The Weekly Bobbins: Will This Season Be The One?

Why, hello there friend. Come, sit down, let’s have a natter. It’s been a while, eh?

So, here we are at the dawn of a new season. The second in the Rob Couhig reign. The first proper season for Leam Richardson and his evolving coaching staff.

Out has gone Rob Kelly, replaced by John Coleman, once of the parish of Aldershot, from where I write this and all of my missives. (And yes, it is the ‘hole you’re thinking of in your head.)

Like many of us fans, we’re obviously thinking how this season is going to pan out and where we’ll be at the end of it. I am, for my sins, one of those happy to simply have a club to support, so maybe that puts me in the camp of being less ambitious than some.

When Couhig et al took over, I felt it would be a slow burn. An evolution rather than a revolution. Exorcising the demons of Dai Yongge would take quite some time to achieve and much longer than one summer or even two.

When Richardson took the reins from Noel Hunt, he suggested it would take three or four windows for the club to be where it needs to be in terms of having the quality and quantity of players required to get out of this division.

At the time it seemed like a rather bullish statement from an unhappy manager who couldn’t get his team out of first gear. The more I pondered this resolution the more I aligned to it, despite our decent league position at the time and dire, dire football.

That said, I always had been sanguine to the idea that Couhig’s tenure wasn’t going to be a one-season wonder. Too much to do, too little time, too much work on the squad required from the embers that were left of the previous season.

This false start – coupled with Hunt’s departure, plus Richardson’s assertion that this squad, essentially, was way off a promotion charge – led me to think last season was never the one. I wrote about it often enough, after all.

The trouble is, I don’t think this season is the one either.

In part my thinking has been underlined by Richardson’s need for bigger and better signings. He’s also wanted a fitter and stronger squad. It was of no massive surprise that we employed Mat Bramhall, the strength and conditioning coach from Brentford.

For what seemed to be an eternity, our squad seemed to have a disproportionate amount of injuries to fixtures. I’ll openly admit that I’m not one to compare and contrast with other clubs and their injury lists. Ain’t nobody got time for that, but Richardson’s statistic that 84% of our players were available for only 50% of the time is a rather damning stat.

Due to his assertion that he needed a good window this summer, I was interested, as we all were, to see how much business we’d do and when.

He stated until the cows came home that he wanted and demanded a full pre-season with the players. What he’s got so far is four signings, which on the surface are good signings. Upgrades, if you will. But the depth is sadly lacking.

Here we are just a matter of days away until the new season and the manager still wants three or four in. And he’s not wrong. We’re likely to be waiting for other dominos to fall before our final pieces are in place.

“We still have gaping holes in terms of bona fide first-team positions”

As much as we want to believe this is a promotion-ready season, or even one when we might even hit the play-off positions, it just doesn’t feel like it.

Considering we’ve lost an influential central defender in Derrick Williams, the spluttering Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan and loanees Finley Burns, Kamari Doyle and cough Mark O’Mahony, we’ve only replaced one of those with Josh Stokes from Bristol City.

The other additions we most definitely needed too, but we still have gaping holes in terms of bona fide first-team positions, left-back especially, and just for genuine depth in general.

As much as I’m an exponent of the academy (or, as Ben said on last season’s podcast with Rick Catania, “you’re big on the youth”), it would be unfair to throw in the likes of Boyd Beacroft, Tyler Sackey and Emmanuel Osho and say they need to step up to be part of a promotion-winning team.

Given our history of injuries, I don’t expect Bramhall to cure all our woes in less than a year, either. That’s no slight on him, but it’s common knowledge that once you get a bad knack like a hamstring injury for instance, you’re likely to get them again in the future.

We can’t expect Jack Marriott to have as stellar a season as he did last time round, and to remain fit throughout also. Both of those scenarios seem unlikely.

Jacob Brown is the kind of player we need as depth, but not as a like-for-like replacement for Marriott. Even if Long Kelvin did fill in well at times, he wasn’t a replacement that was even trustworthy in either half, let alone game on game.

That doesn’t seem to scratch the surface of the on-field issues, but off the field it’s just as much of a minefield, if not more.

This might be a bit controversial, but hear me out.

Bearwood is not necessarily our friend financially, nor is Category 1 for the academy.

Now, I’m in no way advocating that we lose one, the other or both, so don’t come for me. But both are huge overheads versus the revenue we don’t have at this level.

Yes, Bearwood is amazing, it’s what any club would want to showcase to prospective players, but it’s a Championship-and-above expense, not a League One expense.

The same goes for Category 1 status. Yes, it does have its merits and obvious knock-on effects down the line when we sell a Femi Azeez and so forth.

“To be a big club, we need the income of a big club”

Add in the new SCMP rules whereby only 50% of our turnover can be used for player-related expenditure, we’re already fighting below our weight when all the other aspects are factored in.

It’s a tricky thing to balance. We want all the good things but, by jingo, they are expensive. Essentially, we need much, much more income to keep the good things afloat AND more than that again to keep our squad competitive to get promoted.

We need more income, more than many other clubs receive, because we have two big drains to satisfy first. No doubt we have some very well-paid players in the division as it is today, also.

To be a big club, we need the income of a big club. At the moment, we’re in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.

We can’t spend the money because it isn’t there. It isn’t there because we don’t have the income stream and the owners can only put in so much themselves. The income stream isn’t there because the club was/is in recovery and fans didn’t like the club image nor the product, ergo, no money to spend. Still with me?

In short, your TL;DR is this: there’s still too much to do for Reading to turn into a normal club.

I’d like to think the owners haven’t bitten off more than they can chew. It still remains to be seen how much they can swallow.