy Kebe could take a deal he maybe wasn't 100% happy with for the sake of the club. Not saying they SHOULD do that but they have as much power as the club do.

Did we do all we could to keep those players? within our business model yes. It's a bit like saying did a Fireman do all he could to save someone from a burning building. They probably could run in when the place is actually collapsing and the flames are 100ft high, but there's a massive chance that they would die doing so and ultimately there's no point risking another life if the odds are against a successful rescue.

In the clubs case we had those players on good contracts and told them we'd love to keep them but at the same time probably said "we've been made a good offer, if you want to go the ball is in your court now' I doubt for a second that Gylfi and Long's departures had anything to do with the money they were on and everything about the level of football they could be playing.

Football is full of Darren Eadie's and Keith O'Neills who turned down moves to bigger clubs only to suffer big injuries and never reach the highest levels. it's up to each player to judge when is the right time to go. The only exception to that is when the club don't renew contracts or offer a contract that's completely unreasonable.

It's fair enough to want the club to speculate a bit more with the transfer fees recieved, but in terms of the sales themselves it's got as much if not more to do with the ambition of players rather than just a clubs desire to make a sale.

Walcott and particularly Moses are better examples than the ones you originally quoted to be fair. When they were sold though weren't both Southampton and Palace in absolute financial dire straits.I'd also say the opportunity to sign for Arsenal is a little different than Hoffenheim as a carrot to entice the player. Moses simply had to be sold by Palace at the time (they absolutely had no choice given their perilous situation).It was just a case of which Premiership club came in for him.

As I said I'm not disagreeing with you really, I just feel that the notion that Gylffi desperately wanted to sign for Hoffenheim whatever we wanted is just as extreme as the view that he was forced out. It's my opinion that the deal was far too good for us to really have any motivation to persuade him to stay. Everything I've seen and heard from Gylffi subsequently would indicate it was a very tough decision for him to make.

[melonhead]

as usual with almost any discussion on anything, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle in the grey, rather at either extreme of black or white

[Wimb]

as usual with almost any discussion on anything, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle in the grey, rather at either extreme of black or white

Agreed. I think Gylfi certainly agonised over the move as did Nicky Hammond & the powers that be when it came in.

Take your point on Moses as well Vision. not sure Southampton were totally in the hole when Walcott got sold... they must have still been getting parachute payments then.