So I've done some keyword-searching and sifting for some prime threads that have lain fallow for a while --and not, it emerges, without reason.
So here's a select few, and I'll chuck more in here as time permits. Feel free to post your own, and I'll add 'em to this post so to have a more complete LOLibrary of tribulation.
Also copy/paste some of your fave posts from other threads in here. Right, then --leading us off:
Are we going down? saw the indefatigable TBM taking a pause --albeit a necessarily brief one-- from his "Make Anything Else Something upon Which We All Someday Will Look Back with Pride [read: post count!]" campaign to put it plainly to The Team board just six weeks out of the starting blocks on Thursday 17th September (which was the day that followed our heroes' 0-1 home defeat to Cardiff City that left us in 18th place on 6 points from our first seven league matches and, in other business, knocked out of the League Cup at the second hurdle with a 1-2 home defeat to Barnsley on 25th August)
The Positive Thread, started by forum denizen Victor Meldrew on 29th December of last year, didn't quite have the juice to get into 2010. Not at all bad for an appetizer and harbinger of what was not long in following.
I think Reading may be relegated this season. saw occasional contributor ROKERITE give direct and explicit expression to the vague pull of angst then rippling amidst the massive. Posted on Sunday 10th January --a week after the home draw with Liverpool in the Third Round of the Cup, immediately after the postponed Newcastle fixture of the day before and just days before Anfield.
ROKERITE signed off with this dire warning by way of concluding the initial post:
If Reading start February in the bottom three then it is too big a gamble not to bring in Ian Dowie
Despite a 1-0 beating of Barnsley on the penultimate day of January, our hooped heroes stood in 22nd place at month's end, on 26 points and three adrift of Ipswich above the drop zone. Would it be Dowie to the rescue come February?
BRIAN McDERMOTT SIGN HIM UP, started by shoey (and soon thereafter merged by a vigilant mod with an offering from rfcjoe entitled I'm not saying this because of tonight's result....), followed in the immediate wake of the massive result at Anfield on Wednesday 13th January; 'nuff said right there, football fans!
Reading Cut Adrift in Bottom Four sees the ever cheerful, optimistic and above all clairvoyant Sir Dodger Royal get the ball rolling after the league defeat away to the ten men of Nottingham Forest back on 16th January with, in his own words...
Real Facts from the Main Man. You know it makes seseeeeeeeeeee [sic]
Keepin' 'em honest as ever, that SDR --a name at the mere mention of which liars, cheats and thieves slink away for the nearest hole or pile of dead leaves
Bottom 3 is how, three days on, West Stand Flash baldly laid out the predicament confronting Manager Brian McDermott and his charges. In particular, WSF drew a parallel between Sheffield Wednesday appointing a new manager at midseason and immediately hauling themselves out of the bottom three at the next time of asking, whereas Reading replaced their own manager with "a Scout" --but it wasn't McDermott who found himself in the crosshairs as WSF placed the blame squarely where it belonged:
Well done Mr Madejski, Nigel Howe and Gimp Hammond!!
One had to know then that this would not end well.
colours to the mast NOW saw the 'Nobber's continental of choice, LUX, put the question squarely upon the midday of Tuesday 26th January, with a league match away to Sheffield United on tap for that evening; to wit:
Will we stay up? Yes or no?
Let the merriment ensue as only HNA? can bring it!
HOW ARE WE GONNA GET OUT OF THIS SH*T-ST8? is how, with his flair for understatement, The Team board mainstay floyd___streete posed it in the immediate wake of a thumping three-nil league defeat suffered that same evening of 28th January away to Bramall Lane. Nothing says "passion" quite like supporters in full throat after an embarrassing defeat, and RFC's position was as parlous as ever in the wake of that ugly pasting. floyd___ himself said it as well as anyone else in his initial post, which he edited six minutes after he originated the thread to read:
.
With a setup piece of the kind, what more really needed to be said --ahhh, but then this is Hoob Noob Nation of which I speak...
Would it be a tragedy if we went down? is how regular contributor and all-around good guy Archie's Penalty rather wistfully put it to the massive on Thursday 28th January, as the boys stood at their absolute nadir in the wake of that mauling at the hands of Sheffield United at Bramall Lane in midweek. With dear old RFC now on just 23 points won from 26 league matches but also somehow having earned its way into the Fifth Round of the FA Cup, HNA? did not disappoint in tackling A P's philosophical poser nutshelled thus:
I don't want us to go down but I don't think it would be a tragedy if we did. What do you think?
Choose your three to go down came the direct charge from regular contributor and hail-fellow-well-met PEARCEY in the wake of a home victory over Barnsley on Saturday 30th January, and he added a poll after the fact. What it sez on the tin.
play-offs? dared East Stand Ste to wonder on Wednesday 10th February (yours truLOLy's birthday, with this thread being a gift that's kept on giving ever since and indeed to this day) in the wake of two more league wins on the trot over Donny Rovers away on the Saturday and then Plymouth at home in midweek (and I don't know what the boys' league position was in the wake of it, as the link to the HNA? match report thru the main page here is dead --mods/admin please heLOLp!).
It was a question well worth asking at the time and one that remains unresolved (although the answer, of course, is "not likely in the least, but we're waiting for the last dog to die and are in no hurry).
So that's your lot for now. Feel free to bring to general notice any threads of the kind --I'll pop 'em into this post-- and to copy/paste any individual posts that have come to your notice and from which you've wrung particular enjoyment.
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