After a long lay-off due to injury, it’s difficult to know how big a role Andy Yiadom will play for Reading this season.
How many of you forgot about Andy Yiadom at some stage this season? I know I certainly had gotten used to him not being in the first-team picture due to injury.
This has partly been because of the emergence of the likes of Michael Craig as a good right-back option and Ashqar Ahmed as another possible star being rolled out of the academy conveyor belt of talent.
Not just this, but even last season with Yiadom’s injury worries we saw Kelvin Abrefa start to make a breakthrough into the first-team picture (another one we haven’t had much chance to see this season) and Clinton Mola cover that right-back spot.
The consistency the team have developed since November/December 2023 has driven us upwards and we are now a team challenging in the play-offs. Things are going (touch wood) relatively well on the pitch, despite the loss of Ruben Selles. As such, there hasn’t been such a demand for our longest-serving player and club captain.
It’s worth taking a moment just to reflect on how long Yiadom has been a part of this parish. Having joined in 2018, he has worked with eight permanent managers and a few caretakers, while 32* academy players have made their first-team debuts in his tenure, 38* permanent transfers have joined the club and 61* players have left permanently.
Yiadom has been part of all three of Mark Bowen’s non-playing spells with the club, he has seen Reading move training grounds and rename its stadium, and is the only player who was in the first team when the club wasn’t sponsored by Select Car Leasing.
*All numbers are rough estimates, not exact counts. Essentially, the point being made is A LOT.
Even the shirt manufacturer was Puma when he arrived. Yakou Méïté was our top goalscorer in his first season, with 12 goals. Liam Moore was the captain. The turnovers and the changes have been astonishing. This is a very, very different club now to when he arrived.
However, despite all these changes to the club, Yiadom over the last six years - six years which we all know have been among some of the most challenging in the history of the club - has been an ever-present and loyal servant.
He is now at a crossroads. Is there a place for him in this team or have others usurped him? Can we afford his wages any more, as a senior player who last signed a contract when we were still a Championship side? Is he still able to maintain fitness for enough of a season to make an impact on the pitch? Is he still able to play the style of attacking football we have seen coached over the last two seasons?
His leadership has never been, and will never be, in question. But he has slowly slipped away into the backs of our minds of late and this presents an opportunity in the new year when he returns.
The leadership vacancy has been taken with aplomb by Lewis Wing, who has captained the majority of the side’s games this season, but possibly Yiadom coming back to the side will help a young defence.
Possibly having that experience will help support the club as we reach another potential fire sale in January. Perhaps Wing will be poached and Yiadom will reclaim the captaincy.
It is not clear how long Yiadom will have left with us, but he still has a huge role to play for us in the second half of the season, as soon as we can see him return to fitness. Whether it is as a leader, a squad player or a first-choice starter, a standards bearer, Hunt’s go-to guy, someone to offer an arm around the shoulder or a word in the ear of a youngster. Perhaps a combination of all of these things.
It would be a classic Yiadom act of his selfless nature to give his everything to this side and help support the club to keep the ship steady before departing in the summer. We still need our captain - he still has a job to do for us.
