Mick Gooding is speaking to the Chronicle about staving off relegation with Reading but as always seems to be the case, the most painful memory is the one that pushes its way to the front.
“I played I think 20 seasons, started when I was 20 and played my last game when I was 40 and I got relegated once in those 20 years,” Gooding explains. “And without a shadow of a doubt it was the worst season of my life. It was horrible. It was really really horrible.
“I was at Chesterfield at the time not Reading, at the end of the season we were relegated with about three games to go and it’s the most terrible feeling I’ve ever had on a football pitch.”
This should tell you everything about the pain and suffering caused by relegation. It’s now more than two decades later and Mick Gooding only played 12 games for Chesterfield. But before even getting to the success of his multiple survivals with Reading, he feels obligated to touch on his lone heartbreak.
Thankfully, during eight years as player and manager in Berkshire, Gooding never suffered pain like that - although there were a few close calls.
One of the tightest escapes of all came in 1995/96 when Gooding adopted a player/manager role, leading the team alongside Jimmy Quinn while making 46 appearances in all competitions from midfield.
Eight wins in their first 36 games left Reading in deep trouble with just over a third of the way to go in the campaign. But crucial results came at crucial times and five victories in the last ten matches of the season saw the Royals stay up in the final week.
So what’s the key to survival?
“You just have to have that belief,” Gooding says. “It’s very very hard to keep the belief that you’ll get the results that you need. And that is the biggest part of it: having that mentality that you do believe.
“And a lot will be about who is managing the team. Obviously, in 95/96 it was a lot too close for comfort. Some of our better players had unfortunately been sold off. But you just have to have that belief - the more games that you don’t win or the more games you lose, that belief in yourself as a manager…it’s much much harder the longer the run goes. It’s much much harder to keep that belief going. But you have to.
“Because once you’ve lost that belief you might as well throw the towel in. It’s the same as a player - the players have to believe that they are good enough to get a result and they will do whatever they need to do - within the rules of the game - to get a result. It is hard. But as a player, your job is to give it your best every week.”
Reading once again survived the following season before eventually going down in 1997 under Terry Bullivant and Tommy Burns. In truth, they had very few close scrapes like the one Gooding oversaw in 1996 through the decades that followed.
Twice Reading were relegated from the Premier League in the ensuing years - the first time on the last day of the season in a spirited fight that just didn’t pay off. But it took until 2015 for them to be threatened with Championship relegation and until 2017/18 before something like a miracle was needed - and achieved.
Striker Yann Kermogant was nearing the end of his career during Jaap Stam’s second season in charge but he still made 30 appearances as Reading confirmed their survival on the final day of the season, by this point under Paul Clement.
Kermogant remembers the moment he realised Reading were in trouble.
“You sometimes feel that some of your teammates feel like it’s normal to lose - they have no reaction after a loss and that’s not good! In that situation, you feel ‘hmm we are in trouble,’” the Frenchman told the Chronicle.
“Because if after you lose games, you are still joking in the shower…I’m not saying you have to cry or stop living but you should be hurt when you are in this situation. And I think you should hate losing, even in training when you do small-side games. It starts there.”
After getting within penalties of the Premier League the season before, Stam’s second year started out with just three victories in the first 14 games. Once the momentum turned against them, Reading never quite got it back.
“Of course, it’s always difficult,” Kermogant explains. “You start the season wanting to fight at least for the playoffs. But there are 24 teams so you always get four, five, six, seven, even eight teams who are going to fight for not being relegated.
“The start of the season is always crucial because it’s like a spiral. If you start well, even if you don’t have the best squad, the confidence can be high and can make a great season.
“That's the most difficult thing. The mentality is hard when you’re at the bottom three/bottom four because when you’re near the top you’re all friends, you can all accept every kind of work, every kind of demand from your manager. When you’re near the bottom it’s completely different. You start to think; ‘is it your teammates’ fault? is it the manager’s fault?’
“But I think the most important thing in that situation is to try and stay together - which is easy to say but not easy to do. Every single player is human, has a different mentality and reacts differently to difficulties. So that’s where you have to have a strong mentality and be resilient.
“Sometimes you don’t understand why (you keep losing). But every situation is different so sometimes you change the manager because it’s not working anymore, sometimes you change the starting XI because some players are not giving what you expect from them. Sometimes it can be a good time together - a few days away to change your mindset, come back with a win and then you start winning again.
"But there is no certainty because we are all different and we all react differently. So there is no one solution but at least you have to try something.”
In Kermogant and Reading’s case that attempt to “try something” saw Stam lose his job as Clement was brought in and while Reading did indeed stay up, things weren’t particularly happy for the striker or the club under the former Chelsea coach. Clement didn’t last long - leaving the following December.
“When you need some big players with big character who refuse to lose games and are trying to fight for not being relegated, at some point I think he (Clement) had problems with some players…including myself…players with too much character who were fighting on the pitch at training and stuff like that. Because it makes some electricity in training. That’s what you need.
“Sometimes I would go as far as that but you need a fight between players, a proper fight, to expose the problems and move forwards. Because if you’re too nice with each other when you’re close to going down, I think that’s not the right mentality. And I think he (Clement) didn’t like it with me or Paul McShane because we hated losing even in training and if we saw someone not giving his maximum we were like screaming.
"He didn’t want that, he just wanted us to be nice with each other. And that’s not what you need when you need to fight.”
Fight and belief are clearly the focal points to any relegation battle (hence the ‘battle’ tag) but tactically what can be done to get over the line?
Mick Gooding now features as a commentator on BBC Berkshire and as he’s watched Reading leak an almost incessant stream of goals, 27 in total since the new year, he can’t help but think back to what worked for him.
“Unfortunately, Reading seem to be very very easy to play against at the minute,” Gooding explains. “Listen, there are lots and lots of factors but the longer the run goes on the less confidence the players have and confidence is such a huge part of any sport, of any walk of life.
“It’s so difficult to keep that belief and that confidence but in most of the teams, certainly the Reading teams I played in that struggled, you have to make yourself hard to play against. And sometimes it’s really boring!
“But I honestly believe…what you do is you just drill the players day after day after day, that ‘right, when we’ve lost the ball, this is our shape. This is where I need you to be as quickly as you possibly can, this is where I need you to be.’ So the players know exactly what’s expected of them, out of possession.
“And sometimes - I had it as a player - we’d go to the training ground and it would be so boring. We would be drilled for hour after hour after hour about what our jobs were out of possession.
“Now I honestly think that it’s much easier to build a team that’s hard to play against than it is to build a team that will create lots and lots of chances and score lots and lots of goals. That’s the hardest bit in football: scoring goals and creating chances. The defensive bit - and I know a lot of defenders might say I’m talking rubbish - but it’s a lot easier to get your team organised when you haven’t got the ball, to make it difficult for other teams to play against you.
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“Sometimes it is boring because you’re just repeating what you did an hour ago or the day before. But all of the players need to understand exactly what’s expected of them when you’re not in possession of the ball. And if everybody understands their job is out of possession, then it really does make it more difficult to play against that team - without a shadow of a doubt.”
Ultimately, though, in Gooding’s experience it all comes down to one central theme: belief. If you have it, anything is possible. But once it’s lost…
“You just have to have that belief,” Gooding says. “And as a manager you have to lead and you have to show the players that you’ve got total belief in terms of what you’re doing and total belief that you will get the results that you need to stay in the league. And after the playoff final that was our job, to keep the team in the Championship. And thankfully we did that!”
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