Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

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NathStPaul
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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by NathStPaul » 24 Nov 2021 10:30

genome
Zip
NathStPaul I don't want to speak for anyone but I think the majority can accept losing games of football, we have all been around long enough to understand you cannot win every game and some seasons your team can lose far more than they win. What is hard/impossible to stomach is a lack of determination and effort. There has been a real lack of passion at our club for a number of seasons now, very rarely will you see us giving it a good go in games and camping in our opponents box. If we had thrown the kitchen sink at Sheffield United last night then none of us would be sitting here slagging off the team, we'd have been unlucky against what is a decent opposition. The fact is we played like getting the equaliser wasn't that important, that then causes the frustration amongst the supporters and rightly so.

Last night is the classic example of a lack of passion and commitment for me, the players didn't really look too concerned about being a goal down and neither did the manager. Sometimes in games of football you just have to go for it, we showed no sign of going for anything last night. It was drab, dour and uninspiring which is seemingly the new norm for the club. Look at our attendances, look how many never came back to watch football after the restrictions were lifted. People didn't and don't miss it, the players and club have to make the stay away supporters miss it and they just aren't.



Agreed.


Actually, I'd say Carroll looked like he gave a fcuk last night. The rest didn't seem to, but I don't really think footballers tend to not care, they just looked a bit clueless and shot of confidence.

Yeah its a good point, they seem to be playing like dogs who are tied to a lamppost. They can move around a bit and bark but they can only go so far before the lead holds them back.

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Snowflake Royal
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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Snowflake Royal » 24 Nov 2021 12:50

I think most of them care. I just don’t think they have any direction on how to score.

It's just pass it to death and rely on a flair player creating something from nothing.

I've banged on about this before, but successful teams have a consistent pattern of play to an end purpose.

Pardew
Fozzie on the shoulder running the offside trap and Hughes breaking down the middle to catch team on the break after soaking up pressure.

Coppell
Harper moves the ball wide quickly as we attack down the flanks to feed the strikers and midfielders hitting the box late.

McDermott
Control the midfield battle and hit the channels for Long to chase.

Feed Sigurddson to cut inside and bend it in the far post.

Spoil in midfield and get the ball wide quickly for Kebe and McAnuff to feed Roberts / Hunt / Alf

None of this is especially complex. Or disguised. We just did it well and so consistently that everyone knew where everyone else was and what they'd be doing. It's also direct and with the clear purpose of creating a goalscoring chance.


Now the direction is just pass and have a free role so no one knows where anyone else is. Everyone has to look before they play. And no one knows what ball is going where and when.

Carroll is a poor signing because he's just a name striker to bring in with no plan on how to use him. We don't play to his strengths. We aren't changing to play to his strengths, so we aren't going to get the best out of him. Just as we didn’t with Puscas.

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by ayjaydee » 24 Nov 2021 14:13

Been supporting for over 50 years and have seen some rank bad players in that time but there weren’t many that I thought really don’t give a flying one. No longer the case, they are going to get their x grand a week whether they perform or not in the knowledge that their will be another mug club offering them a contract.

I’ve gone from being a full on home and away fan to giving up my season ticket and relying on a bit of corporate through work and paying for the odd ticket. Went on Sat and quite enjoyed the game but didn’t go last night as it was going to be a bit nippy and it was on the box.

The fan “experience” is not exactly encouraging people to come along. Just checked my phone and I paid £2.70 for a cup of hot water with a bit of beef extract. oxf*rd that, if I go again I’ll take a flask.

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by blythspartan » 24 Nov 2021 14:34

I made the 80 mile round trip from Royal Wootton Bassett yesterday evening and I’ll continue to do so. I still miss walking to Elm Park from Tilehurst with my mates on a Saturday afternoon.

I sometimes think I go to games to try and relive my youth but the club is in my blood and I can trace my family’s support going back to the early 1900s.

If I am totally honest I haven’t enjoyed many games since the 2011/12 season. A few games spring to mind like the 3-2 comeback against West Brom in 2012/13 but most of it has been dull for ages. I long for games like oxf*rd off Mark McGhee, the Wigan playoff semifinal and going away to Port Vale in May 1979 and beating them 3-0.

I still want to experience the success of the 106 season all over again but I can appreciate that will never happen again in my life time. However, I am sure that even going back to the old 3rd and 4th division days games were much more exciting or maybe I just remembering through rose tinted spectacles.

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Donny Ironside » 24 Nov 2021 14:58

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NathStPaul I have certainly had enough of going to games. Went to the Forest match for the first time since the restrictions had been lifted and didn't enjoy my experience. Game was decent enough but everything else was just awful. Beer was crap, food was shocking and obscenely expensive, the match day experience was dull and uninspiring much like the football most of the time. I won't be back for a while.

That being said, I am not going to just stop supporting the club. I still care very much about the teams success and will go out of my way to watch our games on TV or listen on the radio. I have just fallen out of love with the live experience I guess, can't justify spending that sort of money on the garbage currently being served up.


I travel from East Sussex for every home game. I am a season ticket holder.

I have supported the Club since aged 7 in 1970/71. I moved to Sussex in the 1980s.

Leaving home at 10.30am and returning at 10pm on a Saturday and getting back between midnight and 1am for a midweek game makes it a time consuming exercise.

I do think that in the past when in the lower leagues, the Cup games (for example) meant a lot more; just the chance of getting a draw against a ‘big Club’ was so exciting (Arsenal at home in 1972, Wolves at home and Southampton home and away in 1978 all treasured memories)

Wealdstone away in 1977 was not so much fun!

The Cup games added glamour to the season.

Now (apart from 2015) the cup games get in the way of our chase for the Prem and when we’re not chasing the Prem, the season becomes so flat.

Last night was really awful. One of the worst games I have seen for years and Saturday was only marginally better.

I cannot put my finger on what it is.

The 106 season (what a team, what a squad, every position taken by a top, top footballer and many positions covered by more than one) which was made all the sweeter by the heartbreak of the Walsall defeat at Cardiff that preceeded our rise with Pardew’’s and then Coppell’s team and (from Jamie Cureton, Martin Butler and John Salako to Kitson, Doyle, Lita et al)

They were (thus far - I am a believer) the pinnacle and it was so just that SJM was at the helm in those glory days. We can all have a moan about the Club and those involved but if we just take a step back and stop and think about what SJM did for the Club; it is beyond dreams.

We won the Championship twice. We broke the all time points record in doing so the first time and we finished 8th in the Prem.

This is Reading Football Club we are talking about.

When SJM took over, we were a basket case. And look what was achieved.

We had a soul throughout those glory days partly because of the painful ones that preceded them (I still run through the Rougier (I think) own goal at Cardiff in my head; watching the ball sail back and in - that was unjust, unfair and torturous)

Bolton at Wembley was even worse; with our special, special team that could really play and should’ve won the league that year (Osborne, Gooding and Nogan et al)

Today, for whatever reason, there is something missing; even though the quality of the players is right up there; and our owners are committed; and our manager is, on the whole, of good quality; it all seems so soulless and directionless right now.

Some of our football yesterday was just awful. The atmosphere, despite the seemingly endless enthusiasm (almost passion) of Club 1871, was often drab and grey and nondescript.

We need something; but I am not sure what it is that we need.


Do you want to lift share?

I travel from there to games, been a ST holder since I was a kid

Do I care as much now? No

Do I care? Yes


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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Donny Ironside » 24 Nov 2021 15:33

genome
BraisingsteakRoyal Yep - happened to me after the PO final - even the preceding season was an unbearable slog at times. The quality of football (and match day value/experience) has deteriorated over that sort of period IMHO - and therefore so did any 'connection' i ever felt to the club.


Yeah, I'd echo that. The 2017/18 season was where I think apathy started setting in for a lot of supporters.

+1

that was the day the club died, apart from the day club1871 started

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Sanguine » 24 Nov 2021 15:51

Stranded You've essentially just described getting older and the process of deciding what is still important to you.



It's that really, isn't it. Those middle-aged guys supping pints and chuntering at each other whilst we passionately support the team 'till I die'? That's most of us now, 25 years on, too fcuking tired with everything else in life to bother too much about singing, or trying to rouse a team of identikit players with little or no connection to Reading (okay there's the odd academy product) toward a victory.

But there's been far worse times even in recent memory to follow Reading than our current 'predicament'. Nigel Adkins, I'm looking at you. And I'm glancing at Steve Clarke too, albeit I think his time gets seen through shittier glasses than is fair thanks to the Fulham stuff.

Going further back we've got the deadline day seven and Tommy Burns (RIP), and before that Terry Bullivant (who?). And in between Adkins and Burns, a few others, and time spent in the bottom half of League One.

Which is really the perspective that drives me to impatience with those on here who seem to think that the current incarnation of Reading FC, a squad full of loan players, a crapload of injuries, under transfer embargo and suffering a points deduction, yet still maintaining a (lower) mid-table Championship position, with a mix of good and bad results, is in some way an abomination that should see the apparently good natured and hard working young manager 'just fcuk off', as if he has personally shit on the head of every single such fan in the stadium.

But that's just me. Maybe if I 'cared more' I'd be as entitled as to dismissively send him on his way too. But I don't.

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Sanguine » 24 Nov 2021 15:58

On a more practical level, injuries and our financial situation means that the team chops and changes. It is really difficult to feel an affiliation with a team when its personnel are often so different.

Looking back to the start of last season, just 15 months ago - just six of the eighteen-strong matchday squad at Derby (Moore, Swift, Ejaria, Laurent, and subs Southwood and Puscas) where also involved last night. Six out of eighteen, in just over a year is a frightening amount of 'churn'.

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by SWLR » 24 Nov 2021 17:07

One key difference from the "Good Old Days" was then there was no expectation: we were a lower league team, in a sh1t ground, that never achieved anything - that was not the reason to go to support Reading.
Now we expect quality football and RFC to challenge for things. It won't always happen.
Last night was dire (I've seen far worse), but as I stepped off the train at 12:03 into the chill SWLondon air, recalling the sight of a player having a seizure put everything in perspective.
I'll be back.


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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by leon » 24 Nov 2021 17:11

SWLR One key difference from the "Good Old Days" was then there was no expectation: we were a lower league team, in a sh1t ground, that never achieved anything - that was not the reason to go to support Reading.
Now we expect quality football and RFC to challenge for things. It won't always happen.
Last night was dire (I've seen far worse), but as I stepped off the train at 12:03 into the chill SWLondon air, recalling the sight of a player having a seizure put everything in perspective.
I'll be back.


So SWLR, which part of SWL do you hail from?

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tmesis
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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by tmesis » 24 Nov 2021 18:46

It doesn't really help that we've had to watch fairly miserable football every year since the 2012/13 season. Yes, there were some decent games in that season, but relegation always looked on the cards. We did well for one year under Stam, but we usually ground our way to wins, and few even got to watch last season.

Fans have just forgotten what it's like to look forward to coming to Reading games. One of the guys I used to go to games with, a season ticket holder since 82/83, jacked it in this season. If the other guy I meet up with called it a day too, I wouldn't carry on.


A big part of it though, I think, is that as you get older, you've seen it all before. There's no novelty left. Nothing to make this season like many of the other seasons you've seen before, and rather than a win making you elated, it just stops you being annoyed now.

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by genome » 24 Nov 2021 18:58

I've been thinking about it... I think the last time I left the Madejski thinking "god, I love football" was the 3-0 win against Bradford in 2015 :shock:

The Fulham win in 2017 is up there but that was more relief after weathering a storm for nigh on 90 minutes.

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Zip
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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Zip » 24 Nov 2021 19:09

When you make the effort to go to the games week in week out and see so many poor performances it becomes very frustrating. For those who support from afar it’s very easy to dismiss the criticisms that many of us make. I suspect those “fans” would feel very differently if they were regularly in attendance.


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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Snowflake Royal » 24 Nov 2021 19:25

Zip When you make the effort to go to the games week in week out and see so many poor performances it becomes very frustrating. For those who support from afar it’s very easy to dismiss the criticisms that many of us make. I suspect those “fans” would feel very differently if they were regularly in attendance.

And for regularly in attendance also read watching online every week.

It's easier to take than traveling for 2-3 hours and 70 miles each way but that just removes the resentment wasting basically an entire day and an extra £50 on the shite, it does little for the actual performance. It's still pretty awful watching us lose half our games and generally disappoint 60/ 70% of the time, over 19 games now.

This last 10 years has been relentlessly dour to follow. Even Adkin's PO near miss, Stam's PO failure and Pauno's promotion face plant ended badly and werent exactly inspiring for large swathes. Whilst we're still in the Championship, Reading fans haven't experienced anything like this consistently poor level of performance, at least at home, since at least the early 90s.

Even the mid to late 90s and early 00s with their relegation fights and mid-table L1 mediocrity weren't as soul destroying. We were plucky little Reading fighting to survive at the highest level we'd achieved and dreaming of bigger things and bigger stadia around the corner. Or solidly mid-table at our usual level, spending like one of the big boys with the prospect of taking it to the next level soon.

you old timers remember a period in the 70s or 80s with as prolonged a level of underachieving compared to recent successes?

And it's not just on the pitch, it's the miss-management off it as well. It just sets a consistently negative tone and malaise throughout the club.

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Zip
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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Zip » 24 Nov 2021 19:29

I remember those times Ian. They were grim. Just reaching the third round of the FA Cup was an achievement back then.
So there is a sense of entitlement these days based on the glory years in the noughties. We became used to watching a team on the up much like Brentford are now.

I don’t think you bought a ST this season. I will probably follow suit next season.

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by AthleticoSpizz » 24 Nov 2021 19:33

Nothing much has changed???

Basically football in the 70s has evolved to football in the 2020s....the same whinges, just the whingers have changed...the older ones have died-off.

It’s football, cold nights, hot August fixtures, wins, loses, ups and downs..... if you can’t handle it now, you never will.

All 92 league (plus countless National League teams) teams crave success....it will never be there for all.

To speak the bleedin’ obvious

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Crowbar6753 » 24 Nov 2021 19:33

Snowflake Royal I think most of them care. I just don’t think they have any direction on how to score.

It's just pass it to death and rely on a flair player creating something from nothing.

I've banged on about this before, but successful teams have a consistent pattern of play to an end purpose.

Pardew
Fozzie on the shoulder running the offside trap and Hughes breaking down the middle to catch team on the break after soaking up pressure.

Coppell
Harper moves the ball wide quickly as we attack down the flanks to feed the strikers and midfielders hitting the box late.

McDermott
Control the midfield battle and hit the channels for Long to chase.

Feed Sigurddson to cut inside and bend it in the far post.

Spoil in midfield and get the ball wide quickly for Kebe and McAnuff to feed Roberts / Hunt / Alf

None of this is especially complex. Or disguised. We just did it well and so consistently that everyone knew where everyone else was and what they'd be doing. It's also direct and with the clear purpose of creating a goalscoring chance.


Now the direction is just pass and have a free role so no one knows where anyone else is. Everyone has to look before they play. And no one knows what ball is going where and when.

Carroll is a poor signing because he's just a name striker to bring in with no plan on how to use him. We don't play to his strengths. We aren't changing to play to his strengths, so we aren't going to get the best out of him. Just as we didn’t with Puscas.


Hi Snowflake, if you look at the Pardew, Coppell and McDermott examples you mentioned above and the one overiding memory for me was that all these teams played quick fast attacking football with the emphasis on fast breaking wing play!! something that has been mentioned numerous times before on many posts.
This slow tippy tappy passing of the classic central European style football is so boring to watch....i remember the game against Derby (5-0) which won us the championship (106 season) and if memory serves i think it was our fourth goal which was a sweeping move with the ball played down the right at pace and a quick cross into the centre (John Oster i think) and Slong scored with a bullet of a header into the top corner. I also remember Coppells reaction to the goal as it was typical English style Coppellesque wing play which must warmed his heart.
Classic wingers get the crowd up off their seats, its exciting to watch, not this boring turgid European crap.
We,ve had some amazing wingers playing for us in the last 30 odd years (Gilkes, Convey, Hunt, Oster, Blakey, Kebe to name a few) what i would give for a couple of those in this present team :D

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Jinx » 24 Nov 2021 19:37

For me it's not just Reading - I find it difficult to watch football full stop. It's become a parody, diving, cheating, time-wasting, commentators say "he felt contact, he's entitled to go down", refs give a free kick every time someone falls over, VAR doesn't help - you can't celebrate a goal. I've binned off the midweek games, its too much of a rush after work and I feel like the Saturdays will follow soon,

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by Donny Ironside » 24 Nov 2021 20:22

Snowflake Royal
Zip When you make the effort to go to the games week in week out and see so many poor performances it becomes very frustrating. For those who support from afar it’s very easy to dismiss the criticisms that many of us make. I suspect those “fans” would feel very differently if they were regularly in attendance.

And for regularly in attendance also read watching online every week.

It's easier to take than traveling for 2-3 hours and 70 miles each way but that just removes the resentment wasting basically an entire day and an extra £50 on the shite, it does little for the actual performance. It's still pretty awful watching us lose half our games and generally disappoint 60/ 70% of the time, over 19 games now.

This last 10 years has been relentlessly dour to follow. Even Adkin's PO near miss, Stam's PO failure and Pauno's promotion face plant ended badly and werent exactly inspiring for large swathes. Whilst we're still in the Championship, Reading fans haven't experienced anything like this consistently poor level of performance, at least at home, since at least the early 90s.

Even the mid to late 90s and early 00s with their relegation fights and mid-table L1 mediocrity weren't as soul destroying. We were plucky little Reading fighting to survive at the highest level we'd achieved and dreaming of bigger things and bigger stadia around the corner. Or solidly mid-table at our usual level, spending like one of the big boys with the prospect of taking it to the next level soon.

you old timers remember a period in the 70s or 80s with as prolonged a level of underachieving compared to recent successes?

And it's not just on the pitch, it's the miss-management off it as well. It just sets a consistently negative tone and malaise throughout the club.


Watching games online doesn't mean you regularly attend Ian.

Just because I watch a TV show everyday doesn't suddenly make me a character in the show :lol:

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Re: Do you sometimes think you`ve had enough.

by 72 bus » 24 Nov 2021 20:38

Snowflake Royal I think most of them care. I just don’t think they have any direction on how to score.

It's just pass it to death and rely on a flair player creating something from nothing.

I've banged on about this before, but successful teams have a consistent pattern of play to an end purpose.

Pardew
Fozzie on the shoulder running the offside trap and Hughes breaking down the middle to catch team on the break after soaking up pressure.

Coppell
Harper moves the ball wide quickly as we attack down the flanks to feed the strikers and midfielders hitting the box late.

McDermott
Control the midfield battle and hit the channels for Long to chase.

Feed Sigurddson to cut inside and bend it in the far post.

Spoil in midfield and get the ball wide quickly for Kebe and McAnuff to feed Roberts / Hunt / Alf

None of this is especially complex. Or disguised. We just did it well and so consistently that everyone knew where everyone else was and what they'd be doing. It's also direct and with the clear purpose of creating a goalscoring chance.


Now the direction is just pass and have a free role so no one knows where anyone else is. Everyone has to look before they play. And no one knows what ball is going where and when.

Carroll is a poor signing because he's just a name striker to bring in with no plan on how to use him. We don't play to his strengths. We aren't changing to play to his strengths, so we aren't going to get the best out of him. Just as we didn’t with Puscas.



Or any other of the 20 goals a season strikers that we have had on loan over the last few seasons.
Reading is a graveyard for decent strikers

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