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Griffin's Penultimate Stand - Division 2 2018-19

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    We're leading Forest 0-1 at HT. If we can hold it for another 45 minutes it'll be the first time QPR have ever won there.

    Totally hexed it now haven't I.

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      We've bloody gone and done it! 0–1 at the City Ground. Yes Virginia there really is a Santa Claus.

      P35 W1-D14–L20
      Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 22-12-2018, 17:49.

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        We haven't beaten Forest since the month that I was conceived. I'm convinced that if we ever beat them I will die...

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          Do you know how many times you've played them?

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            Brentford 1 Bolton 0

            The clash of the two worst teams in the division on current form was a predictably drab affair but neither I, nor the players nor Thomas Frank will care. And a clean sheet, though it should be remembered that Bolton had only scored 5 in their previous 15 games.

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              This Villa-Leeds match is decent.

              2-2 with 30 minutes to go.

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                Leeds win it in injury time

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                  Best game of the season so far for me.

                  The Championship is by some stretch the most open and competitive division in English football.

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                    World Cup Willie, late of this parish, texted me this earlier, having watched the game at home in Leeds:

                    When Roofe scored winner in 98th minute, we made so much noise that a car driving past stopped to see what was going on.

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                      A familiar feeling for Dean Smith. He’s already lost a lead in the final minutes this season to both Leeds and Villa.

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                          Preston, Brentford, and Bolton are left intact.

                          Had to think for a sec about Milvol.

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                            Hal floundering in mid-table, but I don't think the supporters have switched off just yet.

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                              Remarkable how picking our best goalkeeper and best defensive midfielder seems to be an effective way of changing our defensive record. Why didn't the last manager think of that?

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                                Things are going far too smoothly. Something's wrong, it has to be.

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                                  The media would wank themselves off for weeks if De Bruyne provided an assist like Barry Bannan did today.

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                                    Reading's appointment of Portuguese journeyman manager Jose Gomes has steadied the ship. Oh.

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                                      Wheels finally coming off...

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                                        This is great. The family are lovely, a living, breathing East Anglian Simpsons episode. But they also embody an attitude towards football support that seems to be fast disappearing these days. No faux hate/anger nor, you suspect, in your face triumphalism either. Made me feel quite warm and cosy they did.

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                                          From that (Turkish?) league table, Hal has got to be the furthest from how it's actually pronounced.

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                                            Serbian

                                            The language doesn’t really have a short u.

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                                              Most of that league table looks like it has been dictated phonetically by a South African.

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                                                I think Derbi is probably rendered wrongly. I suspect that would be pronounced as in the Kentucky horse race

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                                                  The situation at Reading is absolutely fucking dire. Basically, 20+ years of stability and progress under Madejski has turned into an utter shit storm.

                                                  Goes back about ten years when the combination of Madejski being financially fucked after getting involved in a huge property development in the centre of Reading, coupled with him seemingly bored of football as we’d had our two seasons in the Premier, meant he was desperate to offload the club.

                                                  A number of suitors either didn’t have the money, or didn’t pass the fit and proper persons test, until the twenty something son of a Russian oligarch, somehow managed to convince the authorities and MAdejski that he was good for both and so he took control of 51% of the club. The fact that he’d failed the fit and proper test when trying to take over Everton, and his dad’s emergence as the leading wood pulp mogul, just as all his Russian rivals mysteriously disappeared on visits to forests, was overlooked as there was a completely unexpected return to the Premier League.

                                                  However, relegation coincided with the emergence that the son didn’t actually have any money. He’d taken loans out against the club to finance the original purchase, his dad wouldn’t or couldn’t give him any more, and was actually taking the Premier League cash out of the club, although that could have been a little or a lot, as the club were buying some crap players on high wages; Royston Drenthe, Danny Guthrie and most notably, Russian carthorse Pavel ‘50k per week’Pogrebnyak.

                                                  The finance company forclosed on the loan and Reading were on the market again. This time a Thai consortium took over. Oh, apart from the major financier who was jailed instead. The Thai’s had two major obsessions at the club:-
                                                  1) Writing a succession of really shit club songs.
                                                  2) Assett stripping every possible commercial source from the club, hiving it off into a separate company, and getting rid of the remainder, as soon as possible.

                                                  The second accusation was strenuously denied, until it was unearthed that the very first thing the Thai’s did on the day they bought the club, was to register domain names for a half billion pound new housing development, currently being built on the stadium car park.

                                                  It was soon their time to move on, except of course keeping all the land around the stadium, the hotel attached to the stadium, and possibly the training ground (an ex golf course in a leafy suburb of Wokingham).

                                                  This time the criteria for new owners had three rigorous criteria
                                                  1) The usual pre-requisite of having failed the fit and proper persons test whilst trying to buy Everton.
                                                  2) Having financial accounts that are so much smoke and mirrors that no one knows if they do have any money whasoever.
                                                  3) That they do solemnly commit to spending none of their own money whatsoever, instead loading the club with unmanageable dept.

                                                  So, step forward a Chinese brother and sister combo, who could say yes to all of the above, whilst also adding having been turned down to buy Hull City, by the Allams no less, surely the ultimate indignation.

                                                  So what of the new overlords? Well, firstly, there was a sweep of all the stable and long serving club executives. Madejski was demoted to vice deputy chairman, or some such ceremonial none entity. Chief Executive Nigel Howe was replaced by Ron Goulay from Chelsea, and Director of Football Nicky Hammond, disappeared off to West Brom, being replaced by some fast talking youth coach from Ajax.

                                                  Goulay appears to have been a complete cunt, an was despised by all at the club. The director of football, used his extensive world wide football connections to just bring in various ex-Ajax youth team players who had long since disappeared into Dutch amateur football. He also brought in Jaap Stam as manager. Stam had a very rigid football philosophy, which was games were won by the team who’s centre halves had the most consecutive passes to each other. This baffled the footballing world for one season and somehow the club got to the play off finals, but after the most boring game in footballing history, lost on Penalties to Huddersfield.

                                                  The next season, and the other teams had worked it out that after 30 consecutive passes, one of the centre halves would slice it to an opposing forward, so they just waited for that to happen and Reading were getting tanked, playing the most mind numbingly dull style of play.

                                                  Eventually Stam was sacked, and Paul Clement was brought in, with the outstanding record of being sacked twice, despite having only managed 45 games in his total career.

                                                  At the same time as all this, Reading’s squad has ballooned to over 30 first team players. The reason for this is that transfer policy had long since disappeared from the control of the director of football, and was now a tustle between agents. Either Clements own, or the favoured one of the Chinese owners, none other than Kia Joorabchian, who had the great pedigree of bringing the third party ownership case to West Ham with the deal for Tevez, and has various money laundering charges made of him at his frequent court cases.

                                                  Things didn’t improve under Clement, and in early December, drastic changes took place at the club. Firstly, Chief Executive Ron Goulay was sacked, to be replaced by previous incumbent Nigel Howe. He insisted things were going to return to the Reading way of old, and there were none to subtle leaks that Nicky Hammond was to return as Director of football and legendary ex-player Phillip Parkinson was to be manager. Sure enough the incumbent DoF (by now some nondescript figure, the Dutch bloke having left in the summer after falling out with Goulay) was sacked, swiftly followed by Clement.

                                                  The appointment of Hammond and Parkinson has seen a huge uplift in the clubs fortunes, unbeaten since their arrival in December, and looking forward to a very fruitful January transfer window.

                                                  Except no. With Goulay and Clement on their way out, Kia Joorabchian seized the momentum and suddenly started appearing at Reading games. He then went to the Chinese owners with a list of second division Portugese managers who no one had ever heard of, but looked very suave in a tank top. This seemed to impress the owners more than Howe’s suggestion of bringing in one of only two managers who were below Reading in the table.

                                                  Eventually, after the inevitable trials of being snubbed by some old bloke no-one had ever heard of but once managed Porto reserves, Reading have instead got a slightly younger bloke no one has ever heard of but once managed Porto reserves. Step forward none other than José Manuel Gomes. You know, that one. In Portugal he has manged the giants of Leiria, Moreirense, Aves and Rio Ave, in Saudi Arabia both Al-Taawoun and Al-Ahli and in the UAE Baniyas. However, we may mock but what he may bring is longevity, what with his average length of management stint being 26 games, and his wife and children staying in Portugal.

                                                  Actually, that last point might actually be the most notable. It is alleged that he (oh, have I mentioned all the coaching staff have been sacked and he is bringing in five of his own) is on an enormous wage, to the extent that the club, teetering on the fringes of the financial fair play rules, cannot afford to sack him. So Reading are now locked into a manager, who is only in position because of his agent, so no prizes for guessing what the criteria will be for any player being signed over the next few transfer windows.

                                                  Anyway, perhaps we are being over harsh, it is of course a results game. So what of Boxing Day at Millwall, immediately below Reading in the table. Well the players had an instant response, letting a goal in and having the centre half sent off all in the first five minutes. By all accounts, the next 85 minutes were turgid passes amongst the defence, enlivened only by a second sending off, this time for stamping on a Millwall players chest.

                                                  Thank god its only Man United away next weekend.
                                                  Last edited by Big Boobs and FIRE!; 27-12-2018, 20:03.

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                                                    Thanks for that BB&F.

                                                    With this latest appointment they must have been hoping for a Wolves-style, Portuguese-based resurrection, only without the money. Or the talented manager. I knew Reading had been crap for quite a few years, even in the season they somehow reached the playoffs.

                                                    Now I have a better idea why.

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