Swift, Morrison And Hoilett All To Leave

20 May 2022
By Hob Nob Anyone?

The club have revealed more details of on-going contract negotations, with the majority of the first team squad out of contract this summer. With the club in huge financial difficulties they are unable to meet the contract demands of some of the players on high salaries. This means that John Swift, Junior Hoilett and Michael Morrison are all set to leave as the club are unable to offer contacts, depite wishing to retain their services. All three players are now set to join new clubs for next season and will join Felipe Araruna, Alen Halilovic, Marc McNulty and Orjan Nyland who are not being offered new contracts.

With those players all but certain to depart, manager Paul Ince will be hoping some other players who have been offered contracts can agree terms to stay at the club, as Reading looks set for a dramatically different squad to begin the new season. Josh Laurent, Tom Holmes, Andy Rinomhota, Andy Yiadom, and Femi Azeez are all key first team players - even more so with other players out of the door. The good news is that all of those five players have been offered new contracts as their current deals expire. The bad news is that there is no guarantee any of them will agree new contracts. There remains a strong possibility they will accept a better offer elsewhere from a club that can offer more financially than the Royals can right now.

Meanwhile the club will also see their loan players depart with Danny Drinkwater, Tom Dele-Bashiru, Baba Rahman, Tom Ince and Karl Hein all returning to their parent clubs.

It all adds up to a massive turn around of players with so many of the first team squad leaving. Reading will be forced to turn to youth for the new Championship campaign and have confirmed that a large number of Under 23 and Under 18 players have been offered professional contracts. We will probably be fielding the youngest team in the Championship next season. There is no doubt that Reading have a great Academy set-up to bring such quality players through, however, Reading's Under 23s finished rock bottom of Division 2 this season, winning just five of their 26 league games. We will all hope these young players can successfully transfer to Championship football but Reading will face a difficult season ahead to keep outside of the bottom three.

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