It seems like half a lifetime ago now, doesn’t it? After a brief, bewildering second taste of the Barclays Premier League high life, Reading Football Club gracelessly tumbled back down from English football’s top table with barely a whimper.
2013. The beginning of the en-sh*ttening. The year it all started to go a bit Pete Tong.
12 years, three changes in ownership and 11(ish) permanent managers later, footballing fortunes in our blue-and-white corner of Berkshire have continued to plumb dire and uncharted
depths. The land of milk and honey – or rather, Pep and money – has never felt further from our grasp.
And yet: it didn’t have to be this way. Imagine, if you will, that the decade-plus of botched promotion pushes, dicey relegation dogfights and humdrum mid-table mediocrity simply never happened.
Armed with a heavily modified copy of Football Manager 2024 and a dangerous amount of creative liberty, a new history can be written. It must. A parallel timeline in which Reading FC bounced back from relegation ignominy at the first time of asking – or stuff it up entirely, again.
Come with me on a journey. A journey to expunge demons, to right a litany of wrongs. A journey that starts, as all good stories must, with the author tied to a chair in a pitch-black cleaning cupboard at the old Hogwood Park training ground…
“So you see,” Kingsley Royal urgently finishes explaining to me, propping his giant fleecy body against the frame of the door. “You’re the only one who can do it. You have to get us promoted, Jacob.”
He discreetly brushes a wad of lint from the front of his XXXXXXXL Puma home shirt. “Look around you. Anybody can read the signs, and it’s not pretty. If we can’t get back to the Prem this year, mad shenanigans will start happening. I can feel it in my lions. Sorry… um, loins.”
Bleary-eyed and discombobulated, I nonetheless decide to play along. “Like what, Kingsley? What’s going to happen?”
Kingsley purrs to himself. “Crazy sh*t. Like, signing Yakubu. Or selling the car park to a Thai consortium. Hell, I don’t know, bringing in Jaap Stam as manager? Not Paul Ince though, that’s simply too outlandish and random.”
Still feeling decidedly woozy from my unscheduled hop back through time and space to the eve of the 2013/14 Sky Bet Championship season, I groggily shake my head before babbling a response.
“Well look, there’s got to have been some mistake, mate,” I gibber. My sole sporting credentials thus far are strictly limited to hanging out in a bush on Transfer Deadline Day. “Surely you’ve got the wrong guy? I’m not cut out for this line of work.”
Kingsley sighs, and takes a long, tired drag of a comically oversized inflatable cigarette, held gingerly between both of his lovely soft paws.
“You’re right. We tried for 2025 Alan Curbishley, but the temporal grapple malfunctioned, and now here you are.” He exhales. “No second chances, either. Time travel doesn’t come cheap, you know. Sal Bibbo’s foregoing a month’s salary for all of this.”
I nod in quiet resignation, before asking the obvious question. “Hang about, where’s Nigel Adkins?”
“Gone, mate,” Kingsley says pointedly. “He’s gone.” A terrible silence lingers in the air.
“Oh that’s dreadful. He was so young and full of life.”
“No, no,” The lion slaps a paw to his forehead in obvious exasperation, but, as a being made of fur, there is no sound, only a muffled bof. “Nigel’s not dead. He’s decided to take up a career in motivational speaking, with the occasional slam poetry on the side.”
“Ah. That checks out, actually.”
Kingsley nods curtly. Time is clearly of the essence. One final time, I look up at his fearsome visage. Stoic. Majestic. That old inscrutable totemic expression and thousand-yard stare.
A man (well, anthropomorphic big cat) that has lived too long and seen too much. 142 years of history must weigh heavily upon those padded shoulders, I muse to myself.
What would I give to ease a little of that burden? Maybe, just maybe, I can help give this ancient and venerable creature his smile back.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
I hear the words leave my lips, and detect palpable relief emanating out from underneath the fuzzy headpiece of my costumed companion. It is done. The Faustian pact has been sealed.
Without another utterance, Kingsley finally unties me from the chair and ushers me towards the door. “You start tomorrow,” he growls, as the blood slowly returns to my hands. “I’ll inform the relevant parties. Well, Nicky Hammond. He’s the only one who gives a toss these days.”
I start to leave, indulgent thoughts of Hope Akpan and Lawson D’Ath already beginning to swirl. The league is scarcely prepared for the chaos that I can unleash with a fully fit Chris Baird in the trequartista role.
“Just one last question,” I ask, already halfway down the corridor. “What happened to Queensley?”
“Feline infectious peritonitis. They’ve had her humanely destroyed.”
A grand, brand new era
Dawn breaks on the morning of July 3, 2013. It is Monday, but I have been sitting in my office since Sunday evening. Scheming and plotting.
I turn on the radio. Daft Punk’s seminal “Get Lucky”, the sound of the summer, insipidly trickles out of the tinny speaker. I immediately turn off the radio.
My in-tray is bulging, and I’ve barely made a dent in it overnight. Pavel Pogrebnyak is on how much per week? Crystal Palace want to sign Adam Federici, Shaun Cummings, Dominic Samuel and Sean Morrison? That’s the kind of greed they only talk about in the Bible. Wait, Hal Robson-Kanu is setting up his own turmeric business?
Frankly, I’m swamped, and it’s only day one of the new gig.
In a matter of hours, I’m due to meet the players and backroom staff for the very first time, and still don’t have a tactical set-up, let alone a philosophy (other than a lifelong love of Jean-Paul Sartre, fine wine and an unyielding belief in the power of the indomitable human spirit).
Reaching for the nearest whiteboard, I frenziedly scribble down a rudimentary plan of how I want us to play. It’s not vintage stuff, not quite weapons-grade Kleinball yet, but we’ll get there. Brick by brick. Blade of grass by blade of grass.
This is peak-austerity 2013, and we’re deep in the trenches. You can bet your bottom dollar (well, pound) that my Reading will be playing a no-nonsense 4-4-effing-2.
Satisfied, I lean back in my plush velveteen chair. “Wait until Andy Crosby sees this,” I contemplate, faintly giddy at the thought.
Our first match is a pre-season friendly against Polish titans Legia Warsaw in just five days. Before then, I have plenty to sort out, on and off the training pitch.
Filled with a fragile optimism, I turn to gaze out of my office window upon a golden, glorious vista. A grand, brand-new era. No pain, no regrets. No transfer embargoes. No sad middle-aged men pretending to be Thai journalists on Twitter. No HMRC winding-up petitions. Yes, I think to myself.
“This is how things were meant to be.”
If you made it this far, thanks for having a read. Will Reading get tonked 5-0 against Legia Warsaw? Why does Gozie Ugwu keep having psychic visions of a dark future? As the vultures circle, how will the Royals fare in the transfer market? Does Anton Zingarevich actually have money? (No.)
Join us next week to find out all this and more. Ta ra for now.
Big thanks to MrTini123 who created the custom 2013/14 database that I’m using for Football Manager 24. You can try it out for yourself by downloading it from sortitoutSI.net here.
