Published: Thursday, 15th May, 2008 09:00
Hunt denies Sunderland link
By Anthony Smith
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STEPHEN Hunt has this week denied he is ready to jump ship and join Sunderland.
Black Cats boss Roy Keane is rumoured to be lining up a £10 million double swoop for Hunt and Royals’ team-mate Kevin Doyle.
Keane saw a £5 million offer for Hunt rejected in January but following their relegation to the Championship, Reading would find it hard to turn down that sort of money for two players who cost a combined fee of just £78,000.
However, Hunt insisted he has had no contact with Sunderland and denied he is eager to leave. “Until I hear otherwise I’m a Reading player,” he declared.
“There is a clause but I’ve always been 100% committed to the club and that hasn’t changed.
“This club has done a lot for me and I have strong feelings for it and for the fans. They’ve been brilliant every since I arrived.
“I’m not going to do a Jermaine Defoe and say I’m going so, until somebody tells me differently, I will keep going for Reading and look to come back refreshed for pre-season.”
Hunt, voted Reading’s Player of the Year, is currently back in Dublin where he has been helping Guinness launch a new hurling initiative.
The 26-year-old will then meet up with the Republic of Ireland squad today (Thursday) along with Doyle and Royals’ striker Shane Long.
The squad will then travel to a training camp in Portugal in preparation for the friendlies against Serbia and Colombia later this month when Hunt will also get married.
Hunt is fully aware of the speculation surrounding Reading manager Steve Coppell who is weighing up his future.
But he has no idea whether Coppell will still be here next season: “I’ve been trying to second guess the gaffer for 10 years now and I haven’t got it right once,” he said.
“I didn’t think he would leave Brentford so it’s very difficult to say what he will do but, personally speaking, I believe he is the best man for the job.”
Hunt has followed Coppell from Crystal Palace to Brentford and now the Madejski Stadium. And he admitted: “He’s been very important throughout my career and the same goes for most of the players here.
“The majority of us had never played in the Premier League before and he gave us that experience.
“But the gaffer is his own person. He will make his own decision and only time will tell what it will be.”
Whatever Hunt’s future holds, he believes Reading can cope with relegation because the club is run on a sound financial footing.
“In many ways Reading is quite unique in that it will never be in financial trouble,” he argued. “The chairman knows what he is doing and makes sure it is run properly.
“He has structured everything so that the club will be around for a long time, and hopefully that can be in the Premier League.
“Clubs like Bolton and Sunderland have spent time out of the top division recently. I don’t know if Reading are in the same category, we will see.”
And he added: “I think we will bounce straight back. The Championship is a tough division to get out of but we will go away, recharge the batteries and give it our best shot.
“We fell into the relegation zone at the wrong time. It was weird because we were beating Derby 4-0 and our fans suddenly went quiet when they heard Fulham were ahead.
“I suppose we could have scored seven to keep us up but it wasn’t about what happened in the last game. We weren’t good enough over the season.
“Our first season in the Premier League was great. We exceeded everyone’s expectations. But the Premier League is a tough, tough place to be. You only have to be a little bit off the pace and you get found out.
“But there is no point getting down about it and I believe that the club is strong enough to come back from this.”
Hunt though, says the blame lies with the entire squad, “Any relegated club has problems defending and scoring goals and the responsibility lies with everybody.
“We went into the relegation zone right at the end and we had no time to react. If it had happened earlier, we would have given ourselves more time to get out of it, our performances would have gone up a gear.
“But, at the end of the day, we just didn’t do enough. We fell short and Fulham got out of it playing good football.
“Credit to them. They played very well at our place and somehow they scraped through.”
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