As always, it's the hope that gets you

Hope. Hope is what brings you to that stadium match after match after match, often despite your better judgement. Hope is what makes you think your lumbering striker, floundering goalkeeper or error-prone centre back will confound the critics today.

Hope is what gives you the idea that this year is different, this year might be the year your play off duck is broken.

Hope dashed. Hope dashed is what makes you question why you come back to that stadium time and again. Hope dashed is what makes you think why the manager keeps sticking with that lumbering striker, floundering goalkeeper and error-prone centre back.

Hope dashed was Monday.

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What provided the hope this time around was how the team had gone about its business this season – tactical versatility to counter different teams (both Fulham games a case in point), a steely resolve to see out games (note the countless single goal margin wins) and a strong sense of spirit and purpose (see 3-2 away wins at Bristol City and Blackburn).

Time and time again this season (now last season I guess), we saw things a lot of Reading teams couldn’t do, or very rarely did, in the past – play with three at the back, play a proper 4-3-3, see out one goal leads, make comebacks…and also collapse in spectacular fashion away from home.

This gave hope that we had the skillsets to compete and overcome on Monday. We didn’t.

It felt either as if we froze somewhat or more played the occasion rather than the opponent. Or Huddersfield just sussed us out.

Regardless, the nagging feeling is we didn’t play to our potential. That perhaps is another factor of what made it such a galling day.

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It was fitting our best performer was Danny Williams in a season when his value to this team and his quality was finally recognised.

All year, in either a two-man or three-man midfield, the American offered something none of our other midfield options could – a balance between strength, mobility and passing quality. For all of our decent midfielders this year, none could do what Williams consistently did.

In a game where precious few Reading players excelled, Williams was probably our stand-out. In a similar vein to Steve Sidwell in the 06/07 season, Williams has never shirked a challenge this season despite knowing it could be his last with the club.

His devastatingly tearful reaction at the end suggested to me this will be the end of his Reading career – if we had gone up, I think he would have signed a new deal but he is 28 now and has the quality to player in the top tier; it is most likely now or never for him.

If he does move on, he absolutely deserves his chance and not one Reading fan should begrudge him that. He gave everything and more on Monday.

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The most painful of losing a play-off final isn’t the not getting promoted. The ambivalence toward being a part of the bottom-half Premier League football is growing – without wishing to sound like sour grapes, what really is the point of hoping to survive each year with nought much else to look forward to?

If you haven’t experienced the top tier already, that feeling is less prevalent and understandably so – I was very much looking forward to being part of the Premier League circus back in 2006 and I do sincerely hope Huddersfield enjoy it.

But there is an increasing ‘what’s the point to it?’ when you’ve been there, done that, got the overpriced T-shirt.

No, the reason why losing a play-off final aches to the very soul is your team has missed out after 48 matches and nine months of blood, spit, sweat, tears, fears, beers, joys, disappointments, exhilarations and more. 

It hurts all the more so after a penalty shoot out when you haven’t actually lost the game.

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Nothing in your football watching life prepares you for the intensity of penalty shoot-out in a final.

That said, watching Reading fully prepares you to expect to lose a penalty shoot-out in a final. My celebrations for each successful penalty were barely more than a look to the sky – for Al-Habsi’s penalty save, it was nothing than a single fist pump. It just felt as if things could go wrong.

After play-off final losses via being 2-0 up with a penalty, a freak own goal and a comeback thwarted by less than the width of a post, a penalty shoot-out loss felt likely to be added to the roll call.

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It is now three full days on from the final whistle. Only today have I felt anything like normal.

Tuesday was a day of nothing but mental and emotional exhaustion – a drained out hollow shell trying to make it through the day without reading any match reports or opinion pieces, glancing at Twitter and switching the channel over every time you heard the words “£170m match”.

Wednesday was the hangover from this – the mood slightly lifted but the baggage still being dragged along, the disappointment etched still on your face and the engagement with the rest of the human race still not quite fulsome.

The disappointment will probably last a little while yet, especially as the fallout from the result becomes clear – what happens with Stam? How do the new owners fit in? Which players will leave and who will we sign?

However, the talk has already begun of looking to next year’s fixture list, what away days to do, pre-season tours…

That’s the thing with football there is always next year, there is always hope.

A new flavour of promotion push

Tuesday night’s classic come from behind win against Brentford got me thinking about how our successful Championship level teams have worked.

The shape this season is taking is markedly different to any of our other previously successful seasons at this level – successful meaning we won the league or got to the play offs and excluding 94/95 (I was five at the time so am not in a position to comment).

This isn’t the 05/06 season, for obvious reasons, it isn’t 2010/11 where we benefitted from one player being in the form of his life (Shane Long) and it isn’t 08/09 when we convinced and then spectacularly collapsed.

This year is more like the 02/03 and 11/12 seasons where the sum of the parts was the key reason for success (obviously 05/06 had that same factor but the quality of player was far greater).

But in 02/03, we had a system which worked a treat but when Nicky Forster was injured, we  struggled to cope, and the 11/12 season saw us wedded to the Plan A of four-four-fucking-two which, in the season after, showed up the limitations of that side.

We’ve gone through all manner of formational tweaks this season – three, four or five at the back, wing-backs, no strikers, four centre midfielders – which is a significant difference to the 11/12 season and an ability likely to be of use in the Premier League. That said I think most fans still believe the team would struggle next year if we were to be promoted come May.

This is a strange kind of team – its limitations can be seen from the fact we haven’t really dicked anyone this year and we have, in turn, been thoroughly dicked ourselves on occasion. But the team spirit and the tactics (both Stam’s ideas and the team’s embracing of those ideas) alleviate this.

It is arguable this is something Reading fans haven’t experienced before, certainly in my lifetime; a team which shifts and evolves game-to-game and even mid-game rather than having a set system which works and sticking to it.

And this is all down to Stam and Tevreden.

Further, it shouldn’t be forgotten that this has been a revolutionary past year – a dozen new signings, a new manager and a new director of football in the summer, an extra five signings in January and the constant ownership uncertainty between and lingering.

To be keeping pace with the top two at this stage of the season is nothing short of remarkable and to reach the play-offs this year would be a stunning achievement.

These are points needed to secure 6th place in the last ten seasons - 74, 78, 72, 68, 75, 75, 70, 74, 70, 75 – an average of 73.

Put another way, that’s four more wins from our remaining 14 games. To compare, Fulham have to win more than half of their remaining games (8 of 15) to reach the 73 point mark.

But whatever happens from this point on, this season should be marked as a success.

TFI, the FA Cup and ticket prices

Everything that could be written in ten days about football ticket prices has been written in the last ten days and, with that in mind, have some more related content.

There is a more or less universal feeling that football is overpriced – if not ticketing, then all that comes with it; food, drink, replica shirts are all marked up football fans with, conversely, the quality going down (the Carlsberg and Fosters served at football grounds is somehow less appetising than it is normally).

Paradoxically, as a lapsed fan who does not go to many Reading homes games now as they cost too much for me, I feel as if ticket costs at the Madejski aren’t that bad – they’re too expensive for me in the sense there is more now I’d rather spend 25 quid on than watching another season of rudderless mediocrity.

If memory serves, tickets for matches when Reading were in the Premier League were similarly sensibly priced, despite the fact in a 24,000-seater stadium, the club could probably have got away with charging almost as much as they would like.

Furthermore, the young person’s season ticket introduced this year is also a massive step forward – if I had been a year younger, one would certainly now sit in my wallet.

Reading still have the wider football problem of overpriced tat and dubious quality food and drink, but the bottom line is you don’t have to pay for those, it is a choice (unless you have kids I suppose) and if one had to opt between relatively low ticket prices and low-cost extras, the preferred option should be obvious.

And, for non-season ticket holders like myself, the last week of this month allows you to go to three games in a week for £15 – a bloody good deal if ever there was one. £10 for a home FA Cup tie, a home freebie for friends of season ticket holders via a Reading scheme (a curious attempt to re-brand TFI – or The Fan Initiative) and £5 for an away day at Charlton Athletic, courtesy of an initiative run by the South London club.

All cheap, all good PR, everyone’s a winner.

However, the rub is, how many tickets would be sold for a cup tie against West Brom, a Tuesday night home league game against Rotherham and, from Charlton’s point of view, a match against a resolutely mid-table outfit, albeit while in a relegation battle, if tickets were priced normally?

From there, different tactics have to be used to sell tickets as the supply simply will not there – 13,000 for each of Reading’s home games in that week would be a reasonable target one imagines. In a 24,000 capacity ground.

Ergo, extra efforts have to be made to get people into the stadium and this fans vs customers argument works both ways; the cheaper it is, the more likely it will get your custom. Many economics terms sit uneasily in the realm of sport, but supply and demand works to an extent, especially if you’re not a fan of a Premier League regular where the lesser demand means fans who get fleeced will stop going and not come back or be replaced and the accountants are aware of this.

So, if Reading’s three games in a week were a cup tie against Manchester City and two Premier League games against say Newcastle and Aston Villa (two sides also in relegation battles like Rotherham and Charlton), that £15 fee for three games would probably be increased by 500%.

No harsh words should be levelled at clubs which slash ticket prices and run schemes to get more fans in their ground, especially kids, teenagers and people in their early 20s, but the wider context has to be appreciated that would these initiatives be run if most matches so far that season had been played at stadiums 90% sold out?

One suspects not.

Play-offs good, promotion bad. Thoughts ahead of Reading's last game of the season

The journey is more often than not far more enjoyable than the destination. The commute into work, the slow process of getting drunk rather than actually being drunk and watching The Dark Knight Rises are all disappointing testament to this.
Oh, as is promotion to the Premier League, which the comparison with the commute to work is probably most apt.
Flying through on green lights/ tearing apart all-comers? Check.
Dreams of endless possibilities that can be achieved in the day/season to come? Check.
Ultimate disappointment and looking forward to getting home/back to the Championship? Checkity, check, check.
And so we come to the last day of this season with Reading battling to secure a play-off place which a win against Burnley on Saturday will secure.
But is promotion really something we, as fans, would or, perhaps should, want?
In the optimistic aftermath of our last two promotions, Reading fans were rightly hopeful of achieving a modicum of success in the top flight. The glorious 2005/06 season where records were smashed and the 2011/12 campaign where we came from nowhere to win the title both hinted at a long-term plan and a team capable of competing at a higher level.
The promises of the 106 season proved to exceed expectations - albeit for one season - while the 2012/13 Premier League season probably paints a better picture of what we should expect if we were to win the most unexpected of promotions this season.
The feeling throughout the 2011/12 season throughout the superb second half of the campaign was when our opponents were going to find out our limitations and exploit them and this season, our form has been even worse yet somehow we are in the play-off picture.
With all due respect, this squad is not as good as the 2011/12 season let alone the 2005/06 vintage - though possessing the trademark character and strength of will associated with a lot of Reading teams so far this century - so what could we expect in the Premier League next season?
Presumably, with no investment looking likely, weekly batterings, non-existent confidence in the squad and relegation by early April would probably be a fair assessment.
Furthermore, if the club does get promoted and is suddenly far more attractive to an oversea moneybags buyer a) what chance fair and due diligence will be done on them in the rush to get some cash and b) how likely is it to expect funding to be in place for new signings outside of a late August, Crystal Palace-style splurgefest last summer which Tony Pulis has proven to have been completely futile?
Football may well be about the glory, but those who cannot see a long-term plan and decry anyone not wanting promotion immediately to be unambitious are themselves incredibly naive.
I would be delighted with a play-off place and even a play-off final as it can be enjoyed stress-free with no desire for promotion, similar to the Swansea play-off final in 2011 which was nowhere near as heartbreaking as 1995 or 2001, no matter what anyone says.
A few years at Championship level building properly and steadily is no bad thing. The clubs more successful at establishing themselves in the Premier League in recent years - Wigan, Stoke, Swansea - spent a few years in the Championship laying the foundations of becoming a Premier League team.
We've had the chance twice, but failed to take it for one reason or another. This time around, we have a talented crop of youngters coming through which, coupled with Nigel Adkins' track record of blooding young players, bodes well for long-term building with the right leadership from the board.

But that's another issue for another day.