Jayden Wareham Is Your 2024/25 Reading Rookie Of The Season

The young centre-forward really came into his own this season.

Many congratulations indeed to Jayden Wareham, who you’ve voted as your TTE rookie of the season for 2024/25!

This is essentially our version of a ‘breakthrough young player of the season’, which we give out every year to acknowledge the youngster who’s had the best debut campaign in senior football. You can find the full criteria in here.

Wareham joins an impressive list of players from years gone by, most recently Tyler Bindon, who took the award in 2023/24. Our previous winners, from 2014/15 onwards, are: Jake Cooper, Aaron Tshibola, Liam Kelly, Omar Richards, Andy Rinomhota, Tom McIntyre, Tom Holmes, Femi Azeez and Nesta Guinness-Walker.

It was essentially a two-horse race this year, with Wareham up against very strong competition from Andre Garcia. However, Wareham’s points tally in our weighted scoring system of 498 was enough to put him above Garcia’s 462.

Garcia would also have been a very worthwhile winner indeed. The winger-turned-left-back began the season aged just 16, but played a whopping 2,892 minutes of football in all competitions, becoming a reliable and consistent performer well beyond his years.

Otherwise the remaining five players had relatively small roles in the squad this season, so didn’t really have that much time to impress in the first team consistently. It’s interesting that Michael Stickland emerges with a comfortable third-place finish though - rewarded for some bright showings towards the end of the season. He’s one to watch in 2025/26.

Back onto Wareham though, who shot up from 12th in last season’s 13-man field to first this time out.

In a total of 44 games in all competitions he found the net eight times, as well as managing two assists. While that’s not a colossal goal haul, it’s still a very solid return for a young striker in his first proper season in senior football.

Wareham’s development this season has been about more than goals though. Having started the campaign as back-up to Sam Smith, he stepped up to be Reading’s number one centre-forward when Smith left for Wrexham in January, and quickly showed that he was a more than adequate replacement.

He started 13 of the remaining 19 matches, generally being preferred to Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan. What became clear in that time was that Wareham’s all-round game - his work rate and link-up play - was a real asset to Reading. Really pleasingly too, despite playing a difficult lone-striker role in a notoriously physical league, Wareham never looked out of place or overawed.

It all bodes well for an even stronger 2025/26 for Wareham. While you’d expect Reading to bring in one/two other centre-forwards in the summer, he’s showed at the very least that he’s good competition for a starting spot.

And given Bindon’s success this season after winning our rookie award last time, you never know... perhaps in Wareham we’re looking at Reading’s player of the season next time out.

Congrats Jayden!