Manchester United 5-2 Leicester City(Casemiro 15′, 39′, Garnacho 28′, Fernandes 36′, 59′ | El Kannouss 33′, Coady 45’+3)
OLD TRAFFORD — No rush, Senhor Amorim, Ruud’s got this. Four goals in one half for the first time since 2022, and before the break too.
Yes, there were moments of uncertainty, and two defensive errors that gifted Leicester their goals, but for one night at least, Old Trafford felt properly alive again.
Van Nistelrooy entered to the sound of his own name, responded with a fisted salute and embraced the mascot.
Having dispensed with the tracksuit in favour of casual slacks, roll-neck and crombie, he looked the cool cat hipster Erik ten Hag never was, or could ever be.
He hoped for possession and goals, to shiver the timbers in a way United did when he was banging them in. And just like that the seas parted. However long it takes to negotiate a settlement with Sporting Lisbon for Ruben Amorim, Van Nistelrooy wanted it known that he will give it his all. Just as importantly, he discovered the players are equally disposed.
It had been, he said, a strange 48 hours since Ten Hag was ushered out, his absence filling the space more than his presence, which is often the way of things in separations.
Van Nistelrooy spoke to the players about what it means to represent this club, to play in front of these fans, and hoped a reminder of the privilege might elicit the right response.
Joshua Zirkzee started up front, Altay Bayindir was given a rare crack in goal, and Manuel Ugarte was handed another opportunity to get up to speed. There was very little to distinguish the early experience from an evening with Ten Hag until Casemiro curled in the first, an absolute peach.
One of the many failings under Ten Hag was United’s inability to find the net early in games. Casemiro was dancing beneath the scoreboard after just 15 minutes. He had no right to pick out the top corner from such a range, but did, demonstrating the role of caprice in changes of script.
Alejandro Garnacho missed twice in the opening eight minutes at West Ham on Sunday, both score-able. Here he filled the net with venom from a Diogo Dalot pass to put United two up inside half an hour.
Leicester would bag one themselves shortly afterwards, a decent strike from Bilal El Khannouss, but the blow did not feel lethal in the way setbacks did under Ten Hag.
United simply went again and within six minutes had added two more. Who needs Amorim? Van Nistelrooy’s fist was pumping like it was 2004. The players were high on big Ruud energy and though they conceded a soft second on the stroke of half time, Bruno Fernandes made it five on the hour with a goal straight out of the playground, dribbling the keeper, teasing the defence with a second feint and blasting in on the goalline.
Van Nistelrooy could be gone by the weekend should United and Sporting negotiate a speedy transition for Amorim. But the urgency eased a little on a night that felt like a tribute to a United great, a nascent coach who felt honoured to lead out his team at Old Trafford, if only once.
Apart from the reprieve, the result brought from the deepening cycle of doom under Ten Hag, there was the material gain of a place in the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup, a thread almost lost in a sacking sensation that has obliterated all else.
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Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here
Let’s begin at the end. At full-time of their home game against Bristol City last Tuesday, loud boos rang around the bet365 Stadium. It caught me off guard, both because Stoke City didn’t even lose the match and because this was manager Narcis Pelach’s sixth game in charge.
I don’t think that those boos reflect entitlement, because my goodness you aren’t still coming to watch this team every other week because you honestly think that they belong in the Premier League. I don’t think it reflects a lack of patience in Pelach; he is simply collateral. I don’t even think that it was a reaction to letting a two-goal lead slip, although few things annoy home fans more than wasted joy.
It’s simply that Stoke City supporters can see their future played out on repeat but it reflects their recent past. It’s nothing against Pelach, but he is already being cast as an unwitting part of a wider malaise. A club that had everything going for it is now stuck in a desperate cycle.
Stoke finished ninth for three seasons in a row and enjoyed ten straight seasons of Premier League football because they had a stronger identity than many of their peers.
Now the bet365 Stadium has a listless feel, as if everyone inside is merely waiting for the inevitable. The unpleasantness, if any even exists at all, is saved for the catcalling and groans towards their own players. They know it doesn’t help, but it’s all they have.
Everything you see now is an extended hangover from a ludicrous 18 months when Stoke let life slip through their fingers. They kept faith in Mark Hughes for too long despite a run of seven wins in 33 matches that never looked like being addressed, then replaced him with Paul Lambert. Lambert won his first league game and his last and nothing in between. Stoke City went down.
That didn’t have to mean calamity, as silly as that may now seem. Stoke had parachute payments, had one of the wealthiest and most generous local family owners that any club could wish for and had the chance to reset in the second tier and recapture their identity.
Instead, CEO Tony Scholes oversaw the appointment of Gary Rowett as the club’s new manager, the spending of almost £60m on new players on long contracts to meet Rowett’s desires and the retention of existing players on Premier League wages – Ryan Shawcross, Jack Butland, Mame Biram Diouf.
Rowett was sacked after eight months, to be replaced by Nathan Jones, a coach who had worked within a specific system at Luton Town. Jones lasted 38 matches, nine more than Rowett. He won six matches in all competitions.
The consistency of Stoke City in the Championship is a thing of wonder, although nobody is applauding. Since coming down in 2018, they have finished 16th, 15th, 14th, 14th, 16th and 17th. Last season was at least a little different, but only because things threatened to get worse. Stoke were in the bottom three in early March but lost only two of their last nine matches to pull clear of trouble. You won’t believe this: the good mood didn’t last.
In an ideal Stoke City world, the Coates family would spend their way out of this self-inflicted crisis.
Financial rules are supposed to stop owners from entering a club, loading them with debts and unsustainable financial responsibilities and then walking off into the sunset to let someone else – or nobody else – clean up the mess. That doesn’t really apply to a family who have a wealth of more than £8bn and employ 5,000 local people in their business.
Pelach is bearing the brunt of frustrations (Photo: Getty)
But that misses the point. Stoke knew the rules and knew the likely limitations if they were unable to engineer promotion. The stadium and the Clayton Wood training ground were both sold to bet365 for £85m to keep the Financial Fair Play (FFP) wolf from the door, but you can’t keep spending money, regularly changing managers and finishing in the bottom half of the second tier and avoid comparative austerity forever.
Michael O’Neill at least steadied the ship for a while, and operated under smaller budgets than predecessors. In doing so, he probably made things worse and better simultaneously. He was not a great manager here, perhaps not even a good one.
But he inherited the messy leftovers of three different predecessors and one horrible fall from grace. He brought with him mediocrity, which felt insufficient and yet was just about the best anyone could hope for in the circumstances.
O’Neill is still remembered fairly fondly, but is that even a compliment when only wretched mismanagement and a series of missteps that had led to Stoke City giving him three years to not really work it out. If that sounds as depressing as it gets, Stoke sacked O’Neill a few games into a new season, burned through Alex Neil in 16 months and then also sacked Steve Schumacher in early season. It doesn’t scream effective long-term planning.
A return to the regular hiring and firing of managers has provoked a similar return to high player turnover, aided by several quiet windows under O’Neill and the sale of Harry Souttar and Nathan Collins in consecutive seasons for around £30m.
You know the routine by now: manager arrives, has a list of targets, contracts are handed out, manager leaves before they are halfway expired, rinse and repeat. You are left building a house out of dry sand and misplaced hope.
Since June 2023, 23 players have left Stoke City and 22 have arrived on permanent deals with another 11 loan arrivals.
There has been a deliberate attempt to overhaul the age of the squad, which does at least make sense (the front four for the Bristol City draw were all 22 or younger and the average age this season is 24.1). But that creates two issues: young players thrive in stable working environments and the best of them tend to be loanees from Premier League clubs who stay for a season and then leave.
This recruitment model, scouting across Europe for a high volume of mid-range signings aged between 19-23, can certainly work and did represent a shift in strategy, but it does rely upon those players working out. The six most expensive signings that Stoke made in summer 2023 have started 20 league games between them this season. Three of them have already left the club, permanently or on loan.
In February, Jon Walters was appointed as Stoke City’s sporting director on a permanent basis. In his first interview Walters spoke extensively about using his own successful history as a player here to recapture what has broken.
Stoke City 2-2 Bristol City (Tuesday 22 October)
Game no.: 29/92
Miles: 102
Cumulative miles: 4,483
Total goals seen: 92
The one thing I’ll remember in May: Lewis Koumas’ over-the-shoulder volley after less than two minutes. I’ll see fewer better goals this season.
“It’s a case of building brick-by-brick towards a long-term ambition of being better than we’ve ever been before,” Walters said.
“We will do that by instilling a culture of high standards in everything we do and being true to the local DNA of dedication, relentless hard work, having each other’s backs and never giving in.”
Walters is surely right; it is those core values that were lost too easily and have never been regained. But it’s also far easier said than done when that decline has been continuing, unabated, for more than half a decade.
How does this break in practice? You give a manager time, but what if he’s not the right one and what if it isn’t his fault? What if the culture doesn’t need fixing but rebuilding from the foundations up? Football clubs don’t get to stop the clock until they’ve worked it all out.
And how do you focus on the future when the present never seems to change. Stoke have already sacked one manager this season and appointed another, a 36-year-old Catalan who was a coach at Norwich City. It feels like another lurch in another different direction. Pelach has won one of his eight matches and Stoke are a point above the bottom three. So does this one just play out to the end?
And that’s the biggest problem here: you could have written this piece last season, the one before or the one before that. Change the actors but the script remains painfully similar.
That might all sound like stagnation, but in fact it’s worse than that because of the people you lose on the way: those who question what the point is; those who see another new manager and crop of players but can’t believe anything has changed; those who promise themselves that it’ll be worth the time and money when they see something new.
That’s not a lack of loyalty, it’s emotional self-preservation. It isn’t fun to pretend that you care less than you do because it makes you too angry otherwise.
So, having begun at the end let’s scroll back to the beginning and the Bristol City boos. They weren’t a display of anger or upset because they weren’t a reaction at all. Instead, they were a involuntary warning of what comes next: apathy. Get hurt in the same way enough times and you subconsciously protect yourself against the pain.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goalof visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season.You can follow his progress via ourinteractive map and find every article (so far) here
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There’s a fair argument that given the overwhelming misery of the Erik ten Hag era at Manchester United, everyone’s a winner if Ruben Amorim is appointed as the Dutchman’s successor.
But, of course, that can never be the case. While Amorim has a proven track record of improving players – something no United manager has managed for a decade – some of the current squad will inevitably fall through the cracks of restructuring.
So who will be at the forefront of the brave new world at Old Trafford, and who’s off to the Saudi Pro League in January?
Winners
Marcus Rashford
Arguably the player whose career and reputation has been damaged most by Ten Hag, Rashford has everything to gain under Amorim.
The Portuguese’s 3-4-3 or 3-4-2-1 systems both depend on inside forwards, which could be perfect for Rashford if he can repair his relationship with the fans and fill the role Pedro Goncalves has so successfully for Sporting.
Since the start of Amorim’s first full season at the Lisbon club – 2020-21 – Goncalves scored 81 goals and assisted 56 more in 187 matches, having never previously managed more than seven goals in a single campaign.
While Rashford is more direct and comfortable higher up the pitch than Goncalves, there’s definitely opportunity for the winger to take on that responsibility and role.
The same could well work for Alejandro Garnacho on the opposite wing, with the pair seemingly a better fit for the creative roles than Bruno Fernandes, who we’ll get on to later.
Rasmus Hojlund
Hojlund will be watching clips of Viktor Gyokeres at Sporting and wishing with every fibre of his being that Amorim has a similar effect on his career.
His 18 goals in 51 Manchester United games is fine but ultimately uninspiring, yet the 21-year-old is so clearly a significant talent who should suit both the Premier League and Amorim’s system perfectly.
There’s even potential for this to work out well for Joshua Zirkzee given Amorim’s success with Paulinho, a similarly rounded, non-goalscoring striker who became vital to Sporting’s early success.
Manuel Ugarte
This is probably the most obvious one, given Amorim bought Ugarte at Sporting and was almost solely responsible for his two-season transformation from raw talent to the player sold to PSG for £55m.
Ugarte’s defensive abilities suit Amorim’s preferred style of midfield play almost perfectly. Him and Kobbie Mainoo could rapidly become one of the most effective midfield pairings in the Premier League – and one with huge potential longevity.
This will undoubtedly be helped by having a three-man defence behind them, allowing greater attacking freedom and ability to take risks.
Ugarte will also be key in helping Amorim implement his tactical framework as quickly as possible given his familiarity with his ideas and training methods.
Antony
It really wouldn’t be hard for Antony to enjoy life more under Amorim than he did Ten Hag.
The Brazilian has been not so much underwhelming as utterly embarrassing during his time at Old Trafford, and a move back to the Netherlands or Brazil has seemed a certainty for some time.
But there just might be a role for him under the new regime. Amorim’s tactical system is reliant on wing-backs, a position United arguably don’t have a single natural fit for.
Luke Shaw is probably the closest given his success in the role for England at Euro 2020, but another injury setback means he may not be available for some time.
This presents an opportunity for Antony to reinvent himself. While the fidget-spinner trickster approach clearly doesn’t work for him in the Premier League, he’s a rapid left-footer who’s a sharp crosser and solid one-on-one.
If he’s willing to put in the work to improve his defensive acumen, he could become one of the surprise beneficiaries of Amorim’s arrival as a makeshift left wing-back.
Losers
Bruno Fernandes
Fernandes could end up in the bizarre position of being the best player at Old Trafford, but not starting regularly due to simply not fitting how Amorim wants to play football.
This would likely not be the case even a year ago, but Fernandes isn’t just 30 – he’s 30 and has played a remarkable amount of football in the past decade. He’s featured in at least 45 matches across six of the last eight full seasons and it’s starting to manifest as declining pace and agility.
This is not good news for his chances of lining up as one of the two wide, creative attackers either side of the striker. He’s had some success in a deeper role for Portugal, but it’s difficult to say he fits this role better than Mainoo or Ugarte.
There’s a real risk that Fernandes becomes something of a tragic figure, in the wrong place at the wrong time for the second consecutive time in his career, while Amorim reaps the rewards.
Fernandes’ place could be under threat (Photo: Getty)
Leaving Sporting in January 2020 when they had not won a league title since 2002, Fernandes missed the new boss by two months. They won the Liga Portugal the following season and have embarked upon a run of historic success.
While this seems unlikely in the short term at United, Fernandes could well fall out of favour just before the team’s trajectory finally improves, doomed to carry the burden during the bad days but never taste the benefits.
Casemiro
However bad it got under Ten Hag, there was always the sense that the Dutchman genuinely valued and rated Casemiro.
It’s hard to imagine a new manager thinking the same. Losing the Ten Hag comfort blanket, coupled with him not remotely fitting in Amorim’s double pivot and Ineos being keen to lose his £300k per week off the wage bill, will surely end with a one-way ticket to Riyadh.
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The Ruud van Nistelrooy era at Manchester United may not last long, but he has an opportunity to audition for other top jobs if he can inspire a rapid transformation.
Named interim head coach after the sacking of Erik ten Hag, the former striker has reportedly been increasing his influence at the club since joining as an assistant in the summer.
He will now take charge for Wednesday’s Carabao Cup last-16 match against Leicester, as well as potentially staying on for upcoming matches against Chelsea, Paok Salonika and Leicester again before the November international break.
However, with Ruben Amorim being increasingly strongly linked with the permanent role, this seems unlikely.
What we know about Ruud van Nistelrooy’s coaching style
Van Nistelrooy has never managed a full season at senior level, leaving his only head coach role with PSV Eindhoven one match before the end of the season.
In 14 months in the job, he won the Dutch Cup and Super Cup, as well as finishing second in the Eredivisie behind Arne Slot’s Feyenoord.
He became renowned for slick attacking football with a remarkably talented group of players – at different points he could call upon Cody Gakpo, Noni Madueke, Savio, Xavi Simons, Jarrad Branthwaite, Ibrahim Sangare and Thorgan Hazard.
The Eredivisie top scorers in 2022-23 with 89 goals scored – and 128 in all competitions – Van Nistelrooy’s PSV were far better going forward than they were at the back.
They only had the sixth-best defensive record, conceding more goals than relative minnows Sparta Rotterdam.
Speaking on The Overlap in March 2023, Van Nistelrooy said: “I notice an instinctive feeling that when I’m coaching, I like to see the ball in my team.
“When we have the ball, I’m like ‘yes, now we can start creating’. I like us to prepare and attack – you play possession until a certain moment you’re going to hurt the opponent.”
He has also spoken about the influence of former PSV manager Sir Bobby Robson, especially his focus on positivity and simplicity.
“Robson could explain everything in simplicity and said: ‘Boys, in the media you speak about yourself or positively about somebody else.’ Period,” Van Nistelrooy explained.
One of his greatest strengths has been developing individual players, with Simons saying his compatriot taught him “everything”.
His influence on Madueke and Gakpo, both of whom left PSV in January 2023, is also clear – Van Nistelrooy had worked with both in the academy as well as the first team.
But given he’s only likely to take charge of a maximum four matches, this isn’t going to make much difference to United. What’s more interesting is his preferred tactical set-up – a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3, with quick wingers to hold width and inverted full-backs to dominate the midfield – not unlike Ten Hag.
Considering United’s injury concerns against Leicester and limited depth at full-back, it will be difficult to make many fundamental changes, but given one of Ten Hag’s issues was scoring goals, he may well just aim to let this side off the leash and attack from the off.
United’s dismal start to the season is reflected by the lack of interest in their assets with full-back/occasional No 10 Noussair Mazraoi their most popular pick in the game at just 12 per cent ownership.
Perhaps there will be a new manager bounce under Ruud van Nistelrooy, the relentless goalscorer turned interim coach at the Theatre of Dreams. It’s happened before, after all…
The Red Devils have a tricky test this weekend against in-form Chelsea but Old Trafford will be rocking with fans eager to help a club legend get off to a winning start. After the Blues they face Leicester (h), Ipswich (a) and Everton (h) in their next three. You would like to think there are points to be had from that block of matches.
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Elsewhere, an Arsenal side depleted by injuries in defence take on an out-of-form Newcastle at St James’ Park, Liverpool welcome Brighton to Anfield and Tottenham host Aston Villa in north London.
The Gameweek 10 deadline is at 11am on Saturday 2 November.
Matheus Cunha scored their added time equaliser at the Amex and his performance deserved a goal. The Brazilian was at the heart of everything, taking five shots and creating four chances. He also managed 13 touches in the opposition’s box, nine more than his fellow forward Jorgen Strand Larsen (£5.5m) managed.
Cunha’s output in the opening months of this campaign has been pretty good despite his team’s struggles with four goals in nine appearances. Furthermore, only six forwards in the game have accumulated more points than his 41.
The Premier League’s fixture computer was unkind to Wolves at the start of this season, but their schedule eases up considerably over the next couple of months. Only one of their next nine opponents is currently positioned in the top half of the table and that’s 10th-placed Fulham.
This selection might provoke some raised eyebrows, but have you seen Ashley Young’s returns recently? The veteran full-back has been a beacon of consistency of late, posting numbers that put far more fashionable options to shame.
Young’s assist for Beto against Fulham was his third of the season already, a tally that puts him level at the top of the charts among defenders with Lucas Digne and Nathan Collins. He has three times as many attacking returns as both Trent Alexander-Arnold and Pedro Porro, the first and third-most selected defenders in FPL but is owned by less than one per cent of managers.
He can be a shrewd short-term pick given Everton’s upcoming fixtures. The Toffees face Southampton (a), West Ham (a), Brentford (h), Manchester United (a) and Wolves (h) in their next five, before taking on four of the top five in consecutive matches in December.
Garnacho has been one of United’s best players this season (Photo: Getty)
If you fancy United to put on a show following Ten Hag’s demise you could make a move for Alejandro Garnacho who is a low-cost, high-upside pick in midfield.
The Argentine has been in reasonable form so far, scoring two goals and providing an assist in nine matches and produced 10 points in his previous home game against Brentford.
Garnacho’s underlying data is promising. Although Bruno Fernandes has had more shots than him (28 to 25), Garnacho has taken his from closer range with 18 of his attempts coming from inside the box, compared to 12 from his skipper.
Van Nistelrooy made a career out of finishing chances from close range and will hope to pass on that expertise to Garnacho who has shown a promising tendency to get into goalscoring positions.
Price: £6.2m Points: 32 Gameweek 10 fixture: Chelsea (h)
Bryan Mbeumo (Brentford)
If you haven’t yet snapped up Bryan Mbeumo what are you waiting for? Brentford’s talisman has made an electric start to this season, scoring eight goals in nine games including twice against Ipswich in Gameweek 9. With Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa establishing themselves as one of the league’s most potent partnerships, Ivan Toney has scarcely been missed.
Now, it is worth pointing out that Mbeumo has done most of his points-scoring at the Brentford Community Stadium and plays away in Gameweek 10. Seven of his goals and a staggering 85 per cent of his FPL points this season have come in home matches.
However, Brentford have had a tough run of fixtures on the road so far this campaign, with their opening four away games played at Anfield, the Etihad, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (where Mbeumo scored) and Old Trafford. Upcoming trips to Craven Cottage and Goodison Park are less daunting.
If funds are really tight you could do worse than take a punt on Mbeumo’s teammate Mikkel Damsgaard (£5m) who has chipped in with three assists and is top the club’s creativity charts.
Don’t press the purchase button on Chris Wood just yet as the prolific New Zealander was seen icing his foot after putting Leicester to the sword in Gameweek 9.
If he is passed fit, though, he immediately becomes one of the most obvious transfer targets this weekend given his fearsome form in front of goal. Erling Haaland (with 10) and Mbeumo (eight) are the only players to have scored more Premier League goals than Wood (seven) this season.
It’s not just a purple patch either. Since Nuno Espirito Santo’s first game in charge of Nottingham Forest in December 2023, only Haaland has scored more non-penalty goals in the top flight than Wood.
His form has been consistent over a long period and can continue with high-flying Forest hosting West Ham, Newcastle and Ipswich at the City Ground in their next four.
Price: £6.4m Points: 59 Gameweek 10 fixture: West Ham (h)
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Real Madrid forward Vinicius Jr believes his anti-racism activism cost him the Ballon d’Or as Spanish duo Rodri and Aitana Bonmati won the men’s and women’s titles respectively.
The Brazilian’s supposed snub led to every Real Madrid player, coach and executive nominated for an award boycotting Monday evening’s event in Paris.
Despite Rodri’s win, three Madrid players were named in the top four of the men’s award, with Jude Bellingham and Dani Carvajal trailing Vinicius in the voting.
Carlo Ancelotti won the men’s coach of the year award, while Real Madrid won men’s team of the year and Kylian Mbappe shared the Gerd Muller trophy with Harry Kane.
Posting on X after Rodri was confirmed as the winner, Vinicius said: “I will do it 10 times if I have to. They’re not ready.”
Speaking to Reuters, his management staff confirmed this post was in relation to his fight against racism, which they believe led to him not winning the award.
They said: “The football world is not ready to accept a player who fights against the system.”
Vinicius has been the subject of repeated racist abuse throughout his time in Spain, with four men arrested last Thursday after coordinating an online racist hate campaign against him.
He also offered support to Barcelona winger Lamine Yamal after the 17-year-old was racially abused during his side’s 4-0 win over Madrid on Saturday.
In an earlier statement justifying their boycott, Real Madrid said: “If the award criteria doesn’t give it to Vinicius as the winner, then those same criteria should point to (Dani) Carvajal as the winner.
“As this was not the case, it is clear that Ballon d’Or does not respect Real Madrid. Real Madrid does not go where it is not respected.”
Meanwhile Barcelona midfielder Bonmati led a Catalan clean sweep of the women’s Ballon d’Or, with the Spaniard beating teammates Caroline Graham Hansen and Salma Paralluelo to the award.
Both men’s and women’s Ballon d’Or winners were Spanish (Photo: Getty)
Barcelona Femeni won the Champions League for the third time in three seasons, leading to Bonmati winning the award for the second year in a row.
Former Chelsea manager Emma Hayes was named women’s coach of the year after guiding her USA side to Olympic glory in her first few months in her new role.
Speaking over a video link as the ceremony falls during an international break, Hayes said: “I just want to say I’m very honoured to be awarded the first Ballon d’Or for a coach of the women’s game.
“It’s a very proud moment for my family, I’m very proud to be in this position and I want to say a big congratulations to all of the nominees, they are all coaches I respect hugely, and I understand how challenging our work is. I feel a little bit embarrassed because it’s a team game.”
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Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here
Walking up to the home of Reading is a distinctly doleful experience in 2024, like passing through the high street of a town you used to live in and knowing you can never get those years back. This was the house that John Madejski built that once bore his name, full most weeks during the good years when magic dust seemed to land upon Reading for a while.
Madejski was chairman from 1990, a man who grew up in a children’s home in the town and then made his many millions. He rescued Reading from receivership, built them a new home and then funded a dream not through wanton overspending but by savviness and sensible delegation to well-appointed managers.
Reading had three seasons in the Premier League – the latest in 2012-13 – and finished eighth in 2006-07. They didn’t spend more than £3m on a player until 2017. They made a cult hero team by making good with what they had and who they found along the way: Steve Coppell, Brian McDermott, Adam Le Fondre, Kevin Doyle, Nicky Shorey, Graeme Murty, Stephen Hunt, Dave Kitson, Ibrahima Sonko, Steve Sidwell and more. Reading were a single point away from European football in 2007.
That is the cast list you think of when you walk around the Select Car Leasing Stadium now and not only because their faces, frozen in moments of shared joy, adorn walls that have witnessed far worse times since. Reading have spent more than a year in a state of civil war, an emergency that gets worse with each passing month and each potential takeover that fails. There is one message above all others here: leave fast, Dai Yongge.
As such, there were less than 13,000 at Reading on Saturday lunchtime, vast swathes of blue seats obvious at one end and that splash effect in the main stands, where a concentrated collection of fans in the middle eventually gives away to sporadic dots. Some feel that they cannot give any more money to the owner and, although it doesn’t quite work that way, you have to accept their desire to stay away. Others simply had their spirit eroded to the point that going to the football wasn’t fun enough to justify the cost, time or effort.
Madejski lost control of Reading when he sold it to Thames Sports Investments, a Russian consortium fronted by Anton Zingarevich that were never able to fully complete the purchase, a Thai ownership group stepping in instead. In November 2016, Chinese siblings Dai Yongge and Dai Xiu Li began negotiations to take a majority stake having tried and failed to buy Hull City. By May 2017, they were in.
Dai’s first match – for it was he who was more hands-on and is now effectively the sole owner – was the Championship play-off final at Wembley. Reading lost that on penalties and have never been as high again. That is the tragic irony: all this hurt, all this sorry wastage and all this wasted energy to never get back even to where you started. It could all have been so different but this is all it is now.
Dai might be accused of many things, but not spending money isn’t one of them. The enforced parsimony that eventually swallowed Reading’s potential arrived because of their own excesses. They spent around £15m on George Puscas and Sone Aluko despite being a second-tier club with lower revenues than many of their peers. They reportedly relied upon agent Kia Joorabchian as their high-end transfer fixer. They were known as generous wage payers, especially for loan players.
Unhelpfully, Reading also didn’t sell particularly well. Under Dai’s entire ownership, they have sold two players for a fee of more than £2.5m. The first was Leandro Bacuna, who left for Cardiff for just under £3m in January 2019 (in the same season Reading paid more than that for Sam Baldock). The second was Michael Olise, criminally undervalued by a release clause that allowed him to join Crystal Palace for just £8m.
More to the point, Reading weren’t actually very good. They finished 20th in the first two full seasons under Dai’s ownership and then 14th in the third. In 2020-21, the season before everything started to unravel, Reading were in a dominant position to at least make the Championship play-offs. They won one of their last 11 league games and finished seventh.
That created only one likely reality. Spending on wages alone eventually doubled revenue, financial regulations started to bite and, in November 2021, Reading were deducted six points for exceeding agreed limits on losses with the EFL. The following season they were deducted a further six points for failing to comply with the schedule agreed after the first punishment; this time it meant relegation to League One.
Chinese businessman Dai Yongge bought the club in 2017 (Photo: Getty)
And then last season, more farces still. Reading were docked one point for failing to pay players on time the previous season, two points for making late payments to HMRC and another three for more late payments of salaries. The club existed under transfer embargoes for breaching profitability and sustainability regulations. It became clear: Dai had got it all wrong and the club was paying for his mistakes.
Supporters may have forgiven the wayward stewardship if they could believe that their club was meeting them halfway. Football clubs get relegated all the time and many step on the wrong side of the rules, even multiple times. Tricky times can bring clubs together and create siege mentalities that reinforce the sensation of social institution rather than degrading it.
Here that never happened because lines of communication were broken. Supporters’ groups were told repeatedly that Dai was a private individual, but that doesn’t adequately explain the information vacuum in which only fear or rumour could ever hope to breed sustainably. Relegation to League One could have offered a shot at a clear reset and return to the values that propelled Reading on in the past. Instead, it was bad business as usual.
That is what provoked the protests that have become one of the most concerted supporter campaigns in recent history. Five groups combined to create Sell Before We Dai, a protest organisation that demanded the sale of Reading before more damage could be done. Many of these supporters did the same to save the club in the 1980s; here they were again.
A year ago this month, thousands met at Blue Collar Street Food market on Hosier Street on the eastern edge of the town centre and marched the two miles to the stadium. That was the breakout event of Sell Before We Dai, a means of gaining national attention for their plight before a home game against Portsmouth, a club who had suffered painfully similar turbulence.
The depth and breadth of initiatives that Sell Before We Dai have organised since is genuinely astonishing and impossible to list exhaustively. They created websites and merchandise. They wrote manifestoes for change. They participated in countless media interviews with almost as many different outlets.
They reached out to the council and managed to obtain Asset of Community Value status for the stadium, offering a layer of protection given the separation of the club and ground under Dai’s watch. They relentlessly worked to secure help from local and national MPs, including an approach to use Reading as a test-case club for a new independent regulator.
They organised sit-in protests, tennis ball protests, red card protests and clown fancy dress protests. They became investigative journalists to unearth information that could help their case. They held meetings with the EFL and used social media to conduct sessions in which supporters of other clubs are educated on the issues. They helped to raise money for financial shortfalls within the club. They became educated and active on four different Chinese social media platforms to try and raise awareness in Dai’s native country.
“You name it, Reading fans have done it,” says Adam Jones of the protest group.
“Sell Before We Dai has been the central point for protests and pressure, but it’s the whole fanbase that has helped to bring some of these ideas to life through their participation and fundraising.
“As a group we’re extremely grateful for the support. A prawn sandwich brigade we’re not. Fans have shown that they’re willing to go to all lengths to save their football club.”
One shift over time is how the protests became more studied (focusing on aiding the end goal) rather than reactive (causing a stink about the situation). As Sarah Turner, chair of Reading Supporters’ Trust, explained to me before Saturday’s game, that was a deliberate move because they could not risk more harm to the team due to punishments for interruptive action. “Support the team, not the regime” became another mantra.
Sell Before We Dai have led fan protests for the past 12 months (Photo: Getty)
You see the point: if the aim is for the club to be sold, getting points deductions for actions calling for that sale is only going to take the club down the table and make them less attractive to buyers and exacerbate the emergency. Instead they became a committed cooperative in which experts from multiple industries worked with an army of general volunteer supporters.
And where has that led but nowhere at all. For all their magnificent, tireless work, Reading supporters cannot force through a sale and cannot alter its conditions enough themselves. Last month, a third potential takeover in 12 months fell through as former Wycombe Wanderers owner Rob Couhig was unable to complete a deal. It is the same old story: constant effort and worry with no obvious reward nor end in sight. I have timed my trip to Reading deliberately: this marks the 365th day since Dai announced that the club was for sale.
“I don’t know what as a campaign we could’ve done more,” Caroline Parker of Sell Before We Dai told i.
“We’ve given blood, sweat and tears for 15 months to try to get this man out of the club. We’ve tried everything. We couldn’t have been more high profile.
“And what’s it got us to? Nothing. No football fans should have to keep going through this.”
When chatting to Sarah outside the stadium, her reaction is slightly different but no less bleak: “You know what, when I heard the news, there was no anger and there were no tears. It was just a feeling of complete resignation. It has all made me dead inside.”
This is not just a case of wanting a new owner because they don’t much care for the record of the current one. According to a report in The Guardian, Dai’s attempts to sell the club are being complicated by his failure to repay debts to a Chinese bank, which would raise fears for any potential buyer that they may lose control of the stadium if it is taken as collateral.
Furthermore, Couhig’s group loaned the club money to keep players and staff – and HMRC – paid up and avoid further points deductions. Olise’s sale to Bayern Munich by Crystal Palace has provided a cash injection, but supporters are clearly worried about how long the money will last.
“The fact that they are choosing not to [fund the club] is deplorable, dishonourable and brings the entire game into disrepute,” a statement from the Supporters’ Trust read.
“The club statement asserts that ‘funds are in place to fund the club until a transaction is completed’. This is a huge claim for the club to make given Dai has not funded the club for over six months, the club has continually missed payments without external support and the selling process is nearly entering a second year.”
All the while, things keep getting worse. Staff have been made redundant, a sale of the training ground only collapsed after significant protests, the club’s women’s team were forced to pull out of the second tier because they could no longer operate professionally and those staff left at the club are under enormous pressure and live in constant fear that wages may not arrive on time. It doesn’t get much worse than this.
And yet, counterintuitively given all this place has witnessed over the last two years, I am here to find some hope too. In part it is to be found in everything I read and hear about the supporters themselves. When a fanbase comes together and unites over a single goal, it creates the potential for a day, further down the line, when they can look each other in teary eyes and know that their comradeship made this happen. How could hope not exist while that remains a possibility?
But it’s also present here because of what is happening on the pitch and who is driving it. In Ruben Selles, Reading supporters have a manager who is committed to making the best of the worst and has been an ally to them off the pitch. Reading academy regained Level 1 status in the summer of 2023 and without it god knows where Reading would be now. These two factors have meant everything.
On the side of the stadium is a giant mosaic of Eamonn Dolan, on the stand that now bears his name. Dolan was the academy manager at Reading from 2004 until his tragic passing from cancer in 2016 at the age of just 48. Dolan’s work was not just in providing key ingredients in some of Reading’s greatest ever teams, but in the principles he upheld and standards he set in the academy that would last long after he left us.
Reading beat Bristol Rovers on Saturday; they were dominant throughout although the scoreline was only 1-0 and although they survived a late wobble. They have now picked up the most points at home in the EFL this season, remarkable given preseason expectations and the general mood. A haven has been found in the most unlikely place.
Reading’s starting XI had an average age of 23.8, one of the youngest in the country. More remarkable is that the team contained five academy graduates and there were another four on the bench.
In total this season, Reading have included 12 different academy graduates in their matchday squads. This may not last because the depth in the squad is non-existent, because young players suffer troughs as well as peaks and because there is no money to spend in January, but Reading are sixth in League One.
After the match, Sarah drops me a message: “I hope you could see that there is a good feeling between fans and players – it feels like a team fighting against the odds too”.
And she’s right; it absolutely does. This is a group of young kids who have only known hardship here under a Spanish coach who has been forced to suffer exactly the same, and yet they seem determined to do all they can together. That is enough to provoke intense feelings of pride, even in an outsider visiting for a day.
Who knows how long that can last, because the cycle of emotional turmoil begins again. A new period of exclusivity has opened with a different potential purchaser. Perhaps, after three failures, the fourth one will be a charm. Sarah gives me a knowing smile when I ask if she’s hopeful of it going through. Adam verbalises the same look.
“The club may be in a period of exclusivity now, but we’re still engaging with politicians to try and keep the pressure on. We appreciate the fact we need to be doing meaningful things to actually make any difference and that’s firmly in our minds. We can’t take anything for granted and our work continues.”
Nobody here will dare celebrate until there is a new name above the door. One day I will come back here and not feel as if I am walking towards a wake as I venture along Acre Road with the white metalwork of the stadium coming into view. For now that remains a pipe dream that ultimately sits outside of the control of all but a few.
But when it does happen, and the cloud finally lifts from this club and its 153-year history, we should take a step back to pay homage to those who have offered solace and made a difference over the last year. To the academy players who have stepped up to fill the gaps. To the manager who has somehow shut out the noise. To the staff who have kept on working, taking on more duties under harder circumstances.
And to the supporters: those within the protest groups, those leaders of the movement, those who have volunteered and organised and those outsiders who have lent their help, advice or simply listened. These are the people who went above and beyond because they felt they owed it to those who loved Reading before them and those who would love it after them. They have done so for far longer than they ever feared that they might have to. The things that keep football clubs alive are exactly the things that make that life worth fighting for.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goalof visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season.You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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Standing at the shoulder of the refereeing class is getting harder by the match. Dealing with the pressure of a difficult job has always been a thankless past-time, aggravated by the actions of players and a partisan public.
Officials operate in a hostile culture, which breeds mistakes. That was partly the point of VAR, to make the job and the life of referees easier, to improve the experience for them and us by the removal of doubt.
What we saw at the London Stadium on Sunday might just have drained the last drop of sympathy held by reasonable folk for match officials, a decision so bad it made even the most virulent Manchester United haters proffer their condolences. “One of the worst decisions I have ever seen,” said former referee Keith Hackett.
The intervention broke the spirit of the summer imperative to stop re-refereeing the game. Any call to the TV monitor had to be justified by a clear and obvious error. Match referee David Coote saw nothing in the coming together of Matthijs de Ligt and Danny Ings on the cusp of normal time. Indeed he waved off the incident with a vigorous hand action and Andre Onana continued with the play.
The ball was in the West Ham box when the game was belatedly brought to a halt by video assistant Michael Oliver, who in the clinical quiet of his Stockley Park laboratory had viewed the action again in super slow-mo, a shape-shifting device which, when the frames are slowed sufficiently, could make a Labrador puppy look like the aggressor in a fight with an American Bully.
There is always the suspicion of vanity with Oliver in the performative strut with which he goes about his business on the pitch. This feeling, this sense of low-level power-tripping transfers easily to Stockley Park when he is the one in control of the remote. To be the only man on earth capable of spotting a crime when all others see innocence adds a yard of swagger and a ton of authority.
There was a feeling observing this from the stands that Coote was being persuaded of something he didn’t quite believe. He spent an age staring at the monitor, which is a ready proof against anything being clear and obvious. In truth even when slowed there was no way of knowing clearly and obviously that De Ligt had fouled Ings.
From almost every angle it looked like the force was with Ings, that his speed and clumsiness initiated the contact. De Ligt’s hands were raised to protect against misinterpretation. But Oliver knew better, because he could see what others could not. Because he is Michael Oliver.
So this is not really about VAR. It never has been. It’s about the inability of humans to decipher truth from ambiguity. The technology takes us only so far. In matters as tangled as a football melee the camera has no place since its objectivity must subsequently pass through the filter of human subjectivity, which inevitably renders it useless and takes us back to square one.
Namely scrub VAR and let the referees get on with it, for good or ill. The alternative is to take referees out of it and hand the game over to AI bots. But then it would not be football, but a Fifa lookalike, a computerised hybrid.
Coming gently back to a reasoned place, there is of course a role for video analysis for the measurable elements, line calls and offsides, for those who like to determine a toenail’s width. But when judgements require human interpretation, technology does not bring us closer to the truth of things nor enhance the watching experience because the camera must defer to the Olivers of this world.
It is incumbent on the refereeing community at PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Ltd) to lead the criticism of Sunday’s debacle and reach the necessary compromise to preserve the essence of the game. Yet, any who reads the comments on social media will know that there is little trust in the refereeing community.
Those referees like Mike Dean and Dermot Gallagher, who have migrated to the Sky studios to help unpack decisions for the layperson, and indeed PGMOL chief himself, Howard Webb, via his podcast, have yet to persuade many that they are anything other than apologists for their mates in the middle.
Arsenal’s thriller against Liverpool refereed by Anthony Taylor was beset by its own VAR complications, particularly the check on Ibrahima Konate’s challenge on Gabriel Martinelli, which the Arsenal striker thought illegal. Taylor thought otherwise and was backed by VAR, a critical decision with the match at 1-1.
The Premier League’s contribution via its X account did nothing to add to the sum of understanding telling us only what we already knew, that the check revealed no foul had occurred. That’s not clarity, that’s stating the bleeding obvious as officialdom saw it. And it did not deliver absolute truth but a version of it, which differed to Martinelli’s and 50,000-plus in the stands.
VAR was supposed to bring us closer to heaven, to birth a new clarity and order. The West Ham horror demonstrates how this was always misconceived. We are at a watershed moment, the limits of VAR exposed. The dreaded TV monitor has become a carbuncle responsible for bad decisions after good.
It’s time to reign in VAR, to stop the pretence of perfection and ring-fence its deployment to the measurable elements. Leave the rest up to the man in the middle.
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