Mystery Shrouds Reading FC's Aaron Kuhl

The story — or tragedy — of Aaron Kuhl just goes to show you can never predict a footballer's trajectory.

It was only a few years ago when the youngster broke into the first team under Nigel Adkins, was (supposedly) attracting interest from Manchester City and looked set to become a future Premier League star.

Now, nobody knows what's going on with him, while fellow academy graduate Liam Kelly is now a first team regular and has just been called up to the Ireland squad.

In a series of tweets in reply to Loyal Royal Tom Ewings over the weekend, Kuhl suggested he's not playing football — period.

We have no idea what's going on

At this stage, we don't have any understanding of the situation surrounding the 21-year-old playmaker. After falling out of the first team picture following Adkins' departure, Kuhl had a pretty disastrous loan spell in Scotland with Dundee United, featuring just seven times.

Jaap Stam's arrival sparked hope that his new passing philosophy would suit Kuhl down to a tee, but he was loaned out to National League side Boreham Wood for the first half of the season, featuring in a meagre nine games.

And now he's back at Reading, not playing, not injured, and not with a sniff of first team action.

If Stam just doesn't like him, that wouldn't explain why he's not allowed to play for the U23s. If there are attitude problems, they've never been apparent to the outside world. And anything else we think up wouldn't make sense either.

The situation is looking pretty bad for the player many Reading fans thought would go on to become a genuine star of the midfield. It's a shame.

If we get any further news, we'll let you know.