Former Southampton manager Nigel Adkins has agreed to take over at Reading, accepting the offer to manage the Royals until the summer of 2016, as reported yesterday in the Guardian. Reading owner Anton Zingarevich negotiated the deal with the recently fired Adkins on Monday night and said of the agreement,

“This is an appointment we have made both with the short and long term in mind and Nigel can take our club forward”.

Adkins replaces the recently fired Brian McDermott and takes over at the Madjeski with the team sitting 7 points away from safety and in second to last place in the Premier League.

It was widely reported that current Brighton manager and possible candidate for the Chelsea manager’s job, Gus Poyet, was Reading’s first choice and Zingarevich had been granted permission to speak with him about the Reading vacancy. Thankfully from the Blues point of view, the two parties could not come to an agreement which leaves Brighton still with their superb manager in place and Poyet still in the frame for the Chelsea manager’s post in the summer. Clearly contracts do not mean much these days but it would have been hard to think of Poyet joining Chelsea if he had just signed up to manage Reading a couple of months earlier.

So, fortunately as it turns out Gus Poyet is still a possibility for the Chelsea job contrary to the story we wrote last week and for the record Reading have done very well in grabbing Nigel Adkins who was very harshly treated by Southampton.

I hope to see Gus Poyet at Stamford Bridge in the near future and not just as a Sky Sports pundit.