Noel Hunt In The Reading Dugout: Reflections And Approval Rating

Now we’re 31 games into the Noel Hunt era (excluding his first spell), Sim analyses how well he’s done - and we’ve got our approval rating poll on the gaffer at the bottom too.

It felt like a bit of a surprise, to me at least, that Reading offered Noel Hunt a multi-season contract when he was appointed Ruben Selles’ successor in December.

The Royals were seemingly in such a weak state that any idea of even vaguely long-term planning seemed odd. Remember: at that point there was a real concern of widespread January sales simply to keep the lights on; the target on the pitch was to get enough points to stay in the division, despite Reading sitting sixth at the time, 12 clear of the bottom four.

Fast-forward six months and Hunt has repaid the faith showed in him and then some. If his brief had merely been to make sure Reading remained in League One, he easily surpassed that. The Royals ultimately mounted an unlikely playoff push and were just three points from getting over the line; only a particularly good Leyton Orient run of form stood in our way.

So, how well has Hunt done in the dugout thus far?

The simple answer is ‘very well’, when you boil it down simply to results in relation to expectations, but there’s more to it than that. If you’d taken a quick browse through Twitter after each Reading game during Hunt’s spell this season, you’d have picked up on quite the variety of takes: some particularly positive, others much more critical.

A bumpy (but generally upwards) journey

It’s not been a particularly smooth ride for Hunt so far, with Reading’s form ebbing and flowing somewhat in the last six months.

He had a wobbly start to life in the dugout, taking a few games to get his first win and overseeing two pairs of really poor back-to-back defeats (Blackpool and Lincoln City, Stockport County and Leyton Orient) in December and January respectively. Reading sat 10th at the end of January (following a last-minute banana-skin defeat at Burton Albion) and seemed to only be going backwards, with too many goals being conceded.

Results then picked up in February and March as Reading started putting together a solid unbeaten run, built on a rock-solid defence. However, dropped points against Exeter City (at home) and Crawley Town (away) seemed to strongly indicate that the Royals would fall away from the playoffs, in large part due to a lack of attacking quality.

The Royals reacted well from that point in though, immediately putting in one of the best displays of the season, at home to Wrexham. Five wins, two draws and three defeats in the final 10 matches of the season (including a dogged 1-0 over promotion hopefuls Wycombe Wanderers and a 5-1 battering of Mansfield Town on their own patch) was very good... but not quite good enough to get Reading into the playoffs.

Performances

There’s no fully objective way of assessing this of course, but I’ll turn towards our player ratings for a broad indication. The average for Hunt comes out at 5.73/10, a little bit below Ruben Selles’ 5.94/10, but that’s not a massive drop-off.

Both managers were capable of an excellent 7/10 performance (that’s big by our admittedly deliberately harsh standards) and some... less good displays, shall we say. Five bad games under Hunt in December and January drag his overall rating down.

I took a closer look at those averages in a few different ways to find any interesting patterns and found one cool little tidbit that says a fair bit about Hunt’s Reading.

If I’d asked you to guess which of the Royals’ two managers this season oversaw better league performances on the road, you’d probably say Hunt, but they’re actually virtually identical going by our ratings (Selles 5.78, Hunt 5.76).

The difference though is that Hunt’s away record results-wise was a lot better than Selles’. He managed five wins, five draws and four defeats (PPG of 1.42) in comparison to his predecessor’s two wins, three draws and four defeats (PPG of exactly 1). So even though the Royals weren’t hugely better performance-wise on the whole, Hunt worked out how to translate that into points on the board.

It feels a safe conclusion therefore that, although displays under Hunt may have been worse to a degree and less entertaining (more on that below), they were more efficient and mature. The value of that is clear: five away draws (three 0-0s, two 1-1s) kept the Royals in the playoff race until the final day.

The tactical approach

The flip side of performances being more ‘efficient and mature’ is that they’ve not been as easy on the eye - to a large but not complete extent anyway.

While Reading have had some free-scoring games (generally against poor defences such as Peterborough United and Shrewsbury Town) and scored some excellent team goals under Hunt (Lewis Wing capping off team moves against Wrexham and Bristol Rovers stands out), the overall pattern has been one of a blunter, less creative attack.

Overall, Hunt’s Reading score goals less freely than Selles’ Reading and are more likely to draw a blank. The following stats illustrate that point, and it’s worth remembering that they’re distorted a little bit by one particularly good day in Mansfield.

There are good reasons for this creative drop-off though. Reading have had to make do without a very good centre-forward (Sam Smith) and playmaker (Ben Elliott) for the bulk of Hunt’s time in charge, and Hunt’s been prioritising defensive solidity. We’ve all been over this countless times in the last few months so there’s no real need to delve back into it extensively now.

Another thing that didn’t really dawn on me for a while though is another loss that happened just before Hunt’s arrival: that of James Oliver-Pearce. He was tasked with the attacking side of Reading’s coaching (Selles focused on the defence), as he said in our podcast chat with him a while ago.

While Reading were able to promote Mikele Leigertwood from the under-18s and bring in Nigel Gibbs, the coaching staff still lost a talented guy in Oliver-Pearce. While it’s impossible to say for certain just how much that hurt the Royals’ attacking play, it’s a safe bet to say it’s been a problem.

That shouldn’t absolve Hunt of responsibility though. He’s been heavily reliant on the 4-3-3 he inherited, particularly in constantly using the same midfield three of Harvey Knibbs, Wing and Charlie Savage. There’s been little evidence of a clear plan B, such as making better use of other players (Tom Carroll barely got on the pitch) or altering formation (Reading did go to a back three in games under Hunt, but only when looking to hold onto a lead late on).

While I’ve not seen enough to be really concerned about Hunt in this regard going into next season, he does have room for improvement. I’d like to see a more creative and free-scoring Reading in 2025/26 (hardly controversial - wouldn’t we all?), but also some tactical growth, whatever that looks like in practice. Hunt will of course be helped by virtue of having had this season’s experience, getting a full pre-season and also by getting some fresh faces in throughout the transfer window.

Anything else?

Hunt could work on how he approaches post-match media duty. Too many times this season he’s been a bit too ready to go into the officiating, criticising the referee for a decision that’s gone against Reading. While he’s not necessarily been in the wrong, focusing on that element of things too much doesn’t set the right tone - especially when there’ve been flaws in the Royals’ performances.

What Hunt has done excellently though is to channel the togetherness that we’d seen for much of the year or so before he took the job on a permanent basis. While it’s true to say a lot of the foundations for that were laid by his predecessor, the nature of how Hunt got the job, as well as various things off the pitch in recent months, have meant he’s had more than his fair share of turbulence to ride out. Keeping a young squad focused and performing well shouldn’t be taken for granted, even if we’ve gotten used to that in the last two years.

Hunt’s also done a great job of developing certain players. He’s had to make better use of those at his disposal - due to lacking Smith and Elliott - but Jayden Wareham and Charlie Savage (among others) have really kicked on under Hunt.

Next season

I don’t think there’s really any doubt that Hunt will be in the dugout at the start of next season. He’s done very well so far and, though his management hasn’t been perfect, various factors (the takeover, getting some more experience himself, having a full pre-season and being able to sign some players!) should help him in 2025/26.

It’ll be fascinating to see exactly what a ‘Proper Noel Hunt Reading FC’ will look like. Few managers have got close in recent years to getting ‘their’ team (Selles comes closest, given the summer 2023 rebuild, but even he ultimately had to adapt). Will Hunt’s side next season be largely similar stylistically to what we saw under Selles, or will he really make it his own?

At this stage, who knows? But - as with the rest of the club now - refreshingly we can questions like that with genuine excitement rather than merely trepidation.

Approval rating

Annoyingly I’ve let this feature slip a bit this season (there’s been a lot going on, to put it mildly...) so this’ll be the first approval rating on Hunt in his second spell at the club. We did run one to cover his caretaker spell at the end of 2022/23, which came out at an average of 3.02/5.

You can’t get much closer to the mid-point than that, although one manager got it bang on. Click this mysterious link to found out who it was. (It was Paul Ince.)

Hunt has some strong scores to beat from his predecessor. Selles was on an upwards curve in his ratings, with his most recent return - 4.56/5 - the third-highest we’ve ever had.

So then, what do you make of the job Hunt has done in the dugout so far?

You can grade him in our approval rating poll below, with one being the lowest and five the highest. If the poll doesn’t display on your device, try this link right here.