What We Learned From Reading’s 5-1 Win At Hungerford Town

The Royals got up and running in pre-season with a comfortable win at Bulpit Lane.

It’s never wise to read too much into the first pre-season friendly of the summer - it’s basically a fitness exercise after all - but let’s give it a go anyway. Reading kicked off their preparations for 2025/26 by beating Hungerford Town 5-1 at Bulpit Lane on Saturday.

It was our first look at how the Royals are developing under Noel Hunt this summer and comes ahead of another three friendlies that are also open to the public: Gillingham away next weekend, followed by Reading hosting Tottenham Hotspur and Portsmouth. There are also behind-closed-doors matches at Bearwood against Swindon Town and Oxford United, as well as a mini-break in Ireland for squad bonding, with no games scheduled in for those few days.

First up a quick recap of how the afternoon unfolded.

Reading first-half XI (4-3-3): Pereira; Abrefa, Stickland, Dorsett, Garcia; Sackey, Wing, Savage; Osho, Tuma, Camara

Reading second-half XI (4-3-3): Stevens; Yiadom, Triallist - Yeboah Amankwah, Kanu, Ryan; Borgnis, Spencer, Howard (subbed off for Beacroft); Ahmed, Okine-Peters, Barough

The players under contract but not involved included: Ben Elliott, Harvey Knibbs, Tivonge Rushesha, Matty Jacob, Paudie O’Connor, John Clarke, Tom Norcott

Reading got up and running with a quick-fire double shortly before the half-hour mark. Emmanuel Osho set up Basil Tuma for 1-0 before the roles were reversed for 2-0. Osho made it 3-0 around 10 minutes later with a goal I missed because I was tweeting (rookie error, I know), but the Royals’ lead was cut when Harry Williams made it 3-1 head into the break.

After the break, Reading’s lead was extended to 4-1 when Ashqar Ahmed snatched the ball off the ‘keeper and slotted into an open net. Barough forced a save from a free-kick a little later but Jeremiah Okine-Peters was on hand to slot home on the rebound for 5-1.

A confident start to pre-season

Yes, Reading were playing opposition they would have expected to beat comfortably - Hungerford play four tiers below Reading in the Southern League Premier Division South. But it was still on the Royals to play well (check), convincingly impose themselves on the match (check) and rack up a healthy scoreline (check).

That’s sometimes been easier said than done for younger Reading sides, which Saturday’s two XIs definitely were. It’s a tricky adjustment for players generally used to under-21s and under-18s football to go toe-to-toe with much older, more experienced and more physical players, even if they are in non-league - which has been the case a few times in the Berks & Bucks Cup in recent years, for example.

But there was no issue on Saturday. Even excluding the older players who lined up (Lewis Wing, Jeriel Dorsett, Andy Yiadom etc), Reading competed well throughout, looking sharp, confident and fluid. And that was the case in both halves too, with the XI introduced at half-time maintaining the intensity and positivity from their predecessors before the break.

There’ll be tougher challenges to come of course - starting with a trip to League Two Gillingham next weekend. But this was an encouraging start nonetheless.

Ahmed and Osho’s right-wing auditions

The two biggest standouts performance-wise were on Reading’s right flank. Osho and Ahmed both looked lively in their 45-minute spells, showing positivity with the ball and getting at Hungerford’s defence confidently.

Given that the Royals are very much rebuilding their attacking options this summer and are likely to bring in a few wide players, these two did their chances of game time in 2025/26 no harm at all. Bright performances against Hungerford hardly mean they’ll immediately be fast-tracked into the league XI, but if they can build on Saturday’s showing in the coming weeks, that’ll give them a good foundation to build on for a potentially break-out season.

Just look at Andre Garcia, for example. He came pretty much from nowhere in the summer of 2024 and established himself in the side. Perhaps Osho and/or Ahmed can be this season’s surprise package.

Both have been around the team in the last 12 months of course. Ahmed played 11 times in all competitions for Reading’s first team last season while Osho played six games in the league and cups. I’m used to both of them also getting game time at full-back, so it’ll be interesting to see where their positional futures lie in the long run.

Reading are still inverting full-backs

Speaking of full-backs, Hunt’s continued/revived a Sellesism of inverting them. That wasn’t consistently evident during his managerial tenure in the second half of last season, but it was noticeable on Saturday.

This picture from the first half illustrates the point. Joel Pereira has the ball, with centre-backs Michael Stickland (right-sided corner of the box) and Jeriel Dorsett (off screen to the left) ahead of him. The full-backs (red circles) have come very narrow while the wingers (blue circles) keep their width.

This trend popped up again in the first half too, with Abrefa and Garcia given license to drift infield quite extensively when Reading attacked. At one point Garcia came over so far as to look like the Royals’ right-sided centre-back, and another time he popped up in more of a 10 role (centrally and high up).

This inversion of the full-backs was pretty reminiscent of the second goal against Wrexham in last season’s 2-0 win (the best team goal of 2024/25?) and suggests that Hunt has an underlying, consistent desire to invert his full-backs.

Maybe not always though. In the second half, left-back John Ryan (another one to impress) and right-back Andy Yiadom seemed to be playing as more conventional full-backs, getting forward on the overlap. However, given that both players are versatile and technically good enough to invert (Ryan can also comfortably as a right-back), they could conceivably operate as inverted full-backs too.

It’ll be interesting to see how much Hunt sticks with this idea in the coming weeks and months.

Tuma’s a lively striker option

Kylian M-Baz-e had a strong start to pre-season too. Reading’s lack of centre-forward options meant he was given the nod in the first half (replaced by Okine-Peters at the break) and he made a good impression in that period. Having opened the scoring with a nice guided finish, having been set up by Osho, he returned the favour by sliding the ball over for his teammate to tap home at the back post.

And his all-round game looked encouraging too. Tuma struggled to impose himself as a centre-forward when I saw him in that position against Cheltenham Town in the Bristol Temple Meads Virtuous Pizza Vase last season, but he had a lot more joy on Saturday.

Generally he looked sharp and lively, making the most of his raw pace. Even though he’s been around the first team since the Paul Ince days, it’s always striking (pun unintended) to see his sheer rapidity in person. Given that he lacks the strength of other centre-forwards, he’ll have to maximise his mobility if he’s to get the better of opposition centre-backs.

There also seemed to be a deliberate ploy to let him drop off into space to get the ball. Rather than constantly staying on the last man, looking for a pass in behind, Tuma could also come a little deeper where he didn’t have to compete directly with a defender.

As with Osho and Ahmed, there’s potentially an opening for Tuma in Reading’s forward-line rebuild. The Royals will very probably bring in two strikers this summer (one starter, one back-up), but they could do with a third option for the sake of depth - even if just a young striker. Perhaps that’ll be Tuma.

There’s not much to learn about the triallist

Not the best sub-header for a ‘What We Learned From...’ article, but yeah, I can’t give you much analysis on Reading’s sole triallist. I can give you his name at least - Yeboah Amakwah - thanks to some excellent sleuthing from RFC Latest on Twitter.

It didn’t initially look like Reading had a triallist involved, but I did manage to spot an unknown player on the bench before the game. Following a load of fruitless trawling through Transfermarkt’s ‘Free Agents’ pages (it turns out he’s not a free agent so wouldn’t have been there) and eventually seeing him line up as a right-sided centre-back, we eventually got the name.

Amakwah is a 24-year-old, London-born centre-back formerly of Manchester City’s academy. After loan spells at Rochdale and Accrington Stanley he ended up at Belgian side SK Lommel on a permanent basis in 2022, and has played 47 times there. His contract seemingly expires next summer, so it’s currently unclear why he’s available.

And I don’t have a lot more to say on him. Amakwah didn’t have a huge amount of defending or complicated distribution to do - this game not being the best time to display either quality. It’ll be interesting to see if he’s kept on in the coming weeks though, and perhaps given another go at Gillingham.

Just to really underline the point about triallist defenders not always being able to obviously stand out in pre-season: two years ago one centre-back got a couple of games in pre-season but didn’t clearly pull up any trees. He did ultimately earn a contract though, and was sold to Nottingham Forest in January.