Skim the League One table from top to bottom and you’ll run out of fingers on one hand when counting up the ex-Premier League clubs who have slipped down the pyramid because of catastrophic ownership.
Of the 24 teams in English football’s third tier, there always seems to be at least one consumed by crisis: at the moment it’s Reading. After slipping out of the Championship last year, they are in danger of hurtling towards complete oblivion with silent, absentee owner Dai Yongge refusing to invest any more money into the club.
Crippling cost-cutting measures have placed further restrictions on a side already struggling towards the foot of the table.
These include the departures of manager Ruben Selles’ assistant Andrew Sparkes and academy director Eddie Niedzwiecki due to a “restructuring” of the coaching setup. Catering and data suppliers have suspended their accounts with the club, 17 other staff members have been made redundant, and captain Tom Holmes has been sold to Luton Town.
The EFL has applied pressure on Yongge to sell up and has imposed financial sanctions upon him but appear powerless to force him out. Reading reiterated on Wednesday that he has agreed to sell the club “at the earliest opportunity”, much to the scepticism of an increasingly worried fanbase.
With the turmoil building and the club’s existence increasingly under threat, supporters have intensified their protests.
What started with tennis balls and fake pound notes being lobbed onto the pitch in the 16th minute of an FA Cup tie at Eastleigh in December – 16 being the total number of points the club has had deducted since November 2021 – culminated in a full-scale pitch invasion last weekend which ultimately forced the abandonment of a league fixture with Port Vale.
A week on, Reading face Wigan Athletic, another club with a recent history of nefarious owners, transfer embargoes and crippling points hits.
It is an indication of their recent strife that both clubs began this season on negative points. That this is far from an anomalous occasion speaks to the sorry state that English football has got itself in. Reading’s next match after Wigan? Derby County.
‘It’s really quite moving’
If there is any solace for Reading fans to cling to in times like this it is how supporters from other clubs up and down the country have rallied around them, including those from Port Vale left inconvenienced by the premature ending of last weekend’s game. In subsequent days, Reading supporters have shown their gratitude by donating thousands of pounds to help fund a statue of former Vale manager John Rudge.
“The most incredible thing about this experience – it’s really quite moving to think about – is the way that fan groups have come to us to offer us advice on things,” Ian Morton from the Sell Before We Dai campaign group, tells i.
“We’ve been in contact with the likes of Southend, Wigan, West Brom and it has been quite touching actually to have all of these fan groups wanting to support us. Of course you want the rivalry there, that’s what makes the game so great sometimes, but you can also have incredible respect and support for one another as well and I think that’s what has come out of this.”
Wigan fans are all too aware of the crippling fear that sets in when the club you support is on the brink of evaporating from existence. More than once over the past few years, Wigan were on the same path of darkness that consumed neighbours Bury.
In 2020, supporters raised £750,000 to keep the club breathing and last summer local businessman Mike Danson injected fresh life into it. Had it not been for the herculean efforts of the fans there is a very real possibility that a club that won the FA Cup as recently as 2013 would have ceased to exist altogether.
Wigan are now on a more stable footing, but fans can empathise with Reading supporters’ unease and anguish.
“We need as football fans, football clubs and football supporters’ clubs to really get together and get some sort of governance because otherwise this stuff is just going to keep on happening and it’s always the fans that suffer,” Jason Taylor, supporter liaison officer of the Wigan Athletic Supporters Club tells i.
“We’ve been talking to them [Sell Before We Dai] quite a lot over the past six months because they saw this coming a long time ago, not just in recent times. We’ll be meeting up with them [on Saturday]. When we went down to Reading [before Christmas] we met up with them and got a picture of us all together and the same thing will happen this time.”
“Absolutely it will do,” Taylor adds when asked if Wigan’s turnaround will give Reading fans hope.
“Don’t get me wrong, Mike Danson hasn’t come in and said we’re going to splash millions of pounds to get us back into the Premier League. On the contrary, he’s said exactly the opposite, that he wants us to be sustainable and grow within ourselves which is going to take time.
“But he’s footing the bills right now which are quite hefty at the moment and long term he wants us back in the Premier League, but it’s going to be under our specific limits.”
“There are so many clubs that have been through this,” adds Reading fan Morton. “It’s hard to know if we’ve reached rock bottom yet, only time will tell. But seeing some of the other clubs and the position that they are in now is obviously something that we hold onto.”
Fans battle to save their clubs
Something that is often overlooked by casual outsiders when a club is in freefall is how much time and emotional energy is taken from the people trying to save it.
People become fans of a football club because they spend the week looking forward to pre-match rituals with friends and family in the hope that they will be able to celebrate a last-minute winner with equally euphoric strangers. They don’t do it out of any desire to attend DCMS meetings or organise Zoom calls to discuss different ways of protest, as Sell Before We Dai did this week.
“The interest that we’ve had after this weekend has been incredible but also we can’t do this as a full-time job ultimately, we’re just fans who want to go back to watching football,” Morton says. “We don’t want to be doing this but we’ve been forced into it through negligent ownership. Negligent doesn’t even do it justice to be honest.
“Right now we’re just fighting for the survival of the club and taking things day by day and week by week because I don’t think any of us envisaged things going quite this way when it first started in June.
“We knew we had issues but we didn’t know this season would be as hellish as it has been. It has been incredibly stressful. We’re terrified that the club won’t exist and concerned that Dai Yongge is taking towards liquidation out of spite.”
“I was probably putting in twice as many hours [to save the club] than I was doing with my day job with very little sleep,” adds Taylor, recalling when Wigan were plunged into administration in 2020.
“They are in a waiting game and there’s not a lot they can do about it. You can do a lot once you’re in administration but you want to avoid that at all costs really.”
Can a regulator save Reading?
Reading’s plight has highlighted the need for English football to have an independent regulator in place.
In September, the government announced that a football governance bill will be put before the House of Commons this year, insisting that it plans to introduce one “as soon as possible”. King Charles said in November that a regulator would “safeguard the future of football clubs for the benefit of communities and fans”.
Although momentum on that front is welcome, Reading fans are understandably concerned that things are not progressing quickly enough to make a difference. An independent regulator won’t be of much use to them if Reading go under before meaningful changes are enforced.
“We urgently need the legislation introduced,” Morton says. “The football governance bill we hoped would come out before Christmas and we obviously haven’t been told when it’s coming out but that can’t come any sooner. We were really keen to be the test case for an independent regulator.”
For the time being, all they can do is maintain pressure on Dai and hope that their efforts, coupled with increased scrutiny and exposure of his chronic mismanagement, will ultimately force his departure.
Sell Before We Dai this week launched a fresh fundraiser to pay for “innovative ideas” to step up their campaign against Dai and some form of protest is expected at Wigan’s DW Stadium on Saturday. A minute’s applause at football grounds around the country has also been mooted as a way of further raising awareness of their situation.
“The longest relationship I’ve ever had is Reading Football Club,” Morton says. “I’ve been going to see them for more than 30 years and I can’t imagine what it would be like if it wasn’t in existence. It’s part of who I am, it’s part of my identity and I don’t think Dai Yongge has appreciated what it means to the community and to the fans.”
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