Congratulations to Andy Rinomhota, your player of the month for September! He came out on top of the voting in a well contested field.
Our shortlist ran to five Reading players, a fairly high number by our standards, reflecting the fact that there were numerous standouts last month. Rino finished first with 36%; ahead of Jack Marriott (30%), who scored five times in September; and August’s winner Kyreece Lisbie (18%).
George Earthy, who made a strong start to life in Berkshire, took 13%, with Jacob
Brown rounding out the voting (2%). Even fifth-placed Brown (three goals off the bench) would have been a worthy winner in some of the months of football we’ve seen in recent years.
Anyway, back to Rino, who’s really starting to come into his own in the middle of the park. He’s certainly been the best of Reading’s four deeper central midfielders (also Lewis Wing, Charlie Savage and Liam Fraser), is surely one of the first names on the team sheet and (for me anyway) is the most irreplaceable player in the squad.
Yes, captain Wing is higher up the pecking order and yes, Savage and Fraser are capable stand-ins, but nobody quite matches Rino’s mixture of aggression, energy and intensity both in and out of possession. You’ll not only see him winning the ball back routinely, but also driving upfield with it confidently.
All in all, it’s been a massive turnaround from when – for whatever reason – he was struggling for involvement in the first team last season. In May I had my doubts over the wisdom of offering him a new deal, but I’m glad those worries were misplaced.
The big question is, naturally, over the amount of game time he’ll manage this season. While he’s already racked up 544 league minutes – the seventh-highest in the squad (and that’s factoring in an international-break absence), in recent years he’s generally not been an ever present for any club in terms of his league minutes on the pitch.
Hopefully Reading will be able to keep him fit and available. If that happens, we’ve got an excellent midfielder to deploy, as we saw in September.
