Knee-jerk Takeaways From Reading’s July

July, then. It definitely happened. It happened a bit too much, frankly speaking, with World Cup exits and acrimonious FIFA behaviour. What didn’t really happen much was Reading. Much like June, the most just slowly slipped by and, when we arrived at the final week, all the things happened.

I think we all assumed that, with pre-season kicking off and the holidays finished, momentum of things happening would carry onto into July. It did not. Until the last week. Again.

Indeed, quite a lot of things happened. There was very nearly nothing to react to up until that final week, but there is. So, as is the tradition, here are the (sort of) immediate thoughts and opinions on the events in July: the knee-jerk reactions.

Onwards we go into August, when the next lot of reactions will have real, actual competitive games to discuss. What a time to be alive.

shirt

I’ll talk about football shirts all day long and indeed have done a couple of articles ranking them or discussing specific releases. Having said that, this one genuinely has quite a few points of discussion attached to it. Besides the obvious, too – though I’ll get to that.

Why did it take so long, first and foremost? Well, I suspect the finalisation of the new sponsor was at least a part of this or the major driver but then, still, why did that take so long to organise?

Right then, the shirt itself. First impressions: it’s nice BUT it’s a bit QPR-y. If ever the word “QPR-y” existed, then this is the appropriate moment for it to be used. What does it are the red lines bordering the hoops. It doesn’t necessarily detract from the overall design, but you can’t help but wonder how it would look without the red lines. The red bordering the edge of the sleeves, however, is absolutely fine.

It gets so much else right: the hoops extending out to the sleeves is an essential part of the recipe for a good football kit, and they learned from the past to do this.

What I do find odd is that they didn’t extend this to the back of the shirt and left it completely white. While I get that the space will be used for the players’ numbers and names, if like me you don’t play for Reading Football Club and prefer not to have a name and number on the back, it feels like a bit of a dead space.

Then there’s the price. Niall said it all, really. However, last season the cost was £58 for the home shirt in an adult size. The season before, £55. Now it’s £60.

I also didn’t yet see any reduction in price of the previous season’s kit, or training kits, for that matter. I guess you can summarise the point by saying this: yes, you risk making less money when you’re selling them for £40, but then you might just end up selling more to balance the deficit.

Why not trial the difference? The cost could always be made up in the aggregate of the season-ticket price the following season, if it didn’t work.

However, the main issue is something I’ve seen very few people pick up on: the shorts. White shorts are an absolute no. Why? Just ask the women’s teams.

Overall though, these are mostly just minor design complaints and it is a good shirt. Let’s hope the trend continues for the release of the away and third kits.

I think Ben and Ross nailed this in the recent podcast, which if you haven’t heard, you should absolutely listen to. The biggest insult is Joe Jacobson dressing up Mr Vegas as a sponsor who want to do things to help the community, in keeping with our ethos of being a community and family club.

Right… except, the sponsor can’t be present on the kids’ shirts, nor will it be on the women’s kits. Surely that’s a red flag? Not to mention the previous sponsors – Select Car Leasing – are an absolute pillar of the Reading community.

The reality is, with the pun very much intended here, if you’re going with a betting company as your sponsor then just call a spade a spade; acknowledge it’s for the money. It can be sold as “the extra money gained through the partnership allows us to fund elements of the club like the academy and invest in improving the stadium and the first-team squad”. Simple, not condescending.

I’d be interested to know how much more money we get from this sponsorship deal compared to the previous. If it’s a matter of thousands then was it really worth it? If we are talking millions then I think the transparency of that would be understood by the fanbase.

We might not agree with it as a fanbase, but at least the honesty about how we can benefit will be there. Personally: I don’t like it but I get it. I’ve just got to like it or lump it and get on with it.

The small comfort from this is – and it really is the smallest comfort – at least the sponsor’s typeface and colouring actually doesn’t look out of place on the new shirt.

sponsor

Just good eggs really, aren’t they, those Select Car Leasing lot? I don’t generally think Reading fans have an affinity with sponsors, save perhaps for AutoTrader given that was Sir John Madejski’s business. Perhaps Kyocera as well, given they were the sponsor for our first foray into the Premier League.

Select Car Leasing though really went above and beyond in the bad times. It’s great they’re still connected to the club, and I’ve made my peace with the stadium name after what SCL did for us.

It’s a shame to see them moved to the back of the shirt, but at least they’re still there – and will remain there for the kids’ shirts (I suspect more because of laws prohibiting betting/gambling companies being on the shirts) and for the women’s team.

‘Spose that’s nice?

Oh yeah, about that. I was very disappointed to not have received my Readino Footrall Club shirt. This is a pretty common error in AI images, and it’s just such a big miss from that part of the club that they didn’t take the requisite seconds to sense-check that. Why they even needed AI to enhance the photos is beyond me, too.

Disclaimer: Sim covers this in excellent detail, so I’ll keep it brief. It’s important not to get too caught up in results because these games are mostly for fitness, but it has been encouraging to hear and see how much different the style of play has been – in terms of a more positive approach.

Even more encouraging has been seeing the academy get meaningful minutes to state their case for first-team action. I’ll speak about the likes of Tyler Sackey and Shay Spencer all day long, and while the former has made something of a case to be the back-up number 10 option, it’s hard to look past the impact Ashqar Ahmed and Emmanuel Osho have made.

I wanted to see more of Luke Howard after his encouraging end-of-season minutes, and it’s frustrating that once again John Ryan has been injured and Abraham Kanu appears to be out too, as well as Sean Patton now.

And who knew Paddy Lane could do a job at left-back? But, overall, this has been a really positive pre-season for the team and a necessary reset from how 2025/26 ended against Blackpool.

July saw Jacob Brown and Josh Stokes arrive, and both appear to be sensible additions to strengthen our attack. I see Brown as a good option as a 10, but I expect he’s arrived to provide back-up to Jack Marriott as the main striker. Both players have certainly made good cases for their strengths during the pre-season.

However, there’s still business to be done and everything has gone really quiet. Too quiet. We need someone versatile who can cover the left-back position since all of our first four options there (in order: Haydon Roberts, Jeriel Dorsett, Ryan and Kelvin Abrefa) are all injury-prone. But it’s a tricky position to recruit in because they wouldn’t come in as first choice, so we’d need them to be able to play somewhere else in the pitch too.

We definitely need one or two centre-backs also. Right-footed, especially. Philip Duah and Boyd Beacroft have stated their cases in pre-season (by the way: what a goal from Beacroft against Crawley Town!) but we don’t want to be too reliant on them, and we need someone with experience and the ability to move the ball out of defence, someone akin to Amadou Mbengue.

We possibly need depth in the double pivot of midfield – someone who can cover ground, move the ball out of the midfield through runs or passes but also make interceptions. We likely need a number 10 too, to provide back-up to Stokes.

This could come in the form of a striker doing a dual role because the reality is that we badly need a centre-forward. Two, in fact. Our main recognised strikers in Marriott and Brown are both injury-prone and Patton remains talented but unproven.

It will be hard to find someone who can get 20 goals a season and is willing to play back-up to Marriott, unless they’re able to play out wide (right or left) or as a 10. This is a urgent need for the team, even more so due to a recent departure.

I wonder if the reason things have gone quiet is because we are in the part of the Rob Couhig game plan where we are waiting for free agents to make decisions (only signing one of them so far this season is very unusual for us), or waiting on Premier League clubs to make decisions on who they will loan out. Whatever the hold-up is, we need to make movement on this sooner rather than later.

I learned something new – apparently, he had a nickname: “Wifi”. I’m not entirely sure why this, but I think the joke is that his name is like a Wifi password? Certainly when watching the Spanish broadcast version of the Getafe friendly, the commentators just avoided it entirely and referred to him as “Kelvin”.

I’ve never been his biggest fan, but I am a bit sad to see him go. It’s hard to imagine us without him, but the reality is that, as talented as he is, he has been incredibly inconsistent and has never really convinced. Getting decent money for him with one year left on his contract is genuinely great business and we can hopefully reinvest this well.

However, for now, we must wish him well in Denmark and say so long, Kelvin. (Yes, I know the joke would work better without the comma but the laws of grammar are unforgiving.)

I’m starting to think Bearwood must be built on some kind of haunted, ancient burial ground and we have disrupted forces beyond our reckoning that are determined to wreak havoc on our team and treatment room.

So far this pre-season, Roberts (again), Marriott (again), Patton, Udoka Godwin-Malife, Ryan, Kanu and Abrefa all have been struck by the curse. Then for the Charlton friendly (in August, apologies to July) we saw Brown, Stokes and Paudie O’Connor missing with a bug that had spread round the camp.

If you cast your mind back to the 2023/24 season, you can’t help but wonder what Ruben Selles must have done to keep that side fit and injury-free. Can someone maybe send John Coleman out to pee on the corner flags? Would that work?

Still here, then? That’s only a good thing – he has a very unique skillset within this Reading team, coupled with his left foot and availability to bypass the Bearwood curse and thus always be available, which is great.

There’s a long way to go in the window yet, but the early expectations that he would be picked up by another team at Championship level have yet to come to pass. Let’s hope it stays that way, as while it seems he has slipped behind Andy Rinomhota in the pecking order, Rino’s injury issues make Savage a natural first pick to step in, coupled with his ability to play higher up as 10.

And if he does stay, let’s hope the club are already putting in the groundwork to get that contract extended.

It’s not a good look that the only home game of pre-season was cancelled due to the pitch not being ready, but what I will say is that a) no one will remember this by next summer, b) it’s not really any fault of the ownership, more of the team who were employed to make the upgrades to the playing surface.

I get that it’s been hot, but that surely can’t have been a surprise to anyone that we will see some sun in the summer? Even then, maybe just having some contingency plans in place in case of adverse weather conditions?

Let’s hope it will have all been worth it by the time we welcome Luton Town to the SCL on August 15.