It’s a tale as old as time: a wealthy (or as has often been the case, not so wealthy) owner buys a football club and promises its supporters the world, only to emphatically fail to deliver and end up plunging it into a sorrier state than it was in before they arrived.
On the surface, that template appears to apply to Reading, a club that has been on the slide since being taken over by Dai Yongge, a Chinese billionaire who made his fortune in real estate, in 2017.
Yongge pledged to lead The Royals back into the Premier League. Instead, they are in the Championship relegation zone after being hit with a second six-point penalty deduction in two seasons for breaching the EFL’s profit and sustainability rules.
Rookie manager Noel Hunt has been tasked with completing mission improbable after Paul Ince became the sixth permanent manager dismissed during Yongge’s six years in charge. The sense of chaos was ramped up on Good Friday when Andy Carroll had a public disagreement with a fan after the 1-1 draw with Birmingham.
However, Reading’s current predicament while not unique is perhaps more nuanced than the typical tale of botched ownership.
Yongge has spent plenty of money at Reading; the problem is he’s spent it extravagantly badly. His significant investment on transfer fees and wages and the club’s state-of-the-art Bearwood Park training centre means that some fans are conflicted when assessing his overall stewardship, despite the very real prospect of relegation.
“It’s a really tricky one,” Olly Allen from The Tilehurst End podcast tells i. “There is maybe not resentment but dislike for how he’s run the club. His takeover was ratified on the night we beat Fulham to get to the play-off final in 2017 and the irony is it’s not got any better than that. That’s the high point of his tenure and it was his first day.”
According to Allen, Yongge’s lack of footballing expertise is the root of Reading’s downfall. “Ultimately he’s a businessman not a football man and he’s put his trust in the wrong people,” he says, citing the influence of renowned “super agent” Kia Joorabchian behind many of Reading’s most expensive – and largely unsuccessful – transfers in the Yongge era.
An article by The Athletic in November 2021 claimed that Joorabchian has played a “central role in recruitment” despite not being an official member of staff.
“I’m not saying it’s been all bad for Reading because he has brought some players to the club who have done very well like Lucas Joao [a £5m signing from Sheffield Wednesday in 2019],” says Allen. “But in general he’s made the football club pay over the odds for players, pay substantially inflated wages for players and that has ultimately led to two points deductions.”
And transfer embargos. Reading have been unable to buy players since the 2021 summer, a period that spans four transfer windows due to a ban enforced by the EFL, which has limited them to free transfers and loan deals.
Unsurprisingly, such restrictions have left Reading with an imbalanced, peculiar-looking squad, predominantly comprised of players at opposite ends of their careers, many of whom are on short-term contracts.
In last month’s 1-0 defeat to Millwall for instance, Reading started Shane Long and Carroll in attack, a strikeforce with a combined age of 69.
“We can’t get players in their peak essentially,” Allen says. “We’re either getting players who’ve been discarded by clubs like Shane Long – he’s a club legend for what he did at Reading 10 years ago but he’s now 35 – or younger players who are unproven [like Cesare Casadei, a 20-year-old midfielder on loan from Chelsea]. We’re building a squad without a coherent plan and that comes from the years of mismanagement behind the scenes.”
Reading’s remaining fixtures
- Burnley (h) – 15 April
- Luton (h) – 19 April
- Coventry (a) – 22 April
- Wigan (h) – 29 April
- Huddersfield (a) – 8 May
Reading are by no means doomed just yet, with only one point separating them from Cardiff in 21st and five matches remaining to pull themselves clear.
However, neither form nor fixtures are on their side. QPR and Blackpool are the only teams to have taken fewer points from their Championship matches since the turn of the year than Reading, who play teams battling for promotion or scrapping to avoid relegation in the run-in.
The only opponent they face with virtually nothing to play for is Burnley but it seems unlikely that the champions-elect will take their foot off the gas with the 100-point mark in their sights.
It’s asking a lot of Hunt to steer them to safety too given his managerial experience is limited to Reading’s U23s and two games in charge of Swindon Town in 2020. Reading will hope their former striker can galvanise a group that has gone eight games without a win.
“Paul Ince probably goes down as the most disliked manager Reading have ever had because of his attitude,” Allen says. “We were guaranteed to go down with Ince so the club have given themselves a glimmer of hope in that respect but we’ve got five massive games and five quite tricky games. I think we’re going to need 50 points to stay up and it’s hard to see where we’re going to get them.”
And if relegation occurs? “I think if we go down there’s a real worry that we’ll stay down for a long time and may even get relegated even further and if his interest wanes then there’s almost a real worry for the existence of the club.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/smwOnPd
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