After more than three months off, domestic football returns in just three days as Reading make the trip to title favourites Birmingham City on Saturday evening.

Always a popular pastime in the build-up to a new season, pundits up and down the country have been compiling their predictions before a ball has been kicked.

Before The Reading Chronicle nails its colours to the mast later in the week, we have compiled some of the biggest outlets and looked at how they expect Ruben Selles' Royals to get on in the 2024/25 League One campaign.

FourFourTwo magazine

Finish: 16th

What they said: "Either a budding, high-potential squad sprout simultaneously under a top coach, or ownership woes continue to damage the soil in a strengthened league- there may be bits of both. One way or another, watch out for aggressive, explosive right-back Kelvin Abrefa."

Gabriel Sutton, EFL expert

Finish: 7th

What they said: "Reading will divide opinion like no other club in 2024-25.

"Depending on who you talk to, the Royals are about to either flourish with a prodigiously talented young group under a quality coach in Rubén Sellés, or hit their lowest ebb, as a consequence of a decade of mismanagement.

"Many outsiders might fall toward the latter end of the spectrum, struggling to trust a club that’s been run into the ground by outgoing owner Dai Yongge, and seeing the need for rebuild across the board in successor Rob Couhig’s first year.

"And yet, while the overall financial and structural health of a club can have a huge bearing on the timescale of success, in this instance it’s plausible that the Royals can thrive ahead of schedule..."

NotTheTop20, EFL experts

Finish: 17th

What they said: Ali Maxwell commented: "Reading has been, and are continuing to be, under the ownership of Dai Yongge, but without anything official and with hope in my heart, it looks like there will be a change of ownership. Once that happens, Reading can go back to operating like a football club and look upwards. Until that is rubber-stamped, it is still a concern and has impacted what they have been able to do in terms of squad building. They are the only team in the EFL yet to sign anyone. Ruben Selles has to work with what he had last season, and to be fair, particularly in the second half of the campaign, he got a lot out of these players.

Co-host George Elek added: "When you look at the players that are still there: [Harvey] Knibbs, [Femi] Azeez, [Sam] Smith, [Lewis] Wing, [Charlie] Savage, there’s still a spine there of players proven at the level or with quality and the young players look pretty good. If there’s no existential threat to Reading and Couhig’s takeover goes through, ideally by the end of the window, they could finish much higher than where we’ve got them."

Benjamin Bloom, EFL expert

Finish: 15th

What he said: "If you base it on the last couple of decades with size, stature and expectation, you’d have them working their way up League One. It is hard to predict a massive positive under this current ownership. They just needed to get through last season, and they did. I’ve got them going up two but there is some argument that if they are going to climb, they will climb big time. I just find it hard to say anything massively confident until the ownership is out."

The Guardian

Finish: Relegation

What have they said: "Rubén Sellés’s Reading are still on a transfer embargo. The end for their turmoil looks most likely to be League Two."