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Reading FC's Latest Appointment Raises Eyebrows for All the Wrong Reasons

Achieving promotion to the Premier League is hard to come by for any club, and there are many methods used by clubs to try and reach the promised land. Reading has certainly taken an unusual approach to try and bounce back to the top flight after relegation in 2013, and they now find themselves in 13th place in the third tier of English football.

The Royals have created a position at the club that has never been seen before in English football, which is a ‘Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI)’. Stuart Fenton is the man that has been selected for the rather unusual role. Stuart Fenton is the co-founder of Score, which is the AI company that Reading have been working alongside for the past couple of months. The partnership between Reading and Score is currently only a one-year deal, but they hope to extend that and integrate this AI technology into the day-to-day running of the club.

🤖 Chairman Rob Couhig is joined by Stuart Fenton, our new Head of AI, to discuss the role of AI in football and what it means for Reading FC.

📺 Watch the full interview and subscribe to our YouTube channel 👇
— Reading FC (@ReadingFC) August 19, 2025

The aim that Reading has is to become the “most innovative team using AI in world football”, which they believe will help them to climb the pyramid and get back to the Premier League. They have set out the main ideas that they plan to use this technology for, and they are as follows:

Analyse players across any league using objective assessments.
Deliver rapid match analysis and performance insights.
Support tactical preparation and opponent analysis.
Provide data-driven intelligence for recruitment decisions.

The hope for Reading is that they will be ahead of other clubs in the area if other clubs were to give Artificial Intelligence a chance when using data for things such as transfers and match performance.

A big benefit that they are hoping for by using the technology is that they will be able to simulate a lot of different scenarios before a game, for example different tactics or systems and they hope this will help them to be more prepared when they come to playing the game.

Reading FC have appointed Stuart Fenton as the first head of artificial intelligence in English football 👨‍💻⚽️

Sky Sports’ Adam Bate sits down with Score co-founders Stuart Fenton and Max Sebti to discuss the game-changing news 🗞️ pic.twitter.com/xmyyyeIeBV
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) January 27, 2026

However, this decision by the club has had a quite negative reaction on social media. Fans have commented on the social media posts saying, “What has football become?” and “everything wrong with modern football summed up right here”.

The game of football at a professional level has changed a lot in recent years, which you could argue has made it a less exciting spectacle for fans. A number of years ago top-level football used to be all about fast-flowing attacking football and entertainment. However, nowadays data has taken over, and it seems more important to be leading the possession and passing statistics in a game rather than scoring goals. Many teams almost walk the ball into the net rather than taking their chances with shots from range due to the expected goals (xG) figures associated with these chances.

So, it is understandable that fans feel as if this introduction of a Head of AI by Reading could add to the data-obsessed style of the game. It will also make managerial decisions less important as every scenario will have been mapped out by AI so managers will find themselves less and less important to the team.

All fans want to see on the pitch is a bit of personality from a player and a bit of trickery to take on a man and try to create an opportunity rather than constantly passing spectators almost to sleep, and the introduction of this AI role will take us even further from that.