Matt Mills

[Gubbins]

Terrible signing in the end but a question I'm intrigued by is if he really was as bad a player as some of you are describing how the hell did he captain Reading to finish 3rd (I think) the season before?? He must have had some level of ability or was that just a one off season?

[Mike Oxlong]

7 hours ago, Blue Fox 72 said:

"He preceded to do something that I probably shouldn't mention"

 

"Off I stumbled"

 

Sounds like the infamous NP Sheffiekd kiss! 

Not the cough and drop then ? 

[Saxondale]

Sven made some naff signings. That said, I quite like Gelson Fernandes, but he never lasted long.

[Lambert09]

"I stumbled" the useless pr*ck cant even admit that he got dropped

[Tuna]

4 hours ago, z-layrex said:

Matt Mills, Neil Danns, Beckford... the very definitions of midtable Championship obscurity.

Didn't Dougie Freedman sign them all for Bolton?

[Danizen]

He's got to much class to say but I'd love to hear Pearson's version of what happened in that office. I'm sure Mills wasn't just calmly asking why he got dropped...err...before he got dropped again. 

[z-layrex]

3 hours ago, The Horse's Mouth said:

Do think its harsh on Danns, he at least gave it is all and wasnt a bad little squad player the other two were big time Charlie's 

Not saying he's not a good bloke, but he was crap. More interested in song writing than football.

[Jaspa]

Nige knows a wrong'un when he sees one. Not like he didn't give players chances, Ben Marshall for example had huge potential but clearly didn't have the attitude. Mills wasn't right for captaincy and was being paid too much while the ethos early on under Nigel's second spell was 'trim the spend for ffp by cutting dead weight, build a capable squad', that was fully achieved. Mills went onto mid-table Championship mediocrity, we didn't.

[don_danbury]

1 hour ago, Gubbins said:

Terrible signing in the end but a question I'm intrigued by is if he really was as bad a player as some of you are describing how the hell did he captain Reading to finish 3rd (I think) the season before?? He must have had some level of ability or was that just a one off season?

https://hobnob.royals.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=107642

 

they seemed pretty happy for him to go. so probably was never that good to begin with tbh

[The Horse's Mouth]

16 minutes ago, z-layrex said:

Not saying he's not a good bloke, but he was crap. More interested in song writing than football.

 the GOAT

[OntarioFox]

7 hours ago, South Shire Fox said:

Remember at the time there were rumours going round that Pearson stuck the nut on him 😂. He was down training at ‘The Gym’ behind the Highcross with Jon Stevenson a few days later so must of been completely ostrasized from the Club. How a footballer of his ability had an Audi R8 like he did ill never know.

Jeez, I can even remember the personalised numberplate it had in the car park. It spelt "Mills". 

Not being funny, but he strikes me as exactly the sort of self-important melt to drive an Audi with a silly numberplate. He was just being paid enough to drive an R8.

Honestly, I'd kind of blanked the memory of a lot of those Sven-era signings out of my memory, and Mills in particular. What an absolute farce to hand him the club captaincy without him having done anything to earn it - Matt Oakley might not have been a world-beater, but at least he had the hard work and humility that such a position warrants.

The Sven era did have a few players I remember fondly - Gelson Fernandez, Yakubu and Sol Bamba - but that was balanced out by some of the worst dross our club has brought in post-Tater Peeler. Michael Ball, Diomansky Kamara, the elusive Leon Crnčič... the OTHER Ricardo... good lord...  

I also distinctly remember, during the Sven Days, desperately wanting Vassell to pick up and become a world-beater, despite him obviously being past his prime. He was the big "marquee" signing for me, but he did very little in truth.

I think Sol Bamba being the fan's favourite during that time - a limited defender with a pound-shop Franz Beckenbauer streak who scored the odd goal to mask his frailties - sums it up really. Flair, flash and fancy signings above team balance and squad unity.

Matt Mills was top of that pile - the only thing more inflated than his wage being his own ego, as pretty much everything to come out in the washing since has seemingly confirmed. A shocking signing, and one I'm comfortable in declaring one of our worst ever, if not the worst, based on the dismantling of that rebuilding in League One that it represented.

The fact that Big Nige came in like a ton of bricks - possibly literally in Mills' case if this interview is to be believed - is another reason to be thankful. How different things could have been if it was allowed to continue. Hot take, but I think Nigel's second stint was even more important for the trajectory of our club that put us where we are today than his first.

Said it before, i'll say it again - bloody love the bloke. 

Edited 19 August 2020 by OntarioFox

[Fox92]

1 hour ago, Saxondale said:

Sven made some naff signings. That said, I quite like Gelson Fernandes, but he never lasted long.

Nuge and Kasper weren't bad!

[SmuelMartin]

I recorded with Matt Mills yesterday.

 

Will be out tomorrow 👍🏻👍🏻

[UniFox21]

I don't like how Mills has come out and suggested Pearson left him "stumbling". Either come out and tell the full story or just say they had a discussion and he was forced to leave the office. This just makes him look a proper twat

[Gamble92]

3 hours ago, Fox92 said:

I remember a Reading fan on here saying Mills only performs on games on the tv, we all said he was bitter but he was right.

 

Mills was terrible. I'm not surprised Pearson didn't want him.

We should have loaned him for the lockdown matches then

[davieG]

8 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

I don't like how Mills has come out and suggested Pearson left him "stumbling". Either come out and tell the full story or just say they had a discussion and he was forced to leave the office. This just makes him look a proper twat

Pearson knows where he lives 

[Spudulike]

The Matt Mills debacle would've been eclipsed by Nicky Maynard, had we signed him. 

[Corky]

34 minutes ago, SmuelMartin said:

I recorded with Matt Mills yesterday.

 

Will be out tomorrow 👍🏻👍🏻

Give him our best wishes  

[don_danbury]

23 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

The Matt Mills debacle would've been eclipsed by Nicky Maynard, had we signed him. 

what a load of balls he was. so much hype  

[UpTheLeagueFox]

6 hours ago, Gamble92 said:

Agree with all of them, although i think Curtis Davies did initially look a class above. He soon adopted the attitude of the rest of them though.

 

I was in awe of Yakubu. Looked out of shape, unhealthy, lazy but his technique was ridiculously good and the things he did were levels above the championship. 

I've got to know Curtis Davies a bit in recent years. He is one of the best professionals around with an exemplary attitude. Superb bloke too.

 

As for Yakubu, one performance at Forest stands out. The most pitiful effort I've possibly ever seen from one of our players. I was working that day and absolutely seething in the press box.

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

1 hour ago, OntarioFox said:

The Sven era did have a few players I remember fondly - Gelson Fernandez, Yakubu and Sol Bamba - but that was balanced out by some of the worst dross our club has brought in post-Tater Peeler. Michael Ball, Diomansky Kamara, the elusive Leon Crnčič... the OTHER Ricardo... good lord...  

 

Kamara was perfectly fine, didn't set anything alight but wasn't even the worst striker we got in under Sven - he was infinitely better than Roman Bednar, for example.

[Gamble92]

1 minute ago, UpTheLeagueFox said:

I've got to know Curtis Davies a bit in recent years. He is one of the best professionals around with an exemplary attitude. Superb bloke too.

 

As for Yakubu, one performance at Forest stands out. The most pitiful effort I've possibly ever seen from one of our players. I was working that day and absolutely seething in the press box.

I'm not discrediting Curtis Davies as an all round player (or person), i was defending him against a few who said he was of the same ilk as a lot from that Sven era. 

 

There's no doubt his performances dropped off, and the whole squad in that era just looked happy to pick up the money. Like i said previously, Pearson knew the sort of players it required to get out of the division and i'm just thankful we didn't go for another "big name" manager who'd have gone with exactly the same approach Sven did.

 

Yakubu was like that as a player. But he was that kind of 'luxury' player who was worth putting up with for that magic. Not to mention he was 58 when we had him 

 

Talking of Forest and the Sven era, having spent all my life in Nottingham, i always appreciated how good Vassell always was against them lot.

[The Horse's Mouth]

I cant even remember us having Kamara, I remember Bednar everytime I go to slag a player off though 

[Manwell Pablo]

9 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

I remember being genuinely amazed we had the money and ambition to sign Matt Mills, lots of us thought he was destined to be a top defender. He was abysmal with us, like so many of that era. 

He was good at Reading tbf, car crash here.

 

One thing I’ll give him is I can see why he’s talking about the Pearson fall out now and didn’t in the immediate fallout of it as that’d be deeply unprofessional.

[Ric Flair]

I thought Neil Danns did an OK job for us, but as soon as Pearson got Drinkwater and then James in it was easy to see why it was time for Danns to be moved on.