Albeit to not much fanfare, the signing of Marc McNulty in the summer was the sort of transfer that brought back pleasant memories. Raiding the lower leagues for a goal scorer has proven an effective strategy in previous years for the Royals, with the likes of Dave Kitson and Leroy Lita immediately springing to mind (I would say Doyle and Long but they were from Ireland so technically cannot be used in this example).
The two mentioned previously hit the ground running when they arrived at the Madejski and would become fan favourites for their goal scoring exploits. So why didn’t the same thing happen for Marc McNulty? In his one season with Coventry City, he scored twenty-eight goals in all competitions and helped them to promotion from League Two. The perfect pedigree to be successful you would think. That thought disappeared quicker than McNulty’s Reading career it would seem.
McNulty made fifteen appearances for the Royals in his six month spell with the club, starting just six games and only scoring one goal in that time. On paper that seems enough time for him to make a mark and grab some goals. If you delve a little deeper, you’ll find that a lot of those substitute appearances didn’t amount to many minutes in total, so you could try and argue that in his favour.
The problem for a player like McNulty, is that goalscorers of his mould don’t really relish in formations that only play one striker. A player such as the Scotsman needs a strike partner to supply for him (partially why Kitson and Lita were so successful). Accompanied with the fact that McNulty was playing in a struggling team that was focusing more on trying not to concede goals as opposed to scoring them, things didn’t really stack up in his favour.
The twenty six year old has now moved on loan to Hibs in Scotland for the rest of the season after new manager Jose Gomes told McNulty that his opportunities would be very limited if he stayed.
It’s a shame that things didn’t work out for McNulty at the Mad Stad, as we are crying out for a goal scorer and if things had panned out the way everyone had hoped, we might not be as far down the table. He is only on loan however, so if he has a good spell north of the border, there’s nothing to say that Gomes won’t take another look at him in the summer and find a use for him.
