Frustrating seasons which (t)is/was the most?

[Cape Town Royal]

Increasingly as we have gone game by game into this season, I have found myself increasingly frustrated by it and as a fan who has supported Reading since the late 70's and long ago realised that up's and downs goes with the territory of supporting Reading, I have found myself wondering why this more than any other season has done this...

We've had good teams that have just missed out, or relegations to deal with.. Good managers poached when things were looking promising etc but this season for me has been the most frustrating..

All I can out it down to is that it's a combination of factors, the feeling at the start of the season, that with the signings we made we would go back up, the fact that this group should be playing better football, the ownership of the club, the real lack of consistency, home form and maybe the realisation that failure to get promoted (actually I am one of those fans who is happy in the premier league or the championship) is likely to lead to another group of good players leaving...

So just wondered if this is our most frustrating season or whether were others that ranked up with this one or maybe surpassed it?

Apologies if there is a thread about this, it's been bugging me for a while, so just logged on and went for it!!

[Cureton's Volley]

We have had many 'worse' seasons in terms of being crap and outclassed. Lots of near misses which were disappointing too.

However, this season has been the most frustrating for me because it is clear that we have the ability to play a lot better. The trouble has been a combination of laboured narrow tactics, not playing to the strengths of the squad, and a general lack of passion and resilience. What has happened off the field has been frustrating too, and for the most part the lack of honesty from the manager and the club have compounded this. Add to this the growing malaise at paying extortionate amounts for tickets, travel, food & drink etc...

Easy to feel nonplussed.

[windermere_royal]

It`s not the actual season that frustrates me it is the transfer windows hoping against hope that we are going to bring people in to move us forward, the brief incursions into the PL being prime examples.
No other teams go up and are so motionless in investment to move to the next level .

[SCIAG]

I prefer this season to any of Coppell's late-season collapses.

No other teams go up and are so motionless in investment to move to the next level .

That isn't true. Our summer recruitment was fairly typical of a promoted team. There have been a couple of examples of very high spending in the past couple of years (Southampton, Cardiff, QPR), but results there have been mixed. Plenty of teams come up, make similar recruitment decisions to us, and succeed - see Norwich and Swansea for examples in recent years. There's no "right way" to do things, investing and not investing can both succeed or fail.

[harry]

97/98 for me.
The impending new stadium. A new manager who was given proper money to buy a striker among others. Then the season actually started. Every keeper we had was injured. Most displays were woeful.
Even as things were bad in the league we had two decent cup runs and the odd decent result which proved what the team was capable of. Another new manager & 7 signings on deadline day and the Hollywood ending looked set - Robert Fleck was going to score the winner against Norwich to keep us up in the last game at Elm Park.
Utterly crushed to have gone down with such a whimper and for Reading's last goal at Elm Park to be from Michael Meaker.

[Ian Royal]

98/99 - shiny new stadium at a lower level with a big name manager and a big budget. We were utterly mediocre and properly dull and uninspiring, finishing 11th.
99/00 - a tale of two halves, the first worst that the previous year and then a recovery to show what we could have done if Burns hadn't been useless.
07/08 - we'd been so good and then poor transfer activity, injuries and player loses led to us falling apart.
09/10 - a tale of two halves, the first worst that the previous year and then a recovery to show what we could have done if Rodgers hadn't been useless.
12/13 - a season where we were going to be better prepared than ever, with the promise of new ownership and having learnt from past mistakes. Instead it was littered with errors and doomed from the start.
08/09 - We came so close to recovering from relegation, but ultimately the same problems on and off the pitch caused us to throw it away.
13/14 - high hopes, with a quality manager and back at a level we won only two years previous, with big promises that failed to materialise into the domination we'd hoped for.

And that's pretty much ranked in order of most frustrating.

[Pepe the Horseman]

Coppell's last season. We were superb first half of the season, dicked Wolves away and won at B'ham as well. Then capitulated, forgot how to win at home, and put up a pathetic fight in the playoffs.

[AthleticoSpizz]

13/14 - high hopes, with a quality manager and back at a level we won only two years previous, with big promises that failed to materialise into the domination we'd hoped for.

Still living this heaven/hell

Still (in 2014) we are achieving the bare minimum requirements......on Saturdays second half performance...god help us if we should we ever get promoted.

Frustrating seasons?

Just great that we can have a post like this in the first place

For more seasons than not since (when I first turned up to watch) 1972...we have been in the mix for something or the other

Frustrated? yes....amused? most definately yes!

We could be Tranmere Carlisle or someone

[leon]

97/98 for me.
...... Another new manager & 7 signings on deadline day and the Hollywood ending looked set - Robert Fleck was going to score the winner against Norwich to keep us up in the last game at Elm Park..

we got relegated at Forest. Not on the last game.

However that season was terrible

[Ian Royal]

97/98 for me.
...... Another new manager & 7 signings on deadline day and the Hollywood ending looked set - Robert Fleck was going to score the winner against Norwich to keep us up in the last game at Elm Park..

we got relegated at Forest. Not on the last game.

However that season was terrible

I still remember stuffing Sunderland 4-0 and spending the rest of the season thinking: what the hell has happened?

[Arnie_Pie]

So just wondered if this is our most frustrating season or whether were others that ranked up with this one or maybe surpassed it?

This, to a lot of fans (not me) is probably the most frustrating, only because the expectation has increased. We have had a couple of bites of the big time in the last 8 years or so and now some people are expecting and wanting it to happen again.

[Cape Town Royal]

So just wondered if this is our most frustrating season or whether were others that ranked up with this one or maybe surpassed it?

This, to a lot of fans (not me) is probably the most frustrating, only because the expectation has increased. We have had a couple of bites of the big time in the last 8 years or so and now some people are expecting and wanting it to happen again.

I agree with you though to be honest in a perverse way I got as much fun out of going away to places like Bury as I do out of the games higher up the league... I think this season is just that so much feels in limbo... Ownership, waiting for consistent form even individual players who you know are so much better than the level they are playing at...

Also agree with Ian Royal re 09/10 with Rodgers because I liked his philosophy on the game and really wanted it to click... It just didn't which sadly for us he probably learn't a lot from and Swansea and Liverpool have benefitted from.

[The Real Sandhurst Royal]

I have come to teh conclusion we have simply not good been enough this season to many changes week on week. no continuity in what we are trying to do.

We play 4-5-1 the midfield is congested, yet our asset is pace down both wings if we played 4-4-2..

Adkins bought in Bridge Drenthe and Williams who have all been injured at sometime in the season.

We have missed Karacan, his energy to get box to box and close players down is what we need in midfield.

If we do make the play offs it will be thanks to the other teams who have been as bad as ourselves.

[paddy20]

Got to be the two seasons in the premiership. It was like getting a massive order for your goods but you wouldn't buy a new machine to make them. Investment was essential at the right time. Unfortunately we had leaders that weren't leaders

[Handsome Man]

The best thing about this season was the January transfer window when nobody rubbish came in and we won a few games. This has made it easier to endure than the pre-106 season when we were playing a similar brand of passionless football, but for some reason had signed Martin Keown and Les Ferdinand. The end of Coppell's last season was probably worse than this one as well: horrific hoofball and some of the worst individual performances ever seen at the Madejski from players with big international reputations.

Frustrating is the right word for many of this season's displays. We might have better players than many of the teams in the division, but they only seem to raise their game against the bigger teams. You can blame the manager, and sometimes I feel we lack a captain on the pitch, but I would blame some of the missing team spirit on the huge wages being picked up by players who have had very mediocre seasons.

[Pepe the Horseman]

The best thing about this season was the January transfer window when nobody rubbish came in and we won a few games. This has made it easier to endure than the pre-106 season when we were playing a similar brand of passionless football, but for some reason had signed Martin Keown and Les Ferdinand. The end of Coppell's last season was probably worse than this one as well: horrific hoofball and some of the worst individual performances ever seen at the Madejski from players with big international reputations.

Frustrating is the right word for many of this season's displays. We might have better players than many of the teams in the division, but they only seem to raise their game against the bigger teams. You can blame the manager, and sometimes I feel we lack a captain on the pitch, but I would blame some of the missing team spirit on the huge wages being picked up by players who have had very mediocre seasons.

Amen, brother.

[Lower West]

Summer transfers failed to sparkle.

Stick to home grown talent with the desire to win.

[P!ssed Off]

So just wondered if this is our most frustrating season or whether were others that ranked up with this one or maybe surpassed it?

This, to a lot of fans (not me) is probably the most frustrating, only because the expectation has increased. We have had a couple of bites of the big time in the last 8 years or so and now some people are expecting and wanting it to happen again.

I agree with you though to be honest in a perverse way I got as much fun out of going away to places like Bury as I do out of the games higher up the league... I think this season is just that so much feels in limbo... Ownership, waiting for consistent form even individual players who you know are so much better than the level they are playing at...

Also agree with Ian Royal re 09/10 with Rodgers because I liked his philosophy on the game and really wanted it to click... It just didn't which sadly for us he probably learn't a lot from and Swansea and Liverpool have benefitted from.

The first half of 09/10 was frustrating but the season as a whole was not.
I'd swap the vast majority of our first team squad to see Gylfi in a Reading shirt again.

Not sure about frustrating but this season has been the most boring that I have had the honour of observing.

[Whore Jackie]

Haven't missed a home game thus far, but had the least inclination to go this season, since the halcyon days of Rodgers' tenure. Judging by the amount of times, friends and people in the immediate vicinity etc. haven't gone either, I suspect I'm not alone. Boring, turgid, un entertaining football, played in the main by undistinguished footballers, 'managed' by someone I'm rapidly having zero empathy or respect for.

[Royalwaster]

Summer transfers failed to sparkle.

Stick to home grown talent with the desire to win.

So we should have kept Simon Church?