Royal Rother wrote:Agent Balti wrote:We worked our way out of the Championship admirably, I was proud to be associated with MY club. People who had no affiliation to the club marveled at how we did it. I told them, we spent little money, we used what we had and used it well.
The same people ask me what went wrong last season, I told them, we spent little money and used what we had and we DID NOT learn that lesson.
On the face of it yours is a good post because it sums up many people's feelings very well, with passion and eloquence - however this extract just sums up perfectly what
really pisses me off.
You were very happy when the policies worked brilliantly in 2005/6 and 2006/7, proud to be associated with the club, because everyone admired us, and proud to explain that we did it differently.
Yes, mistakes were made (and subsequently acknowledged) but the club continued to operate within the exact same framework of principles in the very next season, yet when it didn't work so well you became so disillusioned that you won't renew your season ticket.
It's up to you of course but can you not see how fickle that makes you sound? Real men, real supporters don't swing from loving something one minute so much that they tell everyone about it with great pride, and then go all hissy the next minute when it doesn't work so well. It's childish and it's feeble.
Real men? Real Supporters? What on earth does that mean? If relegation without so much as a decent fight isn't enough for me to question where I put my money, then what does? Are we to go back to League 3 before people think it's unacceptable to have a vote? If I feel my money (and Sky's money) wasn't utilized to the best way, how else am I supposed to vent my displeasure? A personal letter to Mr Mad?...now that's childish.
I don't care if I sound fickle, I've given 20 years support and had an ST ever since we moved to the Mad Stad. I'm not going hissy, I've waited a long, long time and even less time than a lot of others who would be more loyal than me, but to just take it and say "Oh thanks for the memories" is bull. Everyone takes our club in isolation to the rest of the football planet and it drives me insane (it shows, I know.) Speculate, accumulate, speculate, accumluate. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but avoiding any of those options or appear to be doing it 'in the Reading way' is enough for most. At some point you have to move with the times, do what's necessary, do what you bloody must to NOT lose the club more money than if you speculated in the first place. Football is a gamble, but our club doesn't want to part with it's chips. So how are we ever to win that gamble?
I absolutely and totally understand those that say 'But look where we've come from'...but it should be where we want to go, not where we've been that matters. If we had had a stellar past, there would be more raving from more lunatics like me, but since we're oh so humble for two seasons in the Prem we have to just take it and be *ahem* loyal? If the club wishes to have no ambition (and even if they do show some ambition in the next month, it's now moot) then I'm perfectly within my rights to say "So do I!". I'm not having a pop at you or anyone else, Rother - I'm sure we could banter about this in a pub, quite sensibly, but what I can't abide is folk saying "It'll be alright, we we're in the 4th Division once, you know". With that thought process, we'll never ever grow as we've always got that to fall back on. To use a shit analogy, we had a Ferrari last year, before that we had a quite decent Porsche, but we lost them...ah, but remember that old Cortina we had, that was a ride." (Told you it was shit.)
P.S. Sign Ben Watson.
