Reading’s Contracts: They’re Expiring, We’re Perspiring
The Royals currently don’t have many players set to stay beyond this summer.
This won’t be a new topic to most, if not all, Royals fans. It was a discussion point on the recent podcast. However, having gotten through January, we are not in the clear.
We have a, quite frankly, ridiculous number of contracts due to expire at the end of the season. For those that don’t know, I will do a quick review of this.
Starting with goalkeepers: yeah, forget about it. All of Joel Pereira, David Button and Coniah Boyce-Clarke have a contract that will expire at the end of June 2025. From the information that I can find online, Pereira *possibly* has a one-year extension clause, which, if true, I cannot see us not triggering.
From being a club with a ridiculous number of goalkeepers at the start of the season, after the contract releases of Jökull Andrésson and Dean Bouzanis during the course of this season, we could potentially finish the year with, at best, one senior goalkeeper. It’s not clear what the situation of academy goalkeepers such as Tom Norcott or Matthew Rowley is.
Now let’s talk about defenders. Did I say ‘forget about it’ with the goalkeepers? This is, somehow, worse. The only defender with a deal that goes through to 2026 is Kelvin Abrefa. Tyler Bindon was leaving anyway, and joining him as it stands will be Amadou Mbengue, Harlee Dean, Jeriel Dorsett, Louie Holzman, Abraham Kanu and the lesser-spotted Andy Yiadom.
I suppose these days we should consider Michael Craig a defender too – well, he’s another with only a couple of months left on his contract. There is little information regarding Andre Garcia’s contract status. However, from what I can find, it seems his deal will run out at the end of this season as well.
Delving into the academy’s better-known players currently plying their trade there, it seems that both John Ryan’s and John Clarke’s deals will run out in the summer, though I cannot be 100% sure. For the likes of Michael Stickland and Ashqar Ahmed, their contract situations aren’t clear.
We need a bit of good news, really, don’t we? Well, here it is: our midfield situation is actually a lot better. We’ve got Lewis Wing, Ben Elliott and Harvey Knibbs tied down until 2026. Charlie Savage is tied down for even longer, until 2027.
Whether they all stay for the duration of those deals is a whole other thing entirely, but now’s not the time to speculate. Effectively: our first-choice midfield remains intact, unless any are sold to raise funds. That’s a small win.
Around the fringes of the first-team/academy set-up regulars, it seems the likes of Tivonge Rushesha, Charlie Wellens, Shay Spencer and Jack Senga will see their deals expire in the summer. I am unable to find any information on Tyler Sackey, unfortunately.
Our forward options are possibly the bleakest of them all. We are not really blessed with many attackers, and that’s before Chem Campbell will return to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the summer. Our only remaining striker, Jayden Wareham, will see his deal expire in the summer.
It’s similar for all of our wingers: Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan, Mamadi Camara and Adrian Akande. In the academy, there is no information available that I can see about Basil Tuma, but Jeremiah Okine-Peters is another whose contract will expire.
If you were keeping count, that’s five players we know aren’t set to leave at the end of June: Abrefa, Wing, Elliott, Knibbs and Savage. Now, I’ve mentioned that there seems to be a chance that Pereira has a one-year extension clause that could be triggered. Hopefully that’s true, and there is also the possibility that some of the other players have something similar built into their deals too.
I recall we had something similar last year, when Femi Azeez, Craig, Dorsett, Ehibhatiomhan, Pereira and Wareham had their options triggered. Aside from Pereira announcing it at The Purple Turtle, largely for the rest, we weren’t aware/confident of these clauses.
I suspect for six players who remain with us, they won’t have another clause in place (hence my lack of confidence around the Pereira reports), but something could be true of other players (I have Mbengue firmly in mind here).
Now, it’s not all bad. Hear me out here. There are players such as Button and Yiadom who are probably among the highest earners of the team and aren’t playing – losing those wages will help free up necessary funds that we all know that we’re desperate for. Similar can be said of Dean who, while on a redemption arc, isn’t really going to be the future for us, and it would be better for all concerned that he bowed out on top, as another who is one of the highest earners in the side.
Those, by and large, are the positives: potential extension clauses and freeing up funds in the squad. It could also be argued that, dependent on the EFL (more on this shortly), the opportunity to have something of a reset could help us bring in quality where we need more quality (and experience) in depth. Left-back and striker, for example.
However, I just don’t understand why we are in this position. It isn’t like any of these contract expirations should be a surprise for anyone in the club. For me, there are three likely parties who could be the cause of this.
Firstly, the ownership. Obviously, the ownership. Now, I get that the fella isn’t putting money in. Fine. Not ideal, but OK.
However, any common sense within business (something that he seems shockingly low on, given how he has run this particular business) would indicate that to make money from player sales, you need to be selling from a position of strength.
Players needs to be in-form and on long-term deals. Sam Smith is a prime example of this. As such, for no other reason than it makes good business sense to put a little money in to get a decent return down the line, surely oh surely they should be considering tying down the key players?
The second party, and I’ll be brief about this, could the club. Maybe they are simply just waiting for a successful end to the season so they themselves can negotiate from a position of strength?
Hey, stay with us. You see what happens when others leave, and we’re a club on the up despite the ownership issues. It could be a good sell, but if that’s the case, it’s extremely risky and could backfire spectacularly. It does seem unlikely though.
The last party here is the league. The EFL are, well, not helpful. It genuinely amazes me how difficult they have made it for us to bring in LOAN signings that we genuinely and clearly need, when you have *other* teams spending £15 million in the summer and then bringing in more players during the January transfer window, because the 17(!) signed in the summer weren’t enough.
Now – which team is a higher risk of breaching FFP rules here, would you say? So why does the EFL allow it to happen?
When you consider logic like this, you do wonder if the EFL are blocking us from extending the contracts of our players, again, given how difficult they have made it for us to bring in any kind of temporary replacements for those who departed both in the summer and the winter.
Much like my point raised with the ownership, how does the EFL expect us to be delivering profitability and sustainability when they are actively putting the blockers in place that allow us to maximise our ability to asset sell to their full value? It’s maddening.
Maybe there is work going on in the background? After all, rarely in recent times do we tend to advertise what we are working on in the background of the club. However, ultimately, we need to start seeing this remedied sooner rather than later, or we are going to be in a lot of trouble in the summer.