The State Of Reading's Academy: Transition, Trials And Triumphs

Today at 04:15 AM

The Royals' youth setup is still going strong, but - like the rest of the club - it's faced more than its fair share of difficulties this year.

All the way back in February, I visited Manchester City's Joie Stadium to see them host Reading's under-18s in the FA Youth Cup, probably this country's most prestigious academy football competition. You can read my report from the game here.

This was in the fifth round, before which the Royals had seen off Oxford City, Forest Green Rovers, Rotherham United and Sheffield Wednesday. In that run is (at time of the game) a National League club, a League Two club and two Championship teams.

This season however, our under-18s were knocked out in the first round of the cup by AFC Dunstable, current members of the Division One Central of the Southern League - the eighth tier of English football.

On the face of it, it's a horrible result, losing to Dunstable. But we weren't the only bigger team to get knocked out in the first round: Rotherham United, Peterborough United and Charlton Athletic also suffered the same fate. The latter of those three is particularly known for a strong academy setup.

However, the likes of those progressing into the second round included Burgess Hill Town, Hertford Town, Merstham and, worst of all, "Rising Ballers Kensington", whatever that is. Utter woke nonsense, as they say.

It's worth noting also that the League One and League Two teams' under-18s joined in the first round, with academies of the top two tiers entering at round three, like the senior FA Cup.

A lack of coverage

What's perhaps worse is that it seemed no-one really knew the game happened either. The only recognition of it before the match was a four-sentence long footnote in "The Week Agenda" on Reading's website, while no mention of the result has been given at all.

Last year's round-one clash at Oxford City however, received a full, in-detail match preview and match report, as did all the succeeding rounds in which Reading competed. In fact, in order to find the last piece of under-18-related news on our website, you'd have to go all the way back to that cup game at Manchester City in February.

I'm not here just to dunk on our young players and media team for not doing as well in the cup and not providing as much coverage as one might expect. Bad games happen, and if budget cuts need to be made, the first place to look is probably academy coverage. But the least a fan might expect is a little more publicity of the games and results.

To be fair, it's not all bad on the academy side. The under-21s have been covered well this season, particularly in our Premier League International Cup campaign. We have also kicked off to a decent start in it too, beating Ajax in the opening fixture, which is worth even more merit given we are the only League One team in it this year, and one of only five English non-Premier League teams in it too.

This season has been our first year competing in Europe's best academy tournament since three years of involvement on the bounce from 2016 to 2019, including a run to the semi-final in 2018/19.

In the Premier League 2, we're 16th after eight games. A definite drop-off since last season's sixth-place finish, and eventual semi-finalists in the elimination playoffs phase. Still, far from horrendous though.

In the under-18 Premier League, Reading are 12th of 13 teams in the southern group. However, we have only ever finished 10th or below since 2017 in that competition, and before that point the format of it was completely different, so we haven't really felt a drop-off in success there.

Producing players for the future

Personally though, I think the real success of the academy is in the output it provides to the first team, and it's hard to say we've been anything but exemplary at that this year.

Reading finished 17th in Training Ground Guru's latest academy rankings, which take into account the number of players from our academy that went on to play in England's top five leagues, and feature every Category 1-3 academy in the country. It's weighted to give clubs producing players performing in the better leagues a better score.

Although that's a downgrade of four places since the 2021/22 edition of the rankings, we still finished above eight Premier League clubs. When removing the weighting, Reading came 10th, meaning we produced the most players of any EFL team.

Reading were also recently named the 10th best academy in the country by OLBG's rankings, over-performing countless clubs with no doubt far better finances and resources at hand.

And the proof is on the pitch for our graduate successes, particularly under the reign of Ruben Selles. It goes without saying that many of those young players wouldn't have been given the same opportunity if we'd been a normal club that's allowed to make more than one summer signing, but even last season, they were trusted more than one might expect.

Experienced players such as Andy Carroll, Harlee Dean, Sam Hutchinson, Tom Holmes, Tom McIntyre and Nesta Guinness-Walker were shunned from the squad at various points and replaced with rather unproven counterparts, and we greatly benefitted from that spirited decision.

This year, we don't really have the luxury of having older players to cut out, and have been forced down the academy route. However, the evidence is there from last season that it would be likely to happen anyway.

The following players have broken into the first-team picture this season:

• Andre Garcia
• Shay Spencer
• Ashqar Ahmed
• Adrian Akande
• Emmanuel Osho
• Abraham Kanu
• Boyd Beacroft
• Jeremiah Okine-Peters
• Joe Barough

While these players have been around the first-team picture for a little longer and are still involved:

• Louie Holzman
• Michael Stickland
• Jay Senga
• Basil Tuma
• Jayden Wareham
• Charlie Wellens

Expectations

They're not all going to be world beaters for sure, and in 10 years' time some may no longer be in professional football. But from what I've seen, they've all largely looked comfortable in senior football.

It's a difficult thing to fairly analyse the young players' performances too - it seems unfair to criticise 16-year-old Garcia for a difficult first half away at Stevenage, especially since his jump straight from the under-18s to the first team.

However, should we be expecting more from, say, 20-year-old Holzman, who made his Reading senior debut nearly three years ago? He seems to be coming into a bit of form recently, yet he finds himself senior to many first-teamers at Reading.

We can't really evaluate from an outsider's perspective how effectively the younger groups of players in the academy are managed, but there has been movement in higher-ups at Bearwood.

Head of academy operations Antoine Thompson left for a job with the Premier League in October. He was previously academy director at Cheltenham Town before coming to Berkshire in summer 2022. In a leaving message on LinkedIn, he wrote: "I will miss the staff sense of humour which kept spirits high and motivated us to do the best we could even through the hardship."

From that, it seems the impact of Dai Yongge's ownership is definitely trickling down to the academy, but it remains functional and thriving. His job has since been filled by Celeste Stevens, who's worked at Reading since 2020 in various safeguarding roles.

Things are moving behind the scenes in the academy, and it'll be interesting to see how it develops in the next few years. I doubt we have the same player pull that we once had, or as much money to support the young lads going forward.

But what we still have, and have always had, is the Reading way: a culture of nurturing, trusting in and producing excellent footballers. And I think that's one thing a new owner's money can't buy.