Was The January 2025 Window The Best Reading Could Have Hoped For?

06/02/2025 10:13

Alex reviews a difficult winter transfer window that could have gone a lot worse for the Royals.

February then! Nice month, February. Except maybe for the first two days of it. Nice short month, which gets us to March nice and quickly and a brief respite from selling players to pay the 'lecky bill.

The original premise for this was going to be a Winners & Losers format but, given the window we had, it's tricky to write in such a way, so I'll do a few summary points of how I think it went.

Overall

The reality (one we were all prepared for) was that we were never going to have a great window, or a good window. It was very much a damage-limitation situation.

When the window opened, almost straightaway there were rumours surfacing about players such as Harvey Knibbs and Joel Pereira. This was obviously worrying but, somehow, we have kept them. Later in the window, there was talk about Andre Garcia, but this again amounted to nothing.

Reportedly Michael Craig was the subject of a bid from Stevenage. Even with the need to pay the tax man looming, it just seemed so unlikely Craig would see that as a good career move for himself and so it didn't come to pass.

It felt like maybe, somewhere, our process of going through exclusivity might have protected us a bit. Maybe you can't have outgoings when the books are being reviewed? I don't know. But against all instinct, we not only got through the first four weeks in tact, but we also actually managed to extend Chem Campbell's stay - something I previously referred to on these pages as seemingly next to impossible.

Then it happened. Rumours surfaced about Sam Smith going and it all burst into life. All of that happened, then Tyler Bindon's exit happened, and then - shock of all shocks - we actually brought in an actual player on an actual loan deal. And just to keep things interesting, we even found Dean Bouzanis from down the back of the sofa and let him off of the lead.

When I ranked players who we most needed to keep at the start of the window, it was with some trepidation. When you look at the bare numbers, we lost our numbers one (Bindon) and three (Smith) in that list, as well as the number 26 (Bouzanis).

That's a tough sell to say that it was any kind of win. We have to measure everything by Reading standards, so losing 2.5 players and bringing in 2.5 players (Bindon being the half on each side) is almost the best we could have reasonably have hoped for. It's a sign of the times that that's how things are and have to be, but it really could have been so much worse.

Bringing people in at all is a legitimate surprise - I barely bothered to rank Campbell as I expected him to bid us farewell. However, one thing that we need to take a moment to reflect on is this: our business model is undeniably the best it has been in a very long time, probably since the Steve Coppell days.

Bringing Smith in for free and getting a reported £2m for him of pure profit, while not great in footballing terms, is good business. Losing Bindon hurts a lot, but his contract was about to run out and now we've both managed to get some money for him and keep him around until the end of the season. That's almost witchcraft.

It's a real departure from even as recently as this time last year and, coupled with the smart sale of Femi Azeez in the summer, in a similar situation to Bindon, we are playing a badly dealt hand well - and that's huge credit to those behind the scenes.

It's damning with faint praise but it's progress from previous years. That's something to give us hope for the future.

Tyler Bindon

Other than keeping him and getting a new contract signed, this was about the best we could have hoped for.

I wrote about possible outcomes in my January transfer window preview and, while re-reading my views of Bindon, I realised why I wasn't as angry as I am about a certain someone else.

We always knew he would one day leave for bigger and better things - he's just a class act and he deserves better to further his career. Nottingham Forest is a huge chance for him.

Maybe they see him as a potential replacement for one of Murillo or Nikola Milenkovic, an excellent pairing, in the future, and this could mean a loan deal to a Championship side (Southampton feels about right, once they are relegated). Or maybe Bindon will be thrown straight in. Either way it's a great move for him, to go from this clown car to a team pushing for the Champions League.

Getting him back on loan for the rest of the season is wonderful - we keep one of our most important players while getting time to ready a replacement (Louie Holzman seems most likely), and we will get a chance to give Bindon a proper send-off in May.

It hurts, but we had to let him fly the nest. He was always brilliant for us, he will go on to have a great career, he will always be one of our own and he will always hate the Swindon.

Sam Smith

The first of the departures and - warning for readers of a sensitive disposition - I am quite angry about this one and will probably be a bit petty for some time on this topic.

I'm not angry at Smith - I get it's a good opportunity for him to go to a club that is on an upward trajectory, earn better money, have more stability in the working environment and get closer to family. While I've sensed since the summer that he hasn't been at his happiest recently with us, the reasons are understandable for that and so, really, fair enough.

I'm not angry with the club either - it was a good offer and £2m (the apparent figure) is hard to turn down. It's frustrating because we just don't have any natural replacement for our only established striker, but that's not necessarily the fault of the club - our hands are very much tied there. Maybe I would have hoped that they could have negotiated a bit more money for him, but that's all.

What, or rather who, I am angry with is Wrexham. It's a cheap shot to weaken a rival and, worse still, I genuinely don't know where they have got the money from to finance this and remain in FFP rules. That TV series must be earning them a fortune.

I'm also angry because they simply didn't need him. They have a massive squad. If we can cope with the numbers we have then why can't Wrexham? And to go and cap it all off, they signed another striker straight afterwards too. They've got about five of them now.

It was a needless transfer, almost done to spite us I think. And what makes it worse is that Phil "Parky" Parkinson was a big part of making this happen. For someone who is considered a club legend at Reading, while he's free to manage whatever club he wants, him being involved this deal is a low blow. He did us dirty there and I do now wonder what the reception will be like when he comes to the SCL in March.

The reason I cite this as needless is because Wrexham will go up eventually - and you know Smith will be cast aside. He's a good striker but not a great one, and it's hard to imagine he'll be a key player for a team who will be looking to set their sights on the Premier League. It was just utterly classless from a club who I've largely considered inoffensive and thought 'live and let live' - we can't help having bad owners as much as they can't help having good, extremely well funded ones.

As Sim mentioned, we don't really have a natural replacement for him. Jayden Wareham isn't ready and Basil Tuma certainly isn't. Kelvin Ehibhationhan is struggling for fitness and has, despite being a striker nominally, not played much senior football there. Harvey Knibbs is a square peg in a round hole. We've had a big hole at left-back for some time now and now we have a similar concern up top. It's a worry.

Chem Campbell

A real and very pleasant surprise. Indeed, for a lot of the window, it seemed that extending his loan until the end of the season was the only business that we would do and that was absolutely fine by me. I mean, not in ideal terms because we needed reinforcements and whatnot, but in realistic terms.

He's slowly growing into the player we need him to be, so it's good to have him hang around. However, the good thing here that must be recognised is that it could have been so easy for him to decide to go elsewhere, to a better run club.

But he didn't. He actually wanted to come back to play with us. This is a huge feather in the cap for the likes of Noel Hunt and his coaching team, and the team spirit that has been forged in the group.

Smith mentioned as part of his goodbye message that he's made friends for life here and you get the sense that Campbell has bought into that - he's a good egg and he cares about the club and those around him as much as his own personal footballing development.

That's the type of character this club sorely lacked for a number of years. Now though we seem to be getting much better as identifying the right people to bring into our family unit - as much my in terms of footballing capacity as mental fortitude and values.

In footballing terms, he's our first-choice right-winger in a position where we don't have a huge number of options, so keeping him on the books is a blessing to support the dwindling numbers of available players.

Billy Bodin

I'm not really sure what to make of this one, if I'm totally honest. I think Sim has said it best, but I'll paraphrase: January is a tough market to operate in and we're not an appealing proposition for any player - let alone the financial constraints we operate under.

This being considered, actually being allowed to bring someone in on loan was a surprise and a relief. We really needed a striker to replace Smith and this will help get us through to the end of the season.

I know very little about Bodin, and if I'm honest, it does worry me that a striker who is struggling to get games at a club fighting relegation from the league we are in is now our saviour.

However, if we look at the places we have found some of our best signings in recent times: Wycombe Wanderers, Cambridge United, Los Angeles FC… sometimes it's not about the club, it's about the player.

There's a graphic about Bodin - from before moving from Oxford United to Burton Albion in the summer - which shows that, while he didn't play much, he had a good (very good in fact) goals per minute ratio.

How that works out over longer periods of play as opposed to being an impact substitute, I don't know. But he's someone who has links to Reading, being born close to the area and having had family play for Reading, so it's reasonable to assume he understands what this club means to us.

It's a tough move for him. I'm not bothered about what age he is, as if age were important then David Button would be starting over Pereira. I am bothered that he can make an instant impact, and that's a pressured situation. It took Campbell time to settle in and Bodin really has to hit the ground running. Let's back him like one of our own and give him the best platform for that with our support.

Dean Bouzanis

I suspect the condition for us to bring in Bodin was that we needed to unload another player. It's not coincidence then that Bouzanis was released at the end of the window - it would seem that we were waiting for a bidder to take his wages off the books and, when none came, we did the necessary.

He's not done anything wrong, but he was brought in under a different regime and isn't a fit for the club. It's a shame that it had to happen like this - there's a reason he was number 26 in the list of priorities to keep, and it's a kindness to let him go and allow him the chance to start somewhere fresh.

At 34, he probably has only a couple years left in his career. The right thing to do is to give him a chance to pursue an opportunity to do that and finish on a high.