McDermott’s record at Reading is lost in Russian

Sitting back in his simple, unfussy office at the Reading training ground, Brian McDermott talked about trust. “That’s a lovely word,” he said.

This was 11 months ago. Two days earlier Reading had beaten Nottingham Forest 1-0 to secure promotion back to the Premier League. A spectacular post-Christmas surge saw McDermott’s team win 14 of the 16 Championship games that preceded Forest.

McDermott remained soft-spoken and understated. He had just had his 51st birthday and was receiving a blast of sustained limelight for around the first time since 1979 when he made his Arsenal debut with long black hair and a wispy bodyswerve.

It is not every man and manager who talks this way, about “trust”, and among other things the Irishness of his upbringing in Slough: “I was born in England; my blood is Irish.”

You could tell Reading’s players liked him, trusted him, and it was easy to see why. Self- deprecation comes easily to McDermott.

In the past five days there could have been times when he may have felt he should have been less himself, more bumptious, grasping. That seems to work for some, after all.

It would not have been McDermott, though. Being Brian McDermott was working particularly well for Brian McDermott. On Thursday his interim successor, Eamonn Dolan, vouched for his friend's popularity.

Players disappointed

“The lads were on the floor,” Dolan said of Monday’s news. “Normally when a manager goes, by the nature of the job, some players may not be disappointed. In this situation every player was disappointed.”

Dolan was forced to quell talk that the new Reading owner, Anton Zingarevich, wants to pick the team for today’s match at Manchester United. It was not a good sign, but it is part of the changing parameters at the club.

Zingarevich was at the training ground that day last year. The son of a Russian billionaire had a spring in his step. In March Zingarevich had been in negotiations to buy a Championship club; in April he was in the process of acquiring one in the Premier League, one guaranteed £40m without even kicking a ball.

There were smiles everywhere. “It’s a good club,” McDermott repeated. He was an appropriate witness, having been at Reading in various guises, scout, coach, manager, for 13 years. He was part of the fabric.

He has been ripped from it, a decision that stems directly from the work McDermott and his players put in last season.

It is as if it is almost unacceptable to some owners that of the 20 clubs in the Premier League each season, three do not stay there. That does not make those clubs, or their managers, failures – though of course we have seen cases of collective failure – but in some eyes relegation is only failure.

That there is no context or memory any more seems like something we say increasingly frequently.

Presumably Zingarevich neither remembers nor cares that this week last year Reading could not win at Doncaster Rovers.

Had he been around that might have been deemed a sackable offence. Presumably Zingarevich has reduced interest in McDermott declining to move to Wolves. Presumably he sees no lesson in Wolves’s fortunes after Mick McCarthy’s departure last February.

Reading, for all the effort, are odds-on to go back down to the Championship, but instead of allowing McDermott room and time to plan for that eventuality – and next season – the key individual responsible for promotion has been axed.

Fighting hard

The same has happened at Southampton. Nigel Adkins was in charge as the Saints won two promotions yet was dismissed with his team running and fighting hard to stay in the Premier League.

Perhaps the new owners of Reading and Southampton think they have some right to Premier League football simply because they are there.

It is not like that and the frustration is that managers as proven and promising as Adkins and McDermott become collateral damage. Both men should only be better than they were a year ago; both will know more about themselves, their players and their clubs.

Of course both made errors, they are making numerous decisions per day. But neither will be able to build on their refined knowledge, not at Southampton or Reading.

The notion of someone being “a good servant” is overplayed – there are big salaries around – but that cannot erase the human factor. McDermott was at Reading a long time and has been removed by someone who has been there five minutes. McDermott is said to be “devastated” and who could blame him?

Zingarevich may have given consideration to the fact that McDermott had to sell Shane Long to West Brom at the start of last season, following on from the sale of Matt Mills to promotion rivals Leicester City, then spending giddily under Sven-Goran Eriksson. But if so, he’s hidden it well.

For clarification purposes, Reading beat Leicester home and away last season. It is another way to measure what Brian McDermott and Nigel Adkins did, to study the more ambitious, more fancied and richer clubs that did not win automatic promotion, or in the cases of Leicester, Leeds and Forest, did not make the play-offs.

Those three are still short of promotion, whereas Reading have the economic benefit of one season up and – probably – two seasons’ parachute payments.

But McDermott won’t be able to shape that fortune, just as he won’t be at Old Trafford today or his old club Arsenal next week. On various levels, professional and personal, those fixtures add to what was a dismal Reading decision. You lose trust.