The Past, Present and Future of Lewis Wing

Hello and welcome to the latest offering from TTE Towers, where I’ll be taking a closer look at some of our favourite players, how their footballing journey has led them to RG2 and their current standing at the club, and predict what their future may hold at this club and beyond.

First up is the northeast prodigy, our best player and talismanic captain, Lewis Wing.

I’ll hold my hands up and say I had just presumed that Wing had joined Middlesborough at a young age, worked his way up through the youth levels and found his way into the first team from there. But oh, how mistaken I was. Wing’s path to professional football was the much less trodden one: a trek through the non-league system.

Between 2012 and 2017, the ages of 17 and 22 for Wingy, he played for teams that I can only describe as potential locations for the rejected northeast version of The Office. I can very much imagine David Brent talking about places like Newton Aycliffe, Esh Winning, Tow Law Town and Shildon.

It was his spell at the latter of those, where he scored 36 goals in 73 games, that pricked the ears and piqued the interest of the scouts at local big-guns Middlesbrough.

After appearances were limited to what was the infamous Pizza Paul Mukairu Papa Johns Free Delivery Cup, it was a loan spell at Yeovil Town where Wing got his first taste of the Football League.

And upon his return to the northeast, Wing really found his feet. Over the next two seasons he played 68 Championship games, scoring 10 and popping up with four assists.

I have this vague recollection of Lewis Wing seemingly always scoring absolute worldies, a memory that has been validated by what we’ve all had the pleasure to witness over the last couple of years.

Wing’s Middlesbrough dream didn’t exactly pan out the way those couple of seasons suggested it would, however. Loan spells at Rotherham United and Sheffield Wednesday followed before a move in the January of 2022 to a club that’s been oddly aligned with our own in recent years, Wycombe Wanderers.

A stellar season and a half at Adams Park followed, including Wing ending the 2022/23 campaign as the Chairboys’ joint-top-goalscorer with nine. He clearly made a lasting impression with the Wycombe fans too.

When he eventually signed for the Royals in May 2023, Wycombe fan George Hipgrave spoke to us at TTE. He had ‘only positives’ to say when discussing Wing, a player who ‘mastered the art of striking a football’ and who ‘looks after the ball better than most at this level’.

It was a surprise to Wycombe and Reading fans alike that, despite a Championship offer on the table to rejoin former manager Gareth Ainsworth at Queens Park Rangers, Wing’s next move was to us at the SCL. But boy oh boy aren’t we glad it was…

It took Wing a while to settle into the team and become a mainstay, but now he’s the first name on the team sheet every single week. He ended his first season with us with 22 goal involvements, winning player of the season and ending the campaign with the armband as Andy Yiadom struggled with injury.

Last time out he didn’t quite hit the dizzying, constant-absolute-worldies, talismanic heights of the previous one, but he played every single minute in the league and further cemented himself as one of the very best at this level.

Despite signing a four-year deal in 2018 with Middlesborough, due to various loans Wing had never been at one club for more than 18 months. With his stock at an all-time high after his spell at Wycombe, yes I’m sure he wanted to test himself in the higher leagues (more on that a little later), but I think he also wanted a home. Somewhere where he felt valued. I mean, who doesn’t?

I think it’s safe to say he’s found that here.

The new deal in the summer was followed up with the announcement of him being our new club captain, and honestly no one can have any complaints with that. Wing took a gamble on us when he joined two years ago - we were a club in the direst of straits and he was coming into his prime at 28.

And I think, despite still being in League One, Reading have repaid that faith to him. He’s playing more football than he ever has done, just signed what I can only presume to be a relatively healthy new contract, is club captain, and has a base to go and become one of the very best at this level.

He’s the cock of the walk in Reading; I don’t think there’s a pub in the town centre he could walk into and not get at least a couple of free drinks. We love him endlessly, and all the signs suggest that love is reciprocated.

Simply put, he’s just too good for League One. And the other teams in this league know that. It feels every game now that teams come with a plan to try and nullify his threat, and while that is frustrating for us as fans, it’s a huge compliment to Wing.

But still he manages to show his quality, showcased a few times this season already with goals against AFC Wimbledon and former employers Wycombe - straight into the top bins in his customary manner. Having a player like Wing commit his long-term future to your club doesn’t happen very often, not to us at least. So we’re very lucky to have him.

With the stormy seas and tidal waves of the Dai Yongge era now replaced with calmer waters, I think we have a real chance at looking upwards rather than downwards, and Wing will hopefully be a big part of that…

I don’t think it’s a secret that a) Wing has more than enough quality to play in the Championship and b) he absolutely wants to do that again before his career ends. While footballers’ careers go on longer now than they ever have been, with Wing committing to us for at least the next three years, you feel his aim is to do that in the Royal blue and white.

As a player moves into their 30s they ultimately become less desirable to potential suitors in higher leagues; that’s just the nature of the beast, regardless of how good they are. Is a Championship club going to come in with a multi-million-pound offer - which is what you’d imagine it’d take for Rob Couhig to let Wing go now he’s committed so much money to him, on a 31- or 32-year-old midfielder? Possibly, but I’d be surprised if so.

So therefore, I think we’re looking at Wing playing most of the rest of his career with us at Reading. After putting that in writing it sounds a bit silly really, doesn’t it? He’s far too good for us, but all the logical signs point towards that being the case.

A nice new contract, new club captain, staying when other big players have decided to move on, and away from the football pitch he has a young family that he has gone on the record in saying feel comfortable and at home in the area - which is always paramount.

Things change very quickly though in this sport - we know that more than most after the last few years - so I think it’s a case of enjoying watching while he’s here.

He’s a supremely talented footballer, and one that deserves to be playing at a higher level than League One. But that step up to the Championship needs to happen in the next couple of years you would imagine, which therefore means (probably) it needs to happen with us.

If that did happen, it would feel like a real achievement, like a goal has been reached. Not just from our point of view, but for Wing as a player. He turned down the Championship for us, he took a gamble, and he deserves that gamble to pay dividends.

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