For the first six months of this season, Steve Coppell was the people’s choice to be England’s manager. Today he is staring down the barrel of relegation. The Reading team he led to eighth in the Premier League last season has hit the wall and, having failed to score in six matches, must win at Derby County today and rely on Portsmouth preventing Fulham from staying up.

“It’s a shame that we’re not in control of our situation going into the final game and depending on somebody else to play well for us,” Coppell said. He expects all clubs to play flat out even if they have nothing at stake this afternoon. “I trust the integrity of the league,” he says. “I know Derby will be flat out, Portsmouth and Blackburn [at Birmingham] too. I have got faith in the managers.

“I have an inner belief that we are capable. Given our record you can’t be confident but we have to have determination – there’s a chance of survival so we have to give our utmost and go for it.”

Coppell’s eyes meet his questioners’ full on. His lean features seem to have aged in a week. He is not tetchy in the face of interrogation, but he puts up the shutters to questions about whether he should have spent when the money was available for fresh talents, and what happens if Monday comes and Reading have fallen.

“It’s pointless thinking about it now,” he says. “We have a game at three o’clock Sunday, and we go from there. We will assess where we are at a board meeting on Monday.”

His only experience of relegation, with Crystal Palace in 1993, prompted his resignation. Will he stay this time, come what may? “Who can say?” he says. “I’m not dodging the question, but we have one game to play. If we win it, we’ve a chance. If we draw, less of a chance. If we lose, no chance.”

Coppell’s view is that the drop will not break the club, but staying up would put Reading on a financial footing that may never present itself again. It took the club 135 years to reach the highest grade in English football, and both Coppell and the owner, John Madejski, know that keeping Premier League status just as clubs banked £50m television payments a season each is a crucial opportunity.

Coppell, whose playing career was ended when a Hungarian boot destroyed his knee joint, had decided the players who won promotion were worth the chance they had sweated for. The first season proved him right; the second is taking that philosophy to the brink. Coppell was a player whose tenacity and work ethic took him from Tranmere to Manchester United and to the wing of England. He might suspect his decision not to buy in January, especially after losing key midfielder Steve Sidwell to Chelsea, placed too much trust in tiring players.

The thrill for Reading’s mainly home-grown players to play in the Premier League spurred them to make up with effort and enthusiasm what they lacked in class. But the seasons run on, preseason begins in June and those players had less time than they needed to regenerate body and soul.

Coppell remains a rational man, supposedly under no immediate threat of unemployment. The instant his knee was ruined 26 years ago, he described it as like a firework exploding inside the joint. The explosion now is all in the mind.