What Is ‘Hunt Ball’ And What’s Going Wrong With It?
According to Hugh van-de-l’Isle, Noel Hunt’s tactical approach has fundamental flaws. Reading FC is at the bottom of the League One table after only three games in 2025/26, having scored one goal.
While there have been few calls for him to be fired, there are many questions about what manager Noel Hunt is trying to accomplish with his style of play on the pitch.
I’ll try to answer those questions here. In this article, I will present my theory that Noel Hunt’s football lacks a discernible style, which is concerning for the season ahead.
1) We keep the ball, so we’re playing possession football… right?
Reading has kept 66.3% possession vs Lincoln City, 49.3% vs Huddersfield Town, and 60.3% vs AFC Wimbledon in its first three matches this season.
So, based on this alone, a statistician would conclude that Reading intends to control the game against weaker opposition.
A possession team, on the other hand, is distinguished by a slow buildup to advance higher up the pitch.
Using the eye test, we cannot conclude that this is ‘Hunt Ball’. “Reading are failing to even get the ball to the feet of their current crop of wide players” Looking back to the last time Reading was a possession-based team, in 2016/17, let’s compare our current key player to who would have played the same position during that Jaap Stam season.
Joey van den Berg’s role was to pick up the ball and make simple passes to move the team forward, whether it was looking for the full-backs or a short pass to Danny Williams, John Swift, or Liam Kelly.
Consider the passes Lewis Wing has made in his two and a half performances thus far.
He consistently drops deeper than Michael Stickland and Finley Burns, but the midfielders are rarely available. Instead, he is aiming for “Hollywood” passes to the wide men/centre-forwards, which is not a bad strategy when you have Sam Smith to aim for, given his movement and control.
However, Reading’s current forwards appear to have the first touch of a kitchen appliance, and their passes result in us losing the ball time and again.
Whereas the goal of ‘Stam Ball’ was to get Garath McCleary/Roy Beerens the ball in dangerous positions, Reading are currently failing to get the ball to any of their current wide players.
2) Ah, so we’re a long-ball side?
In my opinion, route-one football gets a bad rap in the modern era despite the fact that, when used successfully outside of the Premier League, it is very effective.
(I think we have both Pep Guardiola and Sam Allardyce with his pint of wine to thank for this.)
In Hunt’s brief spell following Paul Ince’s tenure, we did not see much of a deviation in the style of play from the established defensive, long-ball style. I had assumed that, this summer, Hunt might try to lean back into this style, given his previous experience as a player.
To achieve this, you need players to get around the target man, yet in each game, our striker, whether Mark O’Mahony or “Big Kelvin,” has looked isolated.
If the intent were to be a long-ball side and look for space in the channels, I am amazed we haven’t looked to recruit a striker of the profile of, say, Steven Fletcher, Chuks Aneke, Ollie Palmer or Michael Cheek, as there are plenty available.
Further to this, looking at the wingers, as mentioned before, Wing is always looking for the pass into feet or for a winger to control on their chest, not a ball to run onto.
At its best, ‘Coppell Ball’/‘McDermott Ball’ involved the central players (whether the forwards or midfielders) looking to spin the ball into rapid wingers for them to run onto.
Yet, stop for a moment and think: how many times have you seen Daniel Kyerewaa, Paddy Lane, Andre Garcia or Mamadi Camara run onto a through pass this season?
Wing picks up the ball so deep on the pitch that he would need a nine iron to reach the space left behind a defence. If we are a long-ball side, then the players clearly have not picked up on this information.
3) So, looking at the shape, Hunt must just be continuing what Selles did?
Last season, both Ruben Selles and Hunt used a 4-3-3 formation, with narrow forwards.
If you take a random match (Reading 0-0 Birmingham City) and look at the bench of Adrian Akande, Billy Bodin, Louie Holzman, Kelvin Abrefa, Tivonge Rushesha, and Jayden Wareham, the depth does not allow for a different formation.
We had a very strong starting XI, but the lack of depth prevented us from experimenting with different formations, such as three at the back or two up top.
With the summer break, you’d expect Hunt and CEO Joe Jacobson to try to build a squad to suit ‘Hunt Ball’, but we’ve stuck with the same 4-3-3 formation from last season. This begs the question:
why isn’t it producing the results that Selles did? To me, the answer is a lack of pressing.
Last season, with Nigel Gibbs on the coaching staff, Reading sat back more, particularly away from home, which helped Reading concede less on the road than in the first half of the season. What Reading lost was the high intensity at the top of the pitch.
Take the shot below from Selles’ 2-1 victory over Huddersfield in September.
Ben Elliott is dispossessed by the full-back, and with his back to the goal, Chem Campbell and Harvey Knibbs target him, with the latter taking the ball and finishing into the roof of the net for Reading’s equaliser that day.
In recent matches, we’ve seen Charlie Savage hare around the pitch to no avail, as the wingers don’t press as hard as they did under Selles.
If you want to press, you must do so as a team, and a defining feature of ‘Selles Ball’ was players targeting holding midfielders and full-backs as pairs in order to gain possession.
This has since been abandoned by Hunt in exchange for players half-heartedly closing down.
My opinion is that Hunt does not fully understand his style of play at this point, and I believe it is a case of putting the best players on the pitch and hoping for the best. On both occasions as Reading manager, he has tweaked rather than revolutionised.
This is evident in our recruitment, which this summer appears to revolve around signing “good characters”. Good characters are great, but they need a system to play in, and I don’t think they’re getting it.After three games, Reading’s league standing reflects this.
I’d like him to prove me wrong and turn this around, but I believe he’s on borrowed time at this point, given that we have an owner with three names in his little black book. Hopefully, one of them will commit to a style.
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