Joel Pereira Is Your April/May 2025 Reading Player Of The Month
A first POTM award for Reading’s commanding ‘keeper.
Congratulations to Joel Pereira, winner of our April/May 2025 player of the month award!
He romped home to victory with 86% of the vote, a massive haul for someone who really shone in the latter stages of the season. He finished well ahead of Charlie Savage (6%), Harvey Knibbs (4%), Tyler Bindon (3%)...
...and Jayden Wareham/Lewis Wing (1%). Eagle-eyed readers of the voting article, which correctly included Wing as one of the candidates, may have noticed that Wareham was the one included on the poll itself. This was, an... er... deliberate test for all of you, and definitely not a sloppy error on my part that came about simply because both of their surnames begin with W.
Look, it’s been a long season.
Anyway, back to Pereira, who most certainly did not let sloppy errors creep into his game in the closing weeks of the season. April/May was an outstanding period for Reading’s number one, with Pereira consistently putting in standout performances to keep the Royals in games.
Perhaps the best example of that was the 2-0 win at Bristol Rovers. Though Reading sealed the points in the second half via goals from Jayden Wareham and Chem Campbell, it was Pereira’s excellent shot-stopping earlier in the match which ensured the home side didn’t establish a lead.
And that wasn’t a one-off at all. Pereira secured four other man-of-the-match wins and two places as runner-up, demonstrating just how clearly important a performer he was in the Royals’ final eight games of the season.
Attention now turns to whether Reading can convince him to sign a new deal. While you’d expect competition for his signature from further up the pyramid, Pereira’s currently at a club where he seems very settled, happy, popular and in probably the best form of his career. Hopefully that counts in our favour.
This is, weirdly, Pereira’s first POTM win at Reading (he’s done so well that I really thought he would have got one earlier). He joins the following winners from earlier this campaign...
- August: Ben Elliott
- September: Ben Elliott
- October: Amadou Mbengue
- November: Harvey Knibbs
- December: Tyler Bindon
- January: Tyler Bindon
- February: Michael Craig
- March: Charlie Savage
Congrats Joel!
With this final POTM award given out, attention will soon turn to our player of the season voting. As per usual, we’ll have one of our writers making the case for each of a number of candidates, to see if any of them can sway your decision. It’s basically Conclave but better.
Whoever wins this award will join this year’s TTE rookie of the season winner, Lewis Wing.