Vote For Your 2025/26 Reading Rookie Of The Season

“Reading are much, much better at developing youth nowadays”… is how I started this article last year. As for now? Not so much.

While it’s been an oft-discussed point that Leam Richardson doesn’t really seem to trust youth players (just look at a lack of game time recently for Emmanuel Osho, Luke Howard and others), the size of our Rookie of the Season 2025/26 nominees list makes the issue clear. This has not been a good season for youngsters breaking through into Reading’s first team. So how does our list work?

Well, to come up with it, we use the same criteria each year (updating the first line though, naturally): Have been 22 years old or younger on August 1, 2025 Have made fewer than five Reading starts before the start of the season Have made five Reading starts this season or a combined 10 sub appearances + starts Not be on loan at the club The 2022/23 relegation campaign was a particularly dour year for youth development, with only three players making our shortlist (Kelvin Abrefa, winner Nesta Guinness-Walker and Amadou Mbengue). A youthwards shift in 2023/24 yielded a whopping 13-man shortlist (congratulations to Tyler Bindon ), which dropped slightly to seven in 2024/25 (congratulations to Jayden Wareham ). As for 2025/26?

We’re down to… two players. Now, obviously the situation at the club is very different now to how it was in the previous two campaigns. Reading had to play youngsters due to an inability to bring in new signings, and that’s not been the case so much in the post-Dai Yongge era.