Reading Fans Pleased With Noel Hunt’s Time In The Dugout So Far

Our latest approval rating suggests supporters are pleased with Hunt’s performance, but think there’s room for improvement.

Recently we ran an approval rating poll on Noel Hunt, to tie in with the end of his first season in charge as permanent manager, and the results are pretty positive. Hunt got an average of 4.1/5.

That’s a solid score and well up from the 3.02/5 he was awarded at the end of his 2023 caretaker spell. However, it’s not high enough to sit alongside some of our higher scores: Ruben Selles got around 4.5/5 twice in 2024, while Jaap Stam and Veljko Paunovic were rewarded with the best averages due to excellent spells in 2016/17 and 2020/21.

The closest we’ve come to Hunt’s 4.1/5 in recent years is the 4.26/5 that both Jose Gomes (May 2019) and Paul Ince (September 2022) managed. I’d say there’s a broad similarity there: managers overall doing a good, respectable job to the extent that fans are pleased with what they’re seeing, but not so well that there isn’t clear room for improvement.

You can see that in the voting breakdown too. Naturally, barely anyone put a 1/5 or 2/5 for Hunt, but looking at the remaining three options, the results are overwhelmingly weighted towards 4/5. I’d have actually expected more 5/5s for Hunt, if anything, but overall this seems about right.

Interestingly, if you go back to May 2023 for the approval rating poll which covered Hunt’s caretaker spell, there’s quite the split in voting. It’s much more even, relatively speaking.

I’d put this down as a strong start for Hunt. While 4.1/5 isn’t a knockout, I’m not really sure how realistic it would have been for a rookie manager in very difficult circumstances to have done so well as to get a much higher score.

Over the coming months it’ll be down to the club to improve his likelihood of success - building a squad primarily - and then down to Hunt to make the most of that. We’re in a good positive to be able to go into a summer (and then next season) with a talented, committed manager already on board.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how well Hunt can do in making the most of his 2024/25 experience, moulding a side over the summer and then leading it into a promotion push next season.