Joel Pereira Is Your TTE 2024/25 Reading Player Of The Season

Congratulations Joel!

Many congratulations indeed to Joel Pereira, who’s won our player of the season award for 2024/25!

It’s a bit of a surprise, given that Tyler Bindon had taken the club’s award, meaning the young centre-back came into our vote as the favourite. Still, there’s precedent for the two results to diverge: this is our 10th POTS award and the winners have only matched up four times.

What ultimately got Pereira over the line was the fact that we use a different voting system. Having given you a shortlist of candidates, we asked you to rank them from first to sixth, and we then assigned a value to each vote. For example, if you ranked Bindon first, that was worth six points, and if you put him last, that equated to one point.

If we’d only taken into consideration first-placed votes, Bindon (51 first-placed votes) would have been the winner ahead of Pereira (44). Charlie Savage (72) would also have made it into the top three instead of Harvey Knibbs (48). Instead, Pereira’s advantage with second- and third-placed votes meant he built up enough of a points tally to sneak past Bindon. Knibbs similarly benefited at Savage’s expense.

On the face of it that’s a little harsh on Bindon and Savage, who did well to get their respective tallies of first-placed votes specifically. But having a more complex voting system helps to recognise the strength of the field overall, allowing you as the voters to acknowledge your ‘best of the rest’ - not just your absolute favourite.

And anyway, all six players had very good seasons and would have been worthy winners in their own right, were it not for the competition they faced. Lewis Wing for example - last season’s winner (TTE and club) - managed an impressive haul of 11 goals and six assists, as well as generally being a key player at the base of Reading’s midfield. Knibbs came up with 20 goal contributions, Savage improved hugely and Amadou Mbengue was a rock at the back.

If you’d like to see the unweighted voting, here you go:

It’s testament to just how well Pereira performed in 2024/25 that only 11 people (out of 127) put him outside their top three. He was a hugely consistent, reliable performer between the posts, keeping the Royals in games frequently with his strong shot-stopping and command of his box.

Attention now turns to whether Reading can keep hold of him, with a contract offered last week. Pereira will surely be of interest to clubs higher up the pyramid, and if he does go, it’d be more than deserved for someone who’s kicked on impressively after arriving in Berkshire as something of a journeyman two years ago.

But let’s hope that doesn’t happen! All things being well, Pereira will be here for a long while to come.

Congratulations on your POTS win Joel!