We all heard the rumours this winter. It is the same every winter, somebody who claims to support the club starts saying that the most in-form player is moving.
Usually it is to a moneybags League Two side, be it Salford, MK Dons or Fleetwood. So often, in fact almost always, these rumours turn out to be false, and I refuse to give them oxygen through the written word. We discuss them, sometimes, on the podcast, but only to laugh a lot.
Imagine one of the best players in the squad moving to MK Dons. I am sure Dons fans would say it is a step up in terms of club size, but they would be wrong. In fairness, I have been around their ground before, and they have nice facilities (albeit three-quarters empty), but they are very different to us.
That is why, when Pete O’Rourke suggested a new deal was close on his Twitter the other night, I had to smile. I do not believe a lot of what Pete puts out, because it is often “xxx player has a lot of clubs looking at him”, framed as an exclusive, which is basically guesswork. When he gets specific, as he has here, it is usually based on fact. I do wonder if it is intended to bring proper bidding clubs out of the woodwork, because O’Rourke’s stories tend to feel agent-led, and why would an agent leak a story about a new deal?
Anyway, whatever it is, whatever happens, I had planned a Reeco article. I believe that as fans, we don’t fully appreciate the impact Reeco has had during his time here.
Reeco Hackett Appreciation
I remember the first time I came across Reeco, back in his Charlton days. I was writing for a Football League website and he came up in a couple of articles as a highly rated youngster, but for one reason or another ended up in non-league. He went to Bromley, where he did well.
I felt there was something of Bruno Andrade about him, or Jamal Lowe. Both of those players had been with bigger clubs, dropped a couple of divisions, and smashed it. Andrade did it with us, and he was in his pomp in 2018/19, when Hackett was at Bromley.
He moved to Portsmouth, hence the Jamal Lowe reference, a player who trod a similar path, and I just thought he would go on to be a big star. It did not work out at Pompey, although 11 goals and two assists in 79 games was not terrible. That led him to us.
His move here has had its ups and downs. He played in the negative Mark Kennedy side in the early part of 2022/23, but got injured just as Michael Skubala came in. When he returned, he briefly exploded, with four goals in five games and an assist in the other, making five goal involvements in five. That was the run just before Cambridge (6-0), Barnsley (5-1) and Bristol Rovers (5-0), so it often gets overshadowed.
He finished that first season with seven goals and four assists from 34 appearances, despite having been on the sidelines from mid-November until mid-January. I had high hopes for the following season.
Those hopes were not exactly met. He was still playing wing-back at this time, a position he can play but probably not his best. He did not arrive on the scene until October, having been injured, and he did not get his first goal until December. He was feeling his way back to match fitness and yet still finished the season with four goals and three assists from 39 games.
I will be honest, I felt he was one of a number of players who just could not find consistency last season. Ben House and Ethan Hamilton were two more who had decent games 70% of the time, but to achieve top six we needed 90%. That is not a criticism. Reeco was out for a while and had to get back to match fitness, as did Hamilton, and that meant they were seemingly always playing catch-up. Of his three seasons so far, this was Reeco’s weakest, but there was always a player there waiting to break out.
Enter 2025/26, a change to 4-2-3-1 and a wide attacking role for our winger. That is where he thrives, that is where he looks confident, and a haul of seven goals so far and four assists leaves him just one goal involvement away from bettering his first season. He is playing with swagger and confidence, and he looks happier further forward. I think he has looked happier since scoring against Port Vale, as if that goal, his first of the season in the league, unlocked him somehow.
In recent weeks, he has been outstanding. Two assists and a goal would have got him in EA FC’s Team of the Week had Tendayi not got two goals and an assist, and when the Player of the Month comes up he has to be considered as well. He has been electric over Christmas, full of little touches and movement that turns defenders inside out.
The point I want to make about Reeco is how he will be valued much higher with hindsight. Week to week, he probably gets undervalued by some City fans. He has 28 goal involvements from 97 games, which is roughly one every three matches, or 0.28 involvements per 90. Given that he spent three months of last season out injured and then two months getting back into it, as well as having time out when Michael came in, that is a good haul. Throw in the fact at least a season-and-a-half was spent playing as a wing back as well, and you begin to see the bigger picture.
We sometimes overlook our own players when assessing what is needed up top. When saying we need another wide player right now, we immediately think Brennan Johnson or Morgan Rogers, which is pie in the sky. We also fall into the trap of thinking players are better after they have left. Harry Anderson is a classic example, a great player for us and one I often hear about in the stands. “Harry could do a job for us” is a quote I hear loads, and do not get me wrong, I loved the lad, but he did not always get that love while he was here.
For the record, Harry got 51 goal involvements during his 222-game stay with City, or 0.22 goal involvements per game. Andrade, with 18 involvements in 73 matches, is at 0.24, still less than Reeco.
So, when we talk about flying wingers that get us off our seats, we may well miss the one sitting in our squad right now. The cold, hard facts are that when I think of my favourites of recent seasons, the two mentioned above, I often do not see that a player we have right now has outperformed both.
It is worth pointing out, that is for sure.
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