Shane long

Every player can be replaced. We lost Siggurdsson and his 20 goals a season and we replaced him. We lost Doyle and his goals and we replaced him. No player is irreplaceable.

I'm Andy.
We bought Mills for £5.5 from you guys i believe.
I've got to be honest here, but i didn't know too much about him before. Sounds a bit like our former captain, Steve Walsh.......a hero, brave, fearless, a leader.
Mills played today against Real Madrid and got stuck in by all accounts.............ended up with concussion so was subbed in the hope that scans reveal he is ok and can play in the opener against Cov next week.

Now I know why you are one of the richest clubs in the world....it's this academy isn't it.

Chase me chase me.

Swindon fan here. Had been looking forward to watching Shane long for a while. Felt a bit let own by his performance in today's friendly. Spent half the time falling over around the box, no doubt a tactic to get Harte his free kicks. He seemed to be winding himself
up in frustration of not getting on the score sheet bar a
penalty in the second half. Perhaps he thought it was going to be a bit easier than it was. Enjoyed watching Reading play some nice football and was pleased with Swindon for making a proper game of it. Both teams seemed to play their strongest teams but was expecting Long to give us more of a test. Nice to see Howard and Morrison back at the County Ground and can't understand why some town fans were booing Sean when he came on. All the best for the Season.

Good gate for a friendly as well,hope we do this again next year.

playthe pitch
"One more thing. If Reading are "financially very stable" then why are you even considering selling your better players? You've come close twice in the last 2 seasons of being there or thereabouts, so why sell a goalscorer?"


Well you are right up a point. We as Reading fans obviously prefer him to stay and spearhead another good campaign for us. I think McDermott (manager) and Madejski (chairman) are trying to be gentlemen here. Long came at the time of Doyle - Doyle was clearly well ahead of Long in ability terms then. But the club supported him, backed him - when he first came from Ireland didn't Shane even stay in digs with the McDermott family for a time before he could stand on his own feet? The club is a family one - how many on here know that Long and McDermott are both amateurish guitar players on the quiet - except that Shane is a fair bit better than his manager and has given him tips!! It's this sort of bonding that has kept Shane and the club very close, even when some of our fans said "wow, he can run so fast (100m in 11 seconds!) but is useless!". But he came good, and armed with a new confidence and influenced all the team-mates around him positively. Shane, in turn, pledged his loyalty ro Reading - many other players of his calibre would have left a season - or two - earlier. However, seeing as we didn't finally go up, the club in fairness felt that he should have the chance to realize his dream of cutting it in the premier, even if it weren't with Reading.

That basically, as I see it, is the feeling of this proposed transfer ...
daib0

8 million pound players don't pop up in academies no matter how good you claim your academy to be (average at best btw), so the fact you think he can simply be replaced underlines the fact that he is an average run of the mill championship striker who knocked in a FEW goals last season.
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We'll we replaced Sigurdsson who came from our academy, who we sold for £7.5 million after his first season where he scored less than "a few" goals, and replaced him with playing Long up front.
When Federici was out of the team we replaced him with McCarthy from our academy who proved himself against Man City and Everton.
Look out for Pearce, Karacan, Hal Robson-Kanu and Obita this season too.

West Ham offered around £5m, which was rejected by Reading.
Long has been quoted as saying he'd be interested in going to West Ham.
Reading might not need to sell him for financial reasons, but their hand could be forced as his contract expires next year.

daib0....
.......some good points made there, thanks.

It does make me smile when people say: " we won't sell to another Championship side".

What if Leicester offer £40m with a sell on clause.

Silly example I know, but it comes down to simple economics. It would still be in Reading's better interests to sell to Leicester for £7m than to Liverpool for £6m. If Leicester beat Reading to promotion it won't be made or broken on Shane Long, but the other 10 players in our respective teams as well.

The player's desire to move to another club in the same league is another matter altogether. You could argue that the only motivation would be money and, of course, he'd rather wait for that elusive PL offer.