Nine Games Into The Noel Hunt Era At Reading, The Signs Are Positive

Tom reviews how the new(ish) gaffer is getting on so far in the dugout.

It’s been just about six weeks since Noel Hunt was appointed as permanent first-team manager at Reading. The whole thing happened so quickly, with him going straight into a game at Wycombe Wanderers the day after his appointment, and then a hectic festive period. Now we’ve had a few weeks to calm down from it all, I think it’s time to take stock of how his time at the helm has gone so far.

Firstly, I wanted to look at the decision to appoint Hunt as manager itself. Even if you look at him purely off his footballing CV, the Irishman has a ridiculous amount of playing experience in the EFL and Premier League, spent years as an assistant manager in League One and League Two, had an interim role managing in the Championship, and of course he worked miracles with the under-21s at Reading, making us one of the best youth sides in the country and qualifying for European football.

It may seem like a slightly lazy appointment at first to promote from within, but given his credentials and the sorry state of our transfer activity, the high standards left by Ruben Selles, and just the club as a whole, for me that CV matches up to the task at hand.

And that’s not even accounting for his relationship with the club. Despite a failed attempt to keep us in the Championship back in 2023, the positive attitude he harboured and created during that short time, and all the memories from 162 playing appearances for Reading, weren’t forgotten by fans when he returned to the hot seat.

Some may point to his lack of experience managing in senior football, but League One isn’t exactly known for being a baptism of fire in terms of how punishing it can be for new managers. And plenty have moved straight from youth football into big EFL jobs before - such as Neil Critchley at Blackpool, Steve Cooper at Swansea City and Paul Heckingbottom at Barnsley.

They all moved from one club’s academy to a different club’s senior team though too, so again that strengthens Hunt’s case, given he has coached so many of our first-teamers at lower age levels.

It’s a good appointment overall. Even if we’d had the capacity to open up the then-vacant position to external candidates, I doubt we would have found many better than Hunt.

Now looking at how he’s performed since coming in, it’s been mostly positive. Hunt has only taken charge of seven League One matches, winning three, drawing two and losing two, giving him a points per game (PPG) of 1.57 across that relatively small sample size. For reference, Selles had a league PPG of 1.41 over his 63 league games.

It’s fair to say that most fans would want us to aim for the playoffs this season. To finish sixth in League One, which is the final playoff spot, teams usually require a points total in the low 70s.

Reading have 22 games left to play, and to reach a figure of... let’s say 75, which is pessimistic for what’s needed... we’d require a PPG of 1.55 for the rest of the season.

Of course it will be nowhere near a straightforward task to keep that up until the end of the season, but importantly it’s a rate that’s already being achieved by a side heavily impacted by injury and now multiple players who are in the balance of whether they will still be at the club by February.

As unlikely as it is for many more players to join in January, the returns of Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan, Jeriel Dorsett, Andy Yiadom, Ben Elliott, Michael Craig and Adrian Akande will feel like new signings, given the longevity of some of their absences. That will leave our squad looking much healthier.

That just reinforces the point of how well Hunt has done. Using players such as Harlee Dean, who hadn’t played consistently for years, or getting a bit of a tune out of a previously underwhelming Mamadi Camara - while still maintaining performance levels across the rest of the squad - is some doing.

Perhaps what the results provide - which is almost more important than the points on the board - is providing another incentive to keep players at this club. At the end of the day, no one wants to play for a losing team, so becoming one following Selles’ departure would have no doubt given our biggest assets another reason to leave.

Looking at how our new manager has set us up, it may not be as pretty, but for sure it’s just as effective. Charlie Savage summed it up in a recent interview when he explained that, away from home - where we’d previously been poor aside from a select few results - Reading now look to sit back and absorb the pressure in the first half to stay in the game, and hit back at tired legs in the second half.

A perfect example of how well that’s worked was the game at Charlton Athletic. Last season in that match we conceded four in the second half. Even though we were again probably the worse team on the day when we visited a few weeks ago, a 0-0 draw is very credible and the team was set up for success. The same can be said for the Cambridge United game too - another one which we lost last year.

Stockport County this Saturday at home, however, will be a real taste of what the League One playoff race has to offer. The visitors are a side of real quality who have a brilliant defensive record and comprehensively sent us packing when Reading visited Edgeley Park. They’re breathing down our necks, just one place behind us, too.

If Hunt can conjure up a performance where we allow the visitors to have possession but greatly limit their chances, and then hit on the break like we did against Mansfield Town, then we’ve got a great chance of putting some distance between us and Stockport in seventh.

For me, the jury is no longer out for Hunt. He’s proven himself to a good degree here, and even if things start to turn, I expect it would be people a little bit further up in the Reading Football Club hierarchy who would be largely to blame - as opposed to him and the players.

We’re incredibly lucky to have a manager who not only is delivering results but also cares so much about the club too, and is surely the one man at the club who would never jump ship by choice.

Keep the faith Reading fans. We’re heading in the right direction with Hunt at the helm.