Reading Between The Lines

I am mid way through 6 weeks travelling around South East Asia so safe to say Reading FC has not been top of mind recently. However, long bus journeys leave a lot of time to kill so here are some thoughts.

Old news now but Noel Hunt was relieved as manager a few days into my trip. Noel Hunt was a favourite player of mine and that admiration only grew when he returned to the club and helped develop the pathway from academy to first team. While sacking him is certainly the right choice, I’m glad his reputation has not been too greatly dented by this stint in charge.

Ultimately, I think Hunt had a pretty clear picture of how he wanted his Reading side to look but simply was unable to execute it. Whether you put that down to inexperience, lack of support from on high or a natural consequence of a summer of upheaval is up for debate. For me, the worst parts of Reading under Hunt (aimless long balls, disjoined press) have seemed his inability to get the team playing the way he wants them to rather than his approach being completely wrong. That is not absolving him of blame and dumping it on the players, this coaching team has not been able to grow the good parts and diminish the weak parts over his tenure. Mediocracy rather outright terrible seems the right description for the team so there was always the glimmer that it might click. At the beginning it was when transfer comes in, when everyone has gelled or maybe when he changes formation. Excuses for the lack of improvement did ultimately run out though. I don’t think Hunt was a million miles off making a success of this but I also don’t feel confident he would have in a timeframe that was acceptable. Football is a shortsighted business but managers don’t get the long term if they can’t show signs of progress in the medium term.

One element I have found interesting with Hunt is the idea of how a young manager builds a coaching team. It is standard fair that when a manager joins a club they bring along a raft of coaches with them. Over time some of those coaches get left behind while others move from club to club. Sometimes, as we saw with JOP, coaches already in place when a manager joins make such a good impression they get taken along to the next club when a manager leaves. Coaching teams tend to be well established as relationships are built over time together. So if you are a young manager thrust into your first role, where do you begin in building one? Now, Hunt is experienced in the game and I’m sure has a good network but he’s also spent most of the last 4 years working at the club he has taken over. His working relationships are in place. If Hunt had taken over Tranmere and brought Ledge, Rob Shay and Scott Marshall with him no one would have blinked an eye but because two were already in the building and one used to be, they were viewed as cheap, below par options. Would things have been materially different if Gibbs had stayed or if Hunt’s first choice assistant manager, Richard Beale, had joined instead of Scott Marshall? My gut says no. I think Gibbs’ positive impact and Marshall’s lack of impact have both been massively over exaggerated by fans. Reality is we have no idea what either of them are responsible for or what impact they have had and just pointing to results is ridiculous.

Football, on and off the pitch, is full of fine margins. Whether a team is successful or not. Whether a young player ‘makes it’. Whether a manager turns the ship around. All these things have so many contributing factors and so many are out of the individual’s control. That isn’t a rally cry to keep backing an underperforming manager, just as small margins can mean bad performances and falling short of expectations the inverse is true. Reading will be banking on a new manager turning the tide and seeing some of those small margins fall our way.

Enter Leam Richardson.
While hardly the sexiest name on the market, if, as I believe, it was Hunt’s inability to execute his plan that was our biggest hurdle then bringing in a manager with a similar approach but more acumen could be a shrewd move. I fully expect refinement rather than reinvention under Richardson and I am moderately confident we will see the marginal gains needed to catapult us up the league. Emotional connection can be so important between staff and fans but I do think at this critical juncture for the club maybe a bit of emotional distance (not a lack of passion mind) may give the clarity and clear thinking we need to define what the next few years look like for this club.

What gives me some confidence that Richardson will be successful, at least short term, is I do believe this is a good squad and just needs the platform to succeed. A lot is often said about managers squeezing more than the sum of its parts out of a squad. Our squad is good enough that it doesn’t have to be better than the sum of its parts. Great if it is but performing to the level of the squad should see us performing like a playoff team.

In part 2 I look a little more at the Richardson’s early tactics and what it means for the players