Former Reading player Mick Gooding has criticised the club for not getting on top of handling their best players' contracts, during a recent interview that he gave to BBC Radio Berkshire.

The likes of John Swift and Tom Holmes are set to find themselves out of contract at the Select Car Leasing Stadium in the summer of next year, meaning that the Royals are at great risk of losing their best players for nothing.

In addition to the two aforementioned names, the Berkshire club also have several other names who could be without a club come the end of the campaign, highlighting just how difficult a position the team is in right now.

Now Gooding has taken aim at his former employers, as he stated the following on the situation recently:

"I was really surprised with the number of contracts that are up. It's lots and that's not great management. 

"I'm not having a pop at Veljko Paunovic here but the football club itself.

"You don't let those numbers of players - and you've got some really, really good players in there that you'd want to keep - you don't let them get into the last year of their contracts.

"What will happen is that they will see their contract out and then decide what options they've got at the end of the season and decide they can go and do a job for somebody else.

"It's not a good position to be in."

The likes of Rafael, Michael Morrison, Andy Yiadom, Scott Dann, Andy Rinomhota, Felipe Araruna, Josh Laurent, Junior Hoilett, Alen Halilovic, Femi Azeez and Marc McNulty make up the long list of players whose contracts are running down towards expiry.

Meanwhile the club are currently in the process of attempting to tie striker Andy Carroll to a longer term deal with them.

The Verdict 

This is a really bad position for Reading to find themselves in and as a result it wouldn't be surprising to see many of their current squad pack up and leave for clubs elsewhere.

They are now well and truly in a releagtion fight and there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding their financial situation.

Things are now looking rosy for the Berkshire outfit and clearly some decisions will need to be made over players as January approaches.

The likes of Swift are sure to attract plenty of interest, so it is just a question of whether they can get any money for him or any of the other players in the new year.