Daily Mirror today - Reading

[Dave the OAP]

If yopu have the mirror or can get hold of a copy, check out Oliver Holt's article on Reading.

It makes Andy naylors article look like a Dick Knight love story.


He hates Madjeski with a pssion....the article makes very good reading

 

[Common as Mook]

I'm sure the article is great - but I could never bring myself to buy that fish and chip paper.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

I'm sure the article is great - but I could never bring myself to buy that fish and chip paper.

Nowt wrong wi' The Mirror

 

[Dave the OAP]

I'm sure the article is great - but I could never bring myself to buy that fish and chip paper.

someone at work buys it...."ahem"

 

[Curious Orange]

This article, Dave?

from the Daily Mirror


READING HAVE PUT THE BERKS INTO BERKSHIRE
Oliver Holt 21/02/2007

SO READING'S season is a fairy tale is it? Excuse me for a second while I decide whether to giggle or gag.

Okay, that wasn't too hard. I'll gag. Because I don't see any fairy story at Reading. I don't see romance, either.

I'll be honest. I don't like the club. I don't like what it stands for.

That starts at the top with a self-satisfied poster boy of conspicuous consumption and Tory donor, chairman John Madejski.

I don't think you should ever, ever trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle, or a bloke who is complicit in having a stadium named after him. What a joke that is.

No doubt the board begged and pleaded with him to allow them to recognise his outstanding contribution to Berkshire life. No doubt it was absolutely none of his doing. But I don't care how much money he's poured into the club.

Name a stadium after Tom Finney or Stanley Matthews or Bobby Moore. Name it after Alex Ferguson, Paul Gascoigne or Bill Shankly. But not after a guy who made his money from a magazine flogging used cars.

Perhaps Madejski simply couldn't call to mind a famous Reading player. Come to think of it, neither can I.

But even Doug Ellis drew the line after naming a stand at Villa Park in his honour. He couldn't quite muster the hubris to go the whole hog and adopt the - entire ground.

But not Madejski. He's got all sorts in his name. Some Fine Rooms at the Royal Academy of Arts, too, apparently. Whatever they are.

I read an interview with him in The Independent last year. The reporter noted that a copy of the Rich List, in which Madejski figures prominently, was placed on a table nearby. Gag, gag, gag.

It's not just the chairman, though. I know times are changing fast but I could have sworn that fairy tales didn't used to feature skull fractures and concussions.

I don't care whether Reading finish sixth. You know what, even if they overtake Chelsea and Man United, romp the title and win the FA Cup as well, my abiding memory of their debut Premiership season will always be Stephen Hunt kneeing Petr Cech in the head.

That's their bequest to this campaign. The first team to disable two opposition keepers in the same game. Let's think of a name for the fairy tale that unfolded that day, shall we.

Snow White and the Seven Stretchers. Beast and the Beast. Barbie in It's a Knockout. Then, of course, Reading played the poor little underdog card, proclaimed their innocence and escaped scot-free. Gag, gag, gag.

A few months later their coach, Wally Downes, who really ought to be led to the dugout in a muzzle and restraints, had the gall to accuse Sheffield United boss Neil Warnock of urging his players to injure opponents.

Funny that, given that it was only a few seconds earlier when Reading midfielder Steve Sidwell produced another of the worst tackles of the season with an over-the-top lunge on Chris Armstrong.

I hope the FA throw the book at Downes when they get him down to Soho Square and tell him his tiresome Crazy Gang garbage went out with the dinosaurs.

Then there's Whispering Steve Coppell, another soul bursting with romance.

That's why he blew the chance to get his side into the quarter-finals of the FA Cup on Saturday when he played his second team at Old Trafford.

There's more joie de vivre in a door mat at a funeral home than there is in the laughing boy in charge of Reading.

Coppell couldn't be bothered to attend the post-match press conference on Saturday night. He was too busy raving it up with a cup of tea in a room next door.

So he sent his man on earth and scorer of the Reading equaliser, Brynjar Gunnarsson, instead.

Gunnarsson hails from Iceland and, yes, I know it's unkind but a 2lb pack of Petits Pois from the deep freeze would have spoken with more animation than him.

The reporters, better men than me, who persevered magnificently in asking him questions, deserved commendations for endurance in the face of determined and desperate tedium.

The Iceman cometh and Iceman sendeth fast asleep.

I almost forgot the Reading fans. A contingent of them anyway. They're the rabid bunch who made it their speciality to behave in an especially unhinged fashion towards former managers.

Alan Pardew got the full treatment when he was leaving for West Ham. Mark McGhee was another treated with gratitude and respect whenever he returned.

And I think that's just about covered it. Except I've just remembered I'm doing a phone-in on Radio Berkshire on Friday evening.

Should be a lorra lorra laughs, as John Madejski's favourite theatre companion might say.

 

[Napper]

the mirror is great

 

[Man of Harveys]

Christ, what a dumb, mean-spirited article. I mean, I don't like the club, or John Majeski, or their twatty yokelly teenage plastic fans very much either, but I can't see how anyone could take anything away from Coppell and what he's doing this season. I've found myself really wanting them to win, I think he's achieving miracles.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

Christ, what a dumb, mean-spirited article. I mean, I don't like the club, or John Majeski, or their twatty yokelly teenage plastic fans very much either, but I can't see how anyone could take anything away from Coppell and what he's doing this season. I've found myself really wanting them to win, I think he's achieving miracles.

What he said.

 

[Starry]

Nowt wrong wi' The Mirror

Not much right with it either.

 

[Tubby Mondays]

Oliver Holts mum is Emily Bishop.

 

[bhafc4eva]

Brilliant article, not really fussed by Reading either way to be honest. A club with as much history as MK Dons and a set of muppet fans.

 

[Icy Gull]

We're gonna need a Madjeski when Falmer is approved. the man has done a fantastic job, who cares if you like him or not.

Pathetic article written by someone who is obviously too bitter to see what the bewigged one has done for Reading.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Why Holt left The Times to write for that comic I'll never know.

 

[hans kraay fan club]

We're gonna need a Madjeski when Falmer is approved. the man has done a fantastic job, who cares if you like him or not.

Pathetic article written by someone who is obviously too bitter to see what the bewigged one has done for Reading.

Totally right.

Madjeski is still a cock for naming the ground after himself though.

I hope our future sugar daddy is a little more self-efacing.

Van Hoogstraten Arena, anyone?

 

[Lady Whistledown]

I agree that chairmen who name stadiums or parts of them after themselves are decidedly annoying, and some of the media fawning after the draw at Old Trafford last weekend ("Plucky Reading Minnows Hold Man U" etc- FFS! They're sixth in the Premiership so it was hardly a shock) was ridiculous.

But I think the overall tone of the article is a bit mean, try as I might I still can't quite see Hunt has deliberately injured Cech, and I have plenty of respect for Coppell.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

A club with as much history as MK Dons and a set of muppet fans.

Muppet fans, well you'll find plenty who'd agree, but to say they've no history is a bit harsh, they're one of the oldest clubs in the league, significantly older than the Albion in fact. Founded in the 1880s, unless I'm very much mistaken.

Now if you're talking WINNING-stuff type history, that's different, but then you could say that about most clubs over the years.

 

[Curious Orange]

I agree that chairmen who name stadiums or parts of them after themselves are decidedly annoying, and some of the media fawning after the draw at Old Trafford last weekend ("Plucky Reading Minnows Hold Man U" etc- FFS! They're sixth in the Premiership so it was hardly a shock) was ridiculous.

But I think the overall tone of the article is a bit mean, try as I might I still can't quite see Hunt has deliberately injured Cech, and I have plenty of respect for Coppell.

Can't disagree with that. It also has to said that Reading actually did put out a fairly decent team against Man U - it certainly wasn't 'the kids' he played.

 

[Bluejuice]

I quite liked it at first, belittling "everybody's second club" as the nothing team they really are but it did get a bit pathetic criticising Coppell who I still have a lot of time for and I think it was ultimately a bit unnecessary.

I'm sure Oliver Holt used to write for the Times didn't he?

How these people can bring themselves to dumb down their journalism so drastically is beyond me sometimes.

Still, gotta be grateful that finally SOMEBODY has spoken out on that poxy club that ACTUALLY not everybody has a soft spot for.

 

[Deano's Right Foot]

Good article up until he started going on about the Stephen Hunt thing. I think Holt must be a bitter Chelsea fan.

 

[Dave the OAP]

The only decent thing about the Madjeski is:


London Irish vs Newcastle

Saturday 3rd march 15:00







Oh yes...and you can park your car next to the ground