It wasn’t long ago that Liam Kelly was heralded as Reading Football Club’s next big thing. He was rewarded with a new contract after a breakout 2016/17 season in which he took to Jaap Stam’s brand of possession play like a small duck to water.
Brian Tevreden, the club’s Director of Football at the time, expressed up how many of us felt:”Developing our own players is exactly what we want to achieve at the club, and Liam Kelly is an excellent example of this.” He came up through the ranks here, made the first team last season, and we awarded him a new deal at the end of December.
“Liam is a fantastic player.” He was an important member of the first team squad last season; he gave us everything, and we wanted to offer him something in return. So the manager, myself, and everyone else at the club are delighted to see him sign this new contract.”
In retrospect, this may have been the point in Kelly’s career when everything began to unravel; when he went from being the next Andres Iniesta to a cause of perpetual aggravation.
Of all, things hadn’t always been easy for him before that. Despite establishing himself as a promising young player with eye-catching goals at juvenile level, notably this wonder-strike for Ireland’s under-19s, and then continuing to impress at the academy, first-team action at Reading was not forthcoming.
Instead, he went to Bath City, although the move into non-league football boosted his career, with Kelly scoring six goals in 16 games during the second part of the 2015/16 season. Even more significant was the manager change at the end of that season: Brian McDermott was replaced by Jaap Stam.
The Dutchman required technical midfielders and found just that in Kelly, despite his obvious lack of height, which had limited his opportunities under previous managers. His league debut came against Rotherham United at the end of October 2016, although it was far from a dream debut. With the Millers pouring on the pressure in the early stages with an aerial onslaught, Stam removed Kelly for the eventual match-winner, Paul McShane. However, after the game, the manager made a point of defending that decision:
“Liam can and will play comfortably since he possesses the necessary skills… He is a consummate professional. He understands what we think of him as a player, which is why he started the game. He’s shown his worth in every training session and every under-23s game. He deserves the opportunity to play.”
Kelly didn’t look back after being benched for the next two games, a home win over Nottingham Forest and an away win against Wigan Athletic, appearing in all but three of the remaining 29 league fixtures. In December 2016, he was even rewarded with a new contract, extending his tenure at the club until 2019.
Reading actually have their own Andrea Pirlo, despite the comparisons to Iniesta. Kelly was excelling in a deep-lying creative role in front of the back four, influencing play for the benefit of those in front of him.
That was likely most evident in the 2-1 home win over Rotherham United, one of Jaap Stam’s few comeback victories during his stint at the club. Reading, who were experimenting with a 4-2-4 formation with Danny Williams and John Swift in midfield, struggled in the first half and trailed 1-0 at the break. Kelly was introduced at halftime into his preferred quarterback role, and Reading went into overdrive as a result, winning the game.
The play-off campaign was less fruitful for him though. Despite being one of the few players to take and bury his penalty at Wembley, he’d been overlooked in the starting line-up for all three matches. Reading needed a disciplined defensive midfielder in the team, not a playmaker, so in came George Evans – who by all accounts did a marvellous job in shutting down Fulham’s Tom Cairney home and away.
Nonetheless, the future was still Kelly’s. Who better to be the lynchpin of Reading’s possession-based midfield as the Jaap Stam Dutch Revolution marched onwards?
Kelly’s decline in the following campaign was as abrupt as it was frustrating, but working out why it happened isn’t completely straightforward. On the face of it, things were going really well for him – not least a manager that believed in him and wanted to play to his strengths, and a fanbase that was delighted to see one of its own making it on the pitch. He didn’t lack for game time either; Kelly would only be out of the matchday squad eight times before Stam’s departure in March 2018.
So how to explain it? In truth, it can probably be simplified down to two broad factors. The first one – his new contract in the summer of 2017 – affected him in the least visible way, but in hindsight it certainly seems to have had a profound effect.
After just one signature, Kelly’s role in the first team changed; he went from a young, up-and-coming midfielder with a bright future in the game if he continued to work hard to an established part of that first team. That new contract was an endorsement of his development up until that point and showed that the club wanted him there for the next few years at least and were willing to boost his paycheck accordingly.
But it was also his third new contract in just 12 months – what kind of message does that send to a young professional? To be rewarded for his development so readily would naturally lead him to think he’d already made it – that further improvement would come as a matter of course. That’s a damaging idea, and perhaps one that got into Kelly’s head, whether consciously or not, in the summer of 2017.
Things went wrong for him on the pitch too though, with Kelly suffering badly from Reading’s unbalanced midfield that had been caused by poor recruitment and Danny Williams’ exit to Huddersfield Town. Up until that point he’d looked in his element as a deep-lying quarterback where he could enjoy time and space on the ball, with Williams as the box-to-box man and Swift playing as a more advanced playmaker.
However, with Reading lacking a direct replacement for Williams – Leandro Bacuna typically playing full-back in Jordan Obita’s continued absence – Kelly was often asked to play in a higher role. Pushing him up into a more congested part of the pitch meant less time on the ball, and therefore an increased need for physical strength and/or dribbling in order to impose his influence on a match. Neither of those traits are part of Kelly’s skillset.
His situation certainly didn’t get any better with the arrival of the more conservative Paul Clement, who replaced Stam in the Spring of 2018 and swept away his predecessor’s style of play. Clement wasn’t one for possession football, and that naturally meant ball-playing Kelly was less important to the team – or at least less appreciated.
More crucial, though, was the absence of a coherent new framework. Clement had one of the strongest coaching educations available after working in Europe’s top leagues, sometimes with Carlo Ancelotti, yet he had no idea what to do with Reading. The Royals were not explicitly focused on possession football, counter-attacking, hoofing it long, or any other definable philosophy under him.
That lack of direction is difficult enough for any young football player trying to improve their profession. But it was especially awful for Liam Kelly, who had performed so well in his debut season when he was assigned a definite tactical job within a defined system. It’s telling that some of his best performances under Clement came in late 2018, when he was in his prime.
Putting too much of his decline down to tactics wouldn’t tell the whole story though, and you have to look to mentality as another key reason for why he regressed so much. In any of his roles on the pitch, whether playing deep, in a box-to-box role or as an advanced playmaker, Kelly was always expected to get on the ball and make things happen.
To do that, he needed to show arrogance and be proactive. In reality though, far too often he took the easy option; making easy sideways or backwards passes that let Reading keep the ball well enough but also meant we did nothing with it.
That’s perhaps best illustrated in the Royals’ 1-0 home defeat to Bolton Wanderers in August 2018. Paul Clement’s side were trailing to a surprise second-half opener, at which point the away side retreated into a deep, solid, defensive set-up to ensure they would come away with the three points.
It gave Kelly, who was teamed with David Meyler that day, as much time on the ball as he could possibly want, and he dutifully recorded 111 passes and 121 touches. However, only one of his 59 passes after the goal resulted in a scoring opportunity. Kelly, in general, is capable of gaining possession of the ball but without the confidence and responsibility to do anything with it.
The arrival of Jose Gomes at Christmas last year should have been Kelly’s perfect chance to turn his Reading career around. Who better than a man-motivating, ever-optimistic manager with a penchant for possession football to get the best out of the midfielder?
Apparently not. Kelly would end the season with just three appearances under the new boss: an impressive 90 minutes at Old Trafford, another 81 against Blackburn Rovers, and a disastrous 19 away to Sheffield United in a 4-0 thrashing before he was hauled off. That would prove to be his final outing in a Reading shirt, and our last words written on him in a player ratings article – by Dave McCormack – were apt.“Oh what has happened to him? From once upon a time being the saviour of the team and having a squad built around him, to now being far too lightweight and lost.”
Gomes’ failure to turn around his player’s fortunes shouldn’t reflect badly on him as manager – but instead go to show just how deep-rooted Kelly’s problems had become. Even a change in philosophy in the dugout wasn’t enough to trigger a revival for someone who was given minimal game time by the new gaffer.
I’m left coming back to that new contract in the summer of 2017 as the watershed moment in Kelly’s career. After then, his lack of confidence and swagger on the pitch were the same under Jaap Stam, Paul Clement and Jose Gomes. In handing him a bumper new deal, had Reading simply asked too much of him too soon?
