once_bitterne

Looking at these Reading LEAGUE 1 prices I assume we won't be getting a nice discount on PL prices! https://www.readingfc.co.uk/tickets/season-tickets/

https://www.rasmusankersen.com/the-boiling-frog-problem/

Phillip Schofield will be locked up by this time next year.

Well I guess he achieved his aim:

The OC. Andrew Cowan.

Orsic and Tall Paul?

Lose home games.

Our squad last year was very poor (won 1 of last 15 PL matches) Our manager had been broken by having to keep the club up for the past 3 seasons with pretty much zero net spend. From this poor squad we lost 3 important players in FF, Romeu and Broja. A keeper who ended up at a CL club, our best defensive MF player and our leading goal scorer. This meant that, as the Summer window opened, the squad we had was so weak it would result in near certain relegation. This meant that SR had to spend the £130m+ they had available for transfer fees alone largely on players who would improve the team on the pitch THIS SEASON (and not in 2 or 3 seasons' time). This is where they failed. Of all the players signed only really Lavia and to a lesser extent ABK and Alcaraz have had any positive impact on the pitch.

Edited for accuracy.

Not going to improve us much then is it? Only worth a James Bree on the low-side or a Tall-Paul, Sulemana and a Mara on the up-side.

Why on earth would DCC and Orsic leave 'in search of football'? They are on multi year contracts with us on wages they will never again match at any other club. Like Boufal, Lemina, Carillo and Hoedt what will happen is that they will be loaned out (with us paying most, if not all, of their wages) until their contracts expire.

So this doesn't include the time from Summer '22 on where we have spent over £130m on transfer fees alone on new 'players'.

They did.

I used to know a girl with a grand mufti.

Is there a print at home option for this game? If so you can just email him the pdf.

Ralph was a good manager, probably too good for the level of the club we are, but we had broken him by giving him very little transfers funds, selling Ings the week before a new season, etc. What would have been interesting is if we had given the £130m+ of transfer fees that we've spent this season to him in his first seasons. If we had I don't think the end result would have been us being bottom of the league.

Burnley didn't have the bloated squad we have accumulated where 4 or 5 players on 60k + per week aren't even able to get on the bench. We've not got a hope in hell of shifting the likes of Perraud, DCC, Diallo, Djenepo, Aribo, Bazunu, Bednarek, etc as no other club would come close to matching the wages they are getting so they'll be staying exactly where they are and counting their money each week.

How do you get the idea we will 'have a budget'? We have spent £130m on players since the start of the Summer window. Add to that all of the wages of them and our bloated squad. Relegation will mean the club will lose around 80% of it revenue overnight. But you think there will be a budget to mount a promotion push, lol!

We'll have few few salable assets. The reality is the likes of Perraud, Djenepo, DCC, Orsic, Bazunu, Lyanco, Diallo, Edozie, etc, etc, know they are on wages they will never get paid by any other club so will have no desire to do anything else than collect their money. We'll be left trying to send them out on loan season after season and try and get the other club to pay a few quid of their massive wages as we did before with Hoedt, Carrillo, Lemina, Elyuseless, etc.

Was the penalty for the tap or for the fact he was trying to rip his shirt off his back?

Of course it was. They offered him the higher contract which he accepted. It's not as if he was going to a CL club. I very much doubt it was his life's ambition to play for Villa...

If we've never replaced Ings, the biggest mistake we've made other than that was letting him go in the first place. He left as we wouldn't match JWP's 125k per week and were 'only' offering 100k. Well that 25k proved to be false economy. I would assume the wages of such legends as Small and Simeu would have covered that... The money we got from Villa for Ings has been utterly wasted on the useless Armstrong and Mara so we didn't get any benefit from that either...

And so she should.

I heard the expression on a podcast last week and decided I must use it more in every day conversation.

Understandable signings for a top 10 PL club then not one with a squad that, as it stood at the start of the transfer window this Summer, looked odds on to be relegated.