Farewell, Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan. Reading have today sold the young forward to Danish side AC Horsens, newly promoted to the top flight, with the fee reported to be in the region of £640,000.
It’s not clear how much of that fee is up-front – ie that we’ll be able to reinvest straightaway, under League One’s financial rules. I’d still argue that getting any substantial fee (let alone more than £500,000) for Ehibhatiomhan, who only had 12 months left to run on the two-year deal he signed in the summer
of 2024, is good business. The Royals will surely also have agreed a sell-on clause too.
And that’s before you get into Ehibhatiomhan’s inconsistency – the single word that summed up his time in Berkshire more than any other. Few Reading players in recent years have been as frustrating as him – not due to him being a bad player, far from it, but because of how hot and cold he blew, both across the course of full seasons and also often over a full 90 minutes.
On paper he’s got it all: the physical strength to bully a defender, the technical ability to dribble past a couple of players and the skill to finish. For example, few Reading players in recent years have had the skillset to score the solo effort he managed at Shrewsbury Town in 2025.
The eye test and the stats tell another story though: for whatever reason, he was unable to fully, consistently convince as a first-team starter. Ehibhatiomhan managed five goals in 40 League One appearances in 2023/24, four in 33 in 2024/25 and nine in 42 last season (six of which came in March 2026).
I wouldn’t put that down to positioning – the focus of much debate around Ehibhatiomhan in the last couple of years (left-winger or centre-forward?). Yes, he undoubtedly had good performances in both roles, but he was also frustratingly inconsistent wherever he was deployed.
My gut feeling is that his most convincing run came when paired with another striker the 4-2-2-2 that Ruben Selles used at the beginning of 2023/24. Indeed, a quick look back at our Player Ratings shows that he got an 8/10 and man of the match award on three separate occasions early on that season (Millwall A, Stevenage H, Exeter City A).
Either way, the bottom line is that Ehibhatiomhan didn’t consistently deliver. And after 115 League One outings (plus another 24 in all competitions), you can’t really say he didn’t have enough of an opportunity.
Despite all of that though, you could never fully shake the feeling that there was an awfully talented player in there and things were just about to click. All of us would love to have seen that happen, and we’ll certainly be left with a feeling of ‘what if?’, but Reading were absolutely right to cash in.
Reading’s focus turns to bringing in another centre-forward or two. Jack Marriott is injured (hopefully just for the short term) while Sean Patton is rumoured to be out for six to eight weeks. Although Reading do have Jacob Brown available, we could do with two more strikers coming in (one of whom should be first-team-quality, ideally).
As for Ehibhatiomhan, all the very best to him in Denmark – hopefully he can now thrive in a new setting. So Long, Kelvin.
