It’s not really a case worthy of the likes of Morse or Sherlock Holmes, but Reading supporters have a mystery on their hands. For one of the club’s centre-backs, Alex Pearce, seems to have vanished from the team.

The season started so promisingly for Pearce, a product of Reading’s youth development academy, who had been outstanding in the heart of the Royals’s defence last season, and in fact was voted Player of the Season by the fans. After a few years trying to establish his place in the Reading first team, it seemed as though Pearce had achieved this and would now be a permanent fixture there.

And that’s how it did begin, with Pearce starting in Reading’s first five matches this season, and even making his international debut in this period. Although he’d previously represented Scotland at Under-21 level when Scotland repeatedly overlooked him at senior level he made it known to Giovanni Trapattoni that he was also eligible for the Republic of Ireland, and his chance came in September against Oman. He even scored in this debut match, but just six days later he made his final start of the season so far for Reading, in the 1-0 away defeat at West Bromwich Albion.

He was dropped for the following week’s Capital One Cup victory over QPR, and has been an ever-present bench-warmer in Reading’s subsequent matches. So to all intents and purposes it seems a straightforward tactical matter, with manager Brian McDermott preferring first Adrian Mariappa and more recently Sean Morrison to Pearce.

But this is where the sleuths should be reaching for their magnifying glasses, for there’s slightly more to this story than immediately meets the eye. It transpires that Pearce is currently in a “contract dispute” with the club, having so far declined to sign a new contract issued to him. So there’s now some doubt whether Pearce’s continued absence from the starting line-up is a purely football-based decision, or whether those higher up in the club have leaned on McDermott to use the starting place as a carrot to make him sign the offered contract.

And this week McDermott further muddied the waters by saying : “We shall see what happens this week. There is a possibility that there will be talks between Alex, his representative and Nick Hammond. When I first made the decision to leave Alex out ....his contract situation.... had no bearing whatsoever.

“Alex has a choice to make and so does his agent. Sean Morrison is now in the team, proved a point and proved he can play at this level. He is very much in contention to play because we know he can do it. He’s committed and has a three-year deal.”

That choice of words appears significant – emphasising that when “he first” left Alex out of the team the contract situation was irrelevant suggests that it now is relevant, and going on to stress Sean Morrison’s “commitment” and length of contract could also almost be designed to send a message to Pearce and his agent.

Rumours are also circulating of a potential move to Liverpool for Pearce in January being behind the impasse in contract talks. It’s well-known that their manager, Brendan Rodgers is a great admirer of Pearce, having been in charge of Reading’s youth development activities when Pearce was a youngster, and Pearce captained the Reading side during Rodgers’s brief tenure as manager.

The lure of a bigger, more famous club may well be the reason for Pearce’s refusal to sign, or alternatively he may feel that the terms offered are insufficient. Pavel Pogrebnyak is reported to be on £38k a week at Reading, a sum which blows Reading’s wage structure completely out of the water, so it would hardly be surprising if other players wanted a bigger share of the Premier League pie. Pearce undoubtedly won’t be looking for that level of wages, but the arrival of a high-earner at any football club inevitably leads to wage increases for everyone else – that’s how football economics works – and so this might be a simple question of Pearce wanting X and only being offered Y.

This contract stalemate has now been going on since the summer and seems to have come to a head this week, but Loyal Royals are disappointed that a player who was such an integral part of the team last season appears to be left out of the team for “non-football” reasons. It’s very unlike Reading to apply pressure to a manager on who he should or shouldn’t select, and it can’t be good for any manager to have his choices restricted by those higher up in the organisation. That principle applies to any club anywhere in the world - but in a struggling team with a small squad to start with this is surely even more of a problem that can’t do anyone any good.

But if he’s in dispute with the club and not being selected, how come he’s on the bench? If this is the case and he’s being punished in some way, will his mindset and attitude be right place if he is brought off the bench? And if he’s not in this dispute with the club, how come he’s been dropped and replaced with Sean Morrison, who clearly has potential but has minimal experience in comparison to Pearce – at a time when experience is clearly at an absolute premium for Reading?

It’s all a bit of a mystery to Loyal Royals – and most of them just want to see things sorted out one way or another, with this deadlock resolved, McDermott completely free to select his teams purely on merit - and ideally Alex Pearce back to the form he showed last season.

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