Anton: There are funds available

Reading owner Anton Zingarevich has said there will be funds for Brian McDermott to sign players in January, but says the rumour of bring 10 new players is purely speculation.

The Russian tycoon publicly gave his full backing to Brian McDermott despite some doubts over his future, even before the victory against Everton on Saturday. Anton was also quoted to have wanted to sign Arsenal forward Andrei Arshavin and maintains that if the Russian was available for transfer, the Royals would be interested.

Speaking in his in-depth interview, Zingarevich said: ‘There will be funds available, but we`ll sit down and see what we want to do. We`ll have to effective. There are teams that spend money and teams that do it in an effective manner. We`ll show what our thinking is, last January we brought in new players and did what we needed to do.’

‘For the sake of bringing in new players, we knew what we need to do to the team and that`s what we did. What I really said is that I was asked the question about Arshavin, what do you think of him as a player. I said he`s a good player, I was asked if we`d be interested in him and I said if he`s available like other 10 or 15 players.’

Anton spoke to journalists Russell Kempson and Laurie Whitwell before our encounter with Everton and the full transcript can be found on the Official Reading FC website here