overwrite the club’s mammoth losses<\/a>. The only way to truly repair Reading’s financial wounds is promotion.<\/p>\nFinally, Reading have got to approach games as if they’d made the Play-Offs this season, rather than as a team who stumbled at the final hurdle.<\/h3>\n
It can be difficult to carry the ‘success’ of a previous campaign into a new season when the last competitive games played were defeats, or the team struggled. It’s clear that the wind has been completely knocked out of the Royals’ sails in the final two months of the season, and mentally, this doesn’t bode well for the next.<\/p>\n
The two areas in which the Royals can help this are arguably Paunovic’s own attitude towards games, and pre-season.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2017, Reading’s pre-season campaign was poor. The Royals didn’t win a game, and regardless of the importance of friendlies, it can’t have aided confidence after the Play-Off defeat. This summer, it’s key that Reading harness some momentum in pre-season and head into the new campaign on the front foot.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Paunovic has often alluded to the fact that he treats every single game the same way, regardless of the magnitude of the tie. Whilst this could be seen as a way to take pressure off the players, it’s hard to say that the approach has worked. Too often, Reading have gone into games and started slowly, gone through the motions, and played like the underdogs despite being, for most of the season, a Play-Off side.<\/p>\n
You could legitimately argue that Reading have got to start approaching games with a little bit of pressure. A little bit of ‘oomph’ to set them off in first gear. Because, the last thing the club need – and, in reality, the club can handle as a business – will be lacklustre performances, dwindling crowds, and key players losing market value.<\/p>\n
COVID is unpredictable, and nobody quite knows how badly their clubs have been hit by the pandemic. But, in the ever-changing world of Reading FC, failure simply doesn’t seem to be an option next season.<\/p>\n
Follow us on Twitter @ProstInt\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n[columns]<\/span><\/p>\n[column size=”1\/2″][blog type=”timeline” posts=”10″ cats=”609″ heading=”EFL” heading_type=”timeline” \/][\/column]<\/span><\/p>\n[column size=”1\/2″][blog type=”timeline” posts=”10″ cats=”2830″ heading=”Reading FC” heading_type=”timeline” \/][\/column]<\/span><\/p>\n[\/columns]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reading’s lacklustre end to the season has rung alarm bells for some fans, but learning from this season’s failings and warnings from the past should put the Royals in a strong position heading into the 2021\/22 campaign. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":256750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[609,2,2830],"tags":[784,792,3596,2895,1887,3057],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259400"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259655,"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259400\/revisions\/259655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prostinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}