Five Things From Reading’s 2024/25 Season

Bobbins (yes, he’s back!) picks out some noteworthy games from the last nine months or so.

Hello, friends. Remember me? It seems like a million years ago but I felt like the ‘Five Things’ had run its course.

Of course, there always are five things to talk about, but in the midst of all things related to Mr Dai, everything became angry, cloudy and grey. The burnout of writing with the same seemingly never-ending path to our demise seemed very real. It became too much and I had to take… five. But here I am, back once again.

Brothers and sisters, here is my return. Enjoy it. If you want.

Birmingham City (A) – August 10, 2024

A dawn of a new season: it’s always pretty exciting, regardless of the tribulations of the club. Regardless, we had the unhampered expectation of what lay ahead. What was ahead for me was a few pints onboard P&O Iona as I headed to Norway for the week.

As it turned out, we almost snuck away from St Andrews with all three points, if only it hadn’t been for one of those awful ways to concede – a very suspect penalty decision.

Photo by Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images

Otherwise, it was (by all accounts) a fine day at the office. Plenty to look forward to for the coming months, it seemed. Well, on the pitch anyway.

In the subsequent days, the thoughts of a takeover came to the fore. For all the world it seemed as if Rob Couhig was to take over the club. I remember writing about it while still on board in the middle of the North Sea. It was so, so close.

Subsequently, Mr Dai pulled one of his most epic of stunts by denying the sale at the last minute. There are many words that I could relay at this point, but the effing and jeffing is not for this fair portal. Use your imagination! I’m sure it won’t be hard.

Harborough Town (H) – FA Cup (second round), December 1, 2024

A bizarre name to draw out of the hat and an even more bizarre game of football. With no disrespect to our combatants from Leicestershire, it seemed more like a fixture from a graphic novel series like “Roy of the Rovers” from back before most of us were born. We should win, though, right? Right?

This is the FA Cup, though. Anything can happen, and it pretty much did. The visitors causing us much embarrassment throughout by going ahead not once but twice in the first half. Somehow we’d clawed our way back and were 3-2 to the good, but were then consigned to playing with 10 men after Abraham Kanu was sent off.

That’s it then, we were going to be THE headline tomorrow as Harborough scored an equaliser in the 86th minute with a goal that you could have seen coming from a week prior.

Yet, somehow, the experience and know-how shone through as loanee Chem Campbell scored twice to save our blushes. A mad, mad game of football in freezing conditions.

Photo by Eddie Keogh/Getty Images

Wrexham (H), March 11, 2025

Or “the one where it all came together”. Possibly the most complete performance of the season, and in the midst of our best patch of the season where we seemed to be unbeatable for a long stretch of time. It seemed to creep up on us that we had managed to sustain ourselves to be without a loss in quite some time. Most unlike Reading!

By the time this fixture had come around we had lost our top scorer, Sam Smith, to Wrexham for a sum of money that we could not refuse. Well, we could have refused it if the owner had managed to run the club correctly, but we needed the reported £2 million pounds to “keep the lights on”.

It’s never great to find ourselves in the situation where we have to lose the current prolific striker just to stay afloat. It shouldn’t to be like that, but that’s where we were at the time.

As for the game itself, it looked like we had the measure of our high-flying opponents from the first whistle. It seemed only a matter of time before we scored and how did we score? From a penalty! The delicious irony that we scored via a method that seemed to elude us for eons was rather sublime.

Our second, a goal which seemed to be avoided in the end-of-season gongs, was an absolute peach. A training ground move that involved passes from Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan to Andre Garcia, Garcia to Kelvin Abrefa, Abrefa to Lewis Wing, Wing to Garcia, Garcia to Harvey Knibbs and, finally, onto Wing to stroke home from the edge of the box.

It was one of those goals where you see the move flowing in real time and it just deserves to be finished off. You hope it will, although more often that not it ends in the keeper’s arms or being hit wide. But not this time. It’s a training-ground move and finish that would have had Noel Hunt purring. Oh, and Smith had a stinker.

Bristol Rovers (A), April 26, 2025

Inflatables Day. It’s always a banger, even if the result doesn’t go your way. But what about when it does?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you THE away day. Some might argue that that was the previous away fixture when we dismantled Mansfield Town 5-1, but I didn’t go to that game so it’s not. So there.

The match itself was pure toil. The line-up had picked itself for weeks and it was beginning to show. The tank was empty, not much left but fumes. And for the first half it seemed that we had run out of juice, puff, energy – call it what you will, it wasn’t there.

And then… magic happened. A sweet flowing move, similar to the above-mentioned finish that is a coach’s dream. It was one that was especially sweet as it unfolded in front of a packed away section.

If you were there, you know how it felt. The out-pouring of emotion when Wing stroked the ball home was something other-worldly. Or PURE LIMBS as we say these days.

The entire day seemed to be the start of something. The rumours had been building that a takeover was almost inevitable. The belief was starting to resurface. It had been a feeling that most of us, if not all, had forgotten how to feel. Winning away from home was now almost expected and not something that was like Hailey’s Comet. Is this normal?? It felt odd, nonetheless.

Barnsley (H), May 3, 2025

The game itself, we can forget about. It wasn’t important. The Barnsley fans seemed to think it was important as they reminded us that Leyton Orient were winning… and we were losing. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered on the field.

While the battle on the pitch was well and truly lost, off the field the war of attrition had been won. Finally. After 550-odd days that felt like several lifetimes, the gig was up. Dai Yongge had long since thrown his last dice and came up short. Again.

The atmosphere outside the stadium was one that we had not seen or felt for a long, long time, if not ever before. Fans basked in the sun knowing that Dai’s reign of terror was over. The air felt lighter as the dark clouds lifted figuratively and physically over south Reading.

Songs were sung for no reason whatsoever. We didn’t need to have a reason. It was pure joy, relief, contentment, and many more adjectives besides that made it all worthwhile again.

Inside the stadium, seats that had long since been empty were filled. A sumptuous sea of blue and white as noise and song reverberated around the stadium. It was a beautiful sight to behold, it really was.

Then, the moment that I had been waiting for. A video montage with the overlayed anthem of “The Impossible Dream” started to play.

It’s always been a favourite of mine. It was even selected by my good self for my wedding, largely on the back of when it was used previously at our home games, but I had always felt that it should be our anthem. It just feels like us.

Up until that point I had held it all in. I had the relief of knowing that the deal was done, but it had not sunk in. I had read it, but I wanted to feel it, too. I knew “The Impossible Dream” would likely do it.

It did not fail. Halfway through, I felt the emotion that I had missed so much. The feeling of love for this club that had seemed to have been lost forever came back to say “Hello. Remember me?”

I, like many others, probably had that lump in the throat, tears in the eyes or full-on sobs. I was somewhere in between. For everything that we thought was lost and could have been gone forever, we were back. We were so back.

Thank you, Mr Couhig and Mr Trosclair. You don’t know exactly what we’ve been through, but we thank you now more than you could ever know.