One of the things that hurts fans most is that everything is there for a new owner to restore Reading to the club it once was.
Not the modern-day iteration of Reading Football Club: renowned for not paying staff and bills on time, fans protesting a deeply disliked owner, a poster child for what can happen when the rotting underbelly of English football infects one of its clubs.
There is a genuine feeling that had Rob Couhig, an American businessman, bought the club, as had been expected, the good times would return.
This season, in League One, they have already taken seven points from a possible 12 against Charlton, Wigan and Hollywood-backed heavyweights Birmingham and Wrexham – four favourites for promotion.
“All the ingredients are there for someone to run the club properly,” Caroline Parker, a spokesperson for Sell Before We Dai, the group campaigning to remove owner Dai Yongge, tells i.
The sale collapse, which took an entire fanbase by surprise this week, “makes it all the more heartbreaking”, she says.
I first spoke to Parker in October 2023 ahead of a protest march they had planned through the town’s streets. On the eve of the march, Reading tried to head it off by releasing a statement saying unpopular owner Dai would sell the club.
Hundreds turned up for the march, regardless, but the spirit and optimism that change was afoot filling the streets that day has 13 months later been replaced by anger, despair and helplessness after what Parker describes as a “bombshell week” in which it was announced that the sale to Couhig, the former Wycombe Wanderers owner, had collapsed.
Fans truly believed that a deal to sell their club, which under Dai has gone through years of decline defined by record points deductions, unpaid wages, unpaid HMRC bills and transfer embargos, was done.
Parker jokes that her personal situation is like the scene in The Matrix where Neo is offered the red pill – to open his eyes to the horrible truth – or the blue pill – to forget everything and go back to his old life of ignorance. She wishes she’d taken the blue pill.
“I don’t know what as a campaign we could’ve done more,” she says. “We’ve given blood, sweat and tears for 15 months to try to get this man out of the club. We’ve tried everything. We couldn’t have been more high profile. And what’s it got us to? Nothing.
“No football fans should have to keep going through this. The effect on people’s mental health, I genuinely think it’s taken a year or two off my life with all the stress. It’s horrendous.”
Sarah Turner, chair of the Supporters Trust At Reading, also feels broken by it all. “It’s consumed so much of my time in the last year, trying to check things, talk to staff, keep fans motivated, do the right things by everyone. It’s been really stressful. I feel exhausted with it.”
The club is in a mess. One source with knowledge of the inner workings at Reading described the situation as “a shambles”.
Couhig was funding the club via loans while the sale was negotiated, but sources say there was no appetite to sign players in the summer transfer window with nothing confirmed. They spent no money on transfer fees, the only arrivals Adrian Akande, a 20-year-old forward signed for a free transfer from West Ham’s youth team, and Chem Campbell on loan from Wolves.
While it is not anticipated to be an immediate prospect, players are concerned that wages could go unpaid this season. i has been told about staff on the lower end of salaries who are enormously stressed and worried about the future. Multiple sources i spoke to shared concerns about the effect on mental health of all involved.
“There’s hardly any staff left at the club, they’re all doing nine jobs and under huge pressure,” Turner says. “People are paying for things out of their own pocket.”
A glimmer of reprieve arrived in July from a transfer that happened 700 miles away. When Reading sold Michael Olise to Crystal Palace for £8m in 2021, they negotiated a 10 percent sell-on clause, applicable to any profits. Olise’s £60m move to Bayern Munich netted the club a windfall of around £5.2m.
But the money is expected to last only until Christmas.
“Every Reading fan is waiting on the last working day of the month hoping the players get paid,” Parker says. “It’s dreadful. Dai Yongge couldn’t care less. He has no regard for rules, the fans, the players, the staff. It’s disgusting this is being allowed to carry on.”
The club’s former head of operations, Mark Bowen, is reported by The Times to be in a legal dispute with his former employer after he had his contract terminated in the summer following an FA gambling ban.
All signs point to a football club in utter chaos.
Why, then, if Couhig was willing to pay money to take all this off Dai’s hands, did the sale collapse? Nobody will say.
Around a month ago, Couhig was publicly telling supporters that the deal was done. What happened since then?
Dai has not been seen at a game since last August. He is believed to have held a meeting with Nigel Howe, the club’s former chief executive who has been tasked with finding a buyer, in London within the last three weeks. Dayong Pang, a Dai associate, held one meeting with supporters as chief executive ahead of the march last year, but they have not heard from him since.
The lack of engagement offers no counter narrative to concerns they simply do not care about the fans.
The club did arrange a press conference with Howe to discuss the collapsed sale, but even that drew criticism from local reporters.
Lewis Coombes, BBC South’s Sports Editor, posted on social media: “Good that someone from the club is talking… Not great that it was only ‘selected media’ & we were told we couldn’t film anything. All very frustrating given we’ve been asking for over a year.”
When asked why the sale collapsed, Howe replied, “It’s tricky. We’re still under an NDA, which is why we haven’t been able to communicate as much as fans want. But ultimately, if terms aren’t agreed upon, the deal falls apart. That’s what happened here.”
But fans are sick of NDAs being used as an excuse for poor communication. “Throughout the process it’s been shrouded with NDA,” Turner says. “They use it as an excuse not to communicate in any way. We’ve seen other clubs communicate during sale processes.
“The indications were everything was progressing well. Rob was meeting fans, at games, he sold the dream it was all going forward. I don’t know what happened. It leaves you with the uncomfortable feeling that you don’t know what’s going on at your own club.”
It’s causing fans to question whether Dai really wants to sell.
“It tells you how difficult it is maybe working with Mr Dai,” Turner says. “He’s a complicated man. Did he want to sell it when process started? I doubt that. Does he want to now? The club say he does, but I don’t know.”
Parker adds, “This is now the third potential takeover that’s fallen through. There’s a common denominator here: Dai Yongge.”
Howe insisted that Dai was still committed to selling.
There are, at least, two positives to have emerged – the thinnest of silver linings around an extraordinarily “dark period”.
Fan groups from Bolton, Wigan, Charlton and others have reached out to Turner offering help, support, asking if there is anything they want them to do when the teams meet. “The football family is incredible,” Turner says. “It shows how important it is. We’re rivals on the pitch but not off it.”
And Parker says the adversity has bonded the fans with the manager, Ruben Selles (who Turner says “sounds like a man at the end of his tether”) and group of predominantly young players.
“They want this dark period to be over as much as we do,” Parker says. “But as a fanbase all we can do is rally behind the players. I believe everyone is a family now. The players, manager and fans have bonded so well.
“We just need to remember we’re all in it together and we’re all victims of this. It’s not right to take our anger out on the players and manager, because they don’t deserve it. We’re all fighting to save the club.”
Parker adds: “If Reading is not a case for an independent regulator to be introduced in this country, then I don’t know what is. The evidence is clear as day that we need an independent football regulator, and we need the shadow regulator to look at Reading and help us. We need political heavyweights now. This has gone beyond what fans can achieve. We don’t know what to do.
“Lisa Nandy, the sports minister, is the MP for Wigan – she knows all about clubs on the wire, I hope she picks up the mantle for us. If you want any red flags around football ownership and lack of transparency, we’re the golden ticket in terms of an investigation.
“It’s a stain on the national game that they can’t do anything about this right now.”
Though it is running out, there is fight left yet.
But Turner’s reaction to the latest news is a chilling indictment of what has been allowed to happen. “I would’ve expected to feel tearful,” she says. “But I felt numb.”
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