We ran our final approval rating on former Reading boss Noel Hunt a few days ago, covering his final 20 games in charge, and the results are actually fairly positive. You gave him an average of 3.02/5, so pretty much exactly in the middle overall – not bad at all for a sacked manager, even if it’s way down from 4.1/5 in May.
The funny thing? This is exactly the same score he got at the end of his brief 2022/23 interim tenure. The extra funny thing? I noted at the time how similar that grade was to
the one Hunt’s then-predecessor, Paul Ince, managed in keeping Reading up during the 2021/22 season.
So the takeaway here is that, going by our approval ratings at least, Reading fans have perceived the following managerial spells as being of the same standard: Ince in 2021/22, Hunt in 2022/23, Hunt in 2025/26.
Almost exactly half of you (49%) gave Hunt 3/5. There’s then a pretty even split between 2/5 (21%) and 4/5 (19%), with a few fans particularly annoyed (3%) or elated (5%) by the Irishman’s time in the dugout. Those don’t add up to 100% as I’ve rounded the percentages down.
This score of 3.02 does jump out at me as being surprisingly positive (yes, the results were adjusted for anyone who’d spammed the voting with 5/5, 1/5 or anything else). Given how much fans seemed to have moved against Hunt in recent weeks – and polls did suggest supporters were overwhelmingly keen on a change – getting an average over 3/5 is not to be sniffed at. I was anticipating something between 2/5 and 3/5, personally.
I’d be remiss to ignore the goodwill that Hunt will have had regardless of how well his time in the dugout went. He was after all a very likeable and successful player for the club, did some excellent work in the academy and then stepped up in Reading’s hour of need last season.
I’d also guess that some voting reflected a desire for Hunt to be given more time. While a lot of fans will have seen enough to decisively make their mind up on Hunt during his 20 games of 2025/26, others will have been more patient.
For some broader historical context, Hunt’s October 2025 score is similar to the final grades of Mark Bowen (3.11 in October 2020) and Jose Gomes (2.92 in October 2019). October does seem to be a somewhat cursed month, doesn’t it…
