by Tommy Youlden's Ears »
27 May 2009 17:12
strap Do you mean most successful who has left us recently? If so, will turn out to be Simon Cox - no argument at all.
If it's those still at the club, Pearce probably holds the accolade for now, although Karacan has potential and Simon Church is starting to get noticed. Hopefully James Henry will knuckle down and take his place o teh wing for us next saeason so we actually get to start matches with 11 footballers on the pitch for us for a change, and Baggie is going to be a big star in the not too distant future. Hopefully it'll be with us and not Swindon or elsewhere.
Letting Cox go for £200k was the worst bit of Business Sir Steve did whilst with us, and that includes the signing of Kebe. Yes I know Cox wanted 1st team football etc etc, but just a little bit more man management might have meant he would have been a 1st XI forward for us next year. It was pretty cxlear to anyone watching the FAC game v Spurs that Cox had something. Oh well, it's in the past. Just hope it's a lesson learnt.
Only bright side is we get 40% of sell on fee.
Interesting quote from Cox in new issue of 442 - says that when he went on loan "...Steve Coppell told me to go down there and do well. I scored eight goals in 18 starts and my fitness improved, so when I came back to Reading I felt ready to play a part in the first team set-up. When I discovered nothing had changed, that was it for me and I joined Swindon permanently in the January". We all know you can't keep everyone happy, but in retrospect, this looks like poor man management.
As has been written on HNA ad nauseum recently, let's hope that the change of manager and the exodus of the over-paid leads us to discover how good the current crop of youth really is, before it too gets driven away.