Good post, though I think you should be more accurate here as it's very important in my opinion. Just because Reading and QPR choose to pay players 20k a week, it doesn't meant that they can. In fact, looking at the financial bother than both clubs are in, it seems that actually they can't remotely afford to pay such wages. I have a friend who supports Reading, who is sure that a lot of chickens will be coming home to roost very very soon.
We wouldn’t be ruled out of signing players of that quality because of any plan. Football has changed. Hendrie these days would cost 2-3 million (affordable) but expect wages of 35-40 grand for example. We are left with a pool much smaller and with less ability to choose from. Of that list we would have a chance with Neil Thompson the rest we would be nowhere near. In years gone we would have been able to sign Matty James. Now there is zero chance. The days where we could sign a peak David Geddes are long gone. The plan was part of our reason for relegation. Selling our experienced centre half because of his age. Not recruiting an experienced central midfielder. Not fighting harder to retain Scowen. Allowing a situation to develop where we had to, in essence, recruit a new team. It is imperfect. It will need adjusting when we get promotion. So far the 3 years we have been doing it have been much more interesting as a fan that what came in the previous 10 but it definitely needs tweaking as and when necessary.
I'll you summat, when we were 2-0 down to Millwall and it was about -10 and I was getting covered in snow at the back of the Ponty, I wasn't thinking, "Hmmmm, this is very interesting."
The whole of Mark Robins tenure I basically slept through in the cold whilst dreaming of doing something more interesting like alphabetising my can cupboard. Most of Hill’s Ill fated tenure I would rather have been grouting the tiles. When Flicker went mad was a bit entertaining. Davey apart from the cup run was the sort of football for people who don’t like football.