The season just gone has seen a lot of low points, but we’ve also seen some big moments that demonstrate we are a team on the up. Moments such as the successful integration of academy players into the first team, signings in the summer becoming key first-teamers, the 4-0 and 9-0 wins in the EFL Trophy against Millwall and Exeter City respectively, big league victories against Cambridge United and Bolton Wanderers and the away win against Wycombe Wanderers, which ended the 378 days of winless away games. It’s not been all bad, in truth, despite the plethora of issues that occurred during the season.
One of the other changes we have seen since around the turn of the new year, perhaps even going back to December, is the talk of the mentality shift around the players. In the first part of the season, heads would drop very easily when issues arose on the pitch or things weren’t falling in our favour. I think we all probably have our memories of moments during the season that summarise this, but for me, it is the 4-0 loss to Charlton Athletic, despite being quite dominant for large periods of the game.
However, by the end of the season, we saw such a culture shift with regard to this mentality: we as fans are regularly discussing the side’s mental fortitude and praising them for it. It’s been quite the turnaround and it’s all the more impressive given how gradual it has been, a work in progress that has developed against the backdrop of points deductions, player sales, wages not being paid on time, a proposed training ground sale and redundancies.
It’s been so commonplace that we have seen such resilience from this group of young players and coaches, I feel like we are almost taking it a little bit for granted. Knowing that when we go a goal down, we just know the team will rally and respond to equalise, for example.
As I said before, it wasn’t always this way and it’s so refreshing to see. I want to explore how this change has occurred by contrasting it to what we saw in 2022/23 and in the first half of 2023/24, to try to better understand just how this evolution has developed.
The season just gone has seen a lot of low points, but we’ve also seen some big moments that demonstrate we are a team on the up. Moments such as the successful integration of academy players into the first team, signings in the summer becoming key first-teamers, the 4-0 and 9-0 wins in the EFL Trophy against Millwall and Exeter City respectively, big league victories against Cambridge United and Bolton Wanderers and the away win against Wycombe Wanderers, which ended the 378 days of winless away games. It’s not been all bad, in truth, despite the plethora of issues that occurred during the season.
One of the other changes we have seen since around the turn of the new year, perhaps even going back to December, is the talk of the mentality shift around the players. In the first part of the season, heads would drop very easily when issues arose on the pitch or things weren’t falling in our favour. I think we all probably have our memories of moments during the season that summarise this, but for me, it is the 4-0 loss to Charlton Athletic, despite being quite dominant for large periods of the game.
However, by the end of the season, we saw such a culture shift with regard to this mentality: we as fans are regularly discussing the side’s mental fortitude and praising them for it. It’s been quite the turnaround and it’s all the more impressive given how gradual it has been, a work in progress that has developed against the backdrop of points deductions, player sales, wages not being paid on time, a proposed training ground sale and redundancies.
It’s been so commonplace that we have seen such resilience from this group of young players and coaches, I feel like we are almost taking it a little bit for granted. Knowing that when we go a goal down, we just know the team will rally and respond to equalise, for example.
As I said before, it wasn’t always this way and it’s so refreshing to see. I want to explore how this change has occurred by contrasting it to what we saw in 2022/23 and in the first half of 2023/24, to try to better understand just how this evolution has developed.
The first compare-and-contrast example I want to refer to is the pair of defeats to Shrewsbury Town. Both times in the league we lost to them, and both times we as a fan base weren’t really sure how it happened.
The first defeat, away from home, left us without an away league win for over a year and the fan reaction was quite negative, to say the least. Reviewing the excellent regular feature of Fans Verdict compiled by Harry, we can see the topics of discussion are the doom and gloom of yet another loss that left us 10 points adrift at the bottom of the League One table, lamenting on throwing away a 2-0 lead and discussing whether or not relegation to League Two would be a realistic possibility for the end of the season.
As well as this, most fans were questioning Ruben Selles and whether he was fit to continue leading the team, with most seeming to think he was out of his depth and that it was time for him to go.
Later in the season, when Shrewsbur
y arrived at the SCL, the same scoreline happened: a 3-2 loss for Reading. This after conceding two goals in something like the opening 10 minutes due to sloppy defending. However, we saw the team find a way to pull level again to 2-2, but ultimately lose a game that we realistically should have expected to win. And the reaction from the fan base? Summarily: ahhh that was frustrating but oh well, on to the next one – these things happen. Quite the change in response.
What’s even more interesting than the reactions is the time between the two games in question. The 3-2 loss where we were serious relegation candidates and Selles was out of his depth was on November 11. The 3-2 loss which we just shrugged off as one of those things was on February 24. Around three and a half months between the two, maths fans.
Of course, being out of the relegation zone will help prevent stronger reactions, but the threat of relegation was still realistic in the second fixture, albeit a distant threat – barring any more points deductions. And this is Reading, so you could never rule that possibility out.
It won’t surprise you to know that I’ve never been a professional footballer, but if my day job involved thousands of people shouting at me for not doing what they thought I should have done, using a variety of adjectives that range from “colourful” to “making a sailor blush” to describe my competency, while not being sure if I am actually going to get paid, then I would probably be – at the very least – asking myself why on earth I’m even bothering.
The example that sticks out to me on this topic is the reaction to the defeat at Leyton Orient. Harry’s section titled “The post-match scenes” really demonstrated a club at its lowest, and the abuse the players and staff got post-match was heart wrenching to see. This didn’t strike me as conducive to success in the longer term, or even the short term. What made this worse is that, while we were upset with the results on the pitch, it was really the things happening outside of the pitch that were causing the extreme emotions to boil to the surface.
I feel the match abandonment at home to Port Vale in January really sums up the difference in approach here. This was a very clear attempt at sending a direct message to the ownership. In the tennis ball protests before this game, Sell Before We Dai did their best to communicate that this was not happening as a reflection on our feelings towards the players or coaching team, but the owners of the club. The protest was the most strikingly visual example that we had seen of this, and really captured the nation’s attention.
Consider this for a moment: if you know the thousands of people coming to watch you play at the weekend or on a Tuesday are on your side, how would you feel? It’s no coincidence that we are as close as we ever have been to a group of players. We’ve stood up and made ourselves be heard and made sure they have our support.
In turn, they’ve stood up to be counted on the pitch and regularly come over at the end of games to applaud us and celebrate with us. I’ll forever love Harvey Knibbs for his response to the win away at Carlisle United, as an example of this.
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