Craig Bellamy's Burnley claims will not change Reading FC minds | OneFootball

The Clarets' 2022/23 campaign may have been good, but Reading fans will argue that nothing comes close to their 2005/06 record-breaking season.

Burnley were comfortably the best team in the Championship during the 2022/23 campaign.

Having lost the likes of Nick Pope, Nathan Collins, Dwight McNeil and Max Cornet, and brought in quite a few players, it would have been understandable if they had stuttered during the season.

But following a fairly mediocre start to the campaign, they were also unstoppable under Vincent Kompany, who was able to guide the Clarets back to the Premier League at the first time of asking.

Losing just three league games during the season, they went on long unbeaten runs in the second tier that stretched from August to November 2022 and November 2022 to April 2023.

Looking at those losses, only one of those defeats was a convincing one, with their 5-2 defeat at Sheffield United a rare blip for them.

Against Watford, they were still getting into their stride considering it was only the early stages of the season, and they only lost 1-0 at Vicarage Road.

And how they didn't win against Queens Park Rangers in April 2023 is beyond many people, considering the chances they had against Gareth Ainsworth's side.

They had already won promotion by the time they played QPR though - and the fact the Lancashire side rarely took their foot off the gas was remarkable.

The 2023/24 Leicester City side looked set to be an even better team than the Clarets' 2022/23 squad, but the Foxes stuttered under Enzo Maresca as they were closing in on promotion and that took the gloss off their title win in the end.

Craig Bellamy, who was the Clarets' assistant boss during that wonderful season, recently spoke about how good the promotion-winning team was and what they had achieved.

He told the BBC: "We murdered the league, and it was that. It hadn't been done before.

"Someone else might have got five-odd points more [over a season] but, trust me, you didn't do what we did. Nobody did.

"We only lost three games all season and one of them was when we were already promoted. It was the manner in which we did it.

"From November onwards, nobody saw the ball, everywhere we went. Home or away, it was an annihilation. If teams got a 0-0 draw, they were applauding and doing a lap of honour. It was that good. It was just like 'wow'.

"We were so good without the ball, the intensity… and, with it, we were able to find different solutions, able to adapt."

The Clarets' 2022/23 campaign may have been good, but Reading's 2005/06 squad surely have to claim the title of being the best Championship team of all time, as things stand.

It may have been a completely different time back in 2005, but the Royals' squad didn't cost very much at all, with Leroy Lita their only seven-figure signing at the time.

He came in for £1m in the summer of 2005 and at the time, that was a club-record fee spent by the Berkshire outfit, who operated on a fairly modest budget.

Having missed out on the play-offs at the end of the previous season, Steve Coppell's side lost on the opening day of the 2005/06 campaign against Plymouth Argyle, but only lost one more league game after that during that term, with that coming away at Luton Town in February 2006.

The team's 106-point tally set a record that stands to this day with some title-winners since then not even coming close to that figure.

They may not have played passing football, but they played an exciting brand of football that got fans off their seats, with their wide players often making a real difference.

Their 4-4-2 system worked and their starting lineup didn't majorly change too often, with Kevin Doyle, Lita, and the midfield duo of Steve Sidwell and James Harper establishing themselves as crucial figures in the team.

Quite frankly, what they achieved was even more impressive than the Clarets' title win just over a year ago, and they deserved to break the record with their excellent attacking and defensive record, scoring 99 league goals during the campaign.