The last time I went to Reading, the club was gripped by its darkest days under the prolonged, unacceptable regime of Dai Yongge. The people I met over that 18-month period covering the story stuck with me: the persistent bad news, the extended takeover saga, the eventual joy. Eight months into a new age, it’s only right to discuss the green shoots of recovery.
The spectacular irony of last season and this is that, for a while, the club appeared to have turned on its head. Despite the off-field bleakness, Reading were pretty good last season. The squad was young and seemed determined to distract from the misery. Reading took 26 points from their first 15 league games in 2024-25.
This season, progress off the pitch but slight concern on it as Reading started appallingly slowly and took 18 points from their first 15 matches. Surely a club can’t perform better in crisis than after it has left?
Most likely this was merely circumstance. Only six players were contracted at the end of 2024-25, although a few signed new deals. The average age shifted upwards as transfers were permitted again and Reading signed 14 new players in the summer; eight of their 13 most regular starters this season were not here last May. Noel Hunt lost his job as manager because the entire remit of overseeing this team had changed and he sadly proved unable to adapt to it.
The difference now – or at least that’s the hope – is that progress is built upon foundations rather than sand. Since losing 2-1 at leaders Cardiff City in October, Reading have the joint-best points-per-game record in the division. Leam Richardson, Hunt’s replacement, has certainly made the defence more solid.
There are benefits to a slow start here. When a new takeover happens that breathes new life into a club that underperformed, the excitement of supporters can naturally veer into “operation promotion”, particularly true here after narrowly missing the play-offs last season.
“There was a feeling for many fans after last season – myself included – that, if we could finish seventh in the division despite being in so much turmoil, surely even some half-decent ownership would be able to take us one step further,” Simeon Pickup of From The Tilehurst End says.
“The reality is that the rebuild – both on and off the pitch – has been more complex and extensive than we thought it would be. We’re also not fully free of the club’s past, with former chief executive Nigel Howe recently serving Reading FC with a winding-up petition. It’s becoming ever clearer that fully getting the club back in fighting shape won’t happen quickly.”
This is the emotional tussle into which every supporter of a post-financial calamity club is thrust. You want to see the team succeed again, but that takes investment (that seems to be available in January) and financial prudence is high on everyone’s agenda after the last few years. You know to be patient but can’t help but think “What if?”.
“As chair of the Supporters’ Trust, and knowing just how close we came to being without one, I’m still ‘just happy to have a club’,” says Sarah Turner. I spoke with Sarah outside the Select Car Leasing Stadium in October 2024, when chaos still enveloped Reading and she was working tirelessly for the best of the club.
“But I’m also a football fan who remembers seeing Reading in the Premier League 20 years ago. The nightmare might be over, but you’ve always got to want to have dreams again otherwise why bother?”
Rob Couhig, Reading’s new owner, is not perfect. His distinctly American brand of positive communication probably led to over-promising ahead of the summer transfer window (Couhig used the word “spectacular” when asked to predict the likely business). The funding of Reading Women, treated appallingly during the Yongge administration, will stop at the end of next season with Couhig seeking a new owner.
But on the whole, Couhig has made strides forward in a situation that, as Pickup says, was more complex than anyone believed at the time. If anything does go awry, he probably has the fanbase in English football most ready to spot warning signs. That is a very useful safety blanket.
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“It’s a tough one for him to navigate because Reading fans are now permanently scarred with ownership trust issues,” says Turner.
“But if he continues in this spirit, there can be no complaints. The energy of him and his fellow investors feels spot on. We see ourselves [the Supporters’ Trust] as a critical friend, and at the moment there’s more reason to be friend than critical.”
In a division where five of the eight teams above Reading have also played in the Premier League and none are in their own early stages of recovery, promotion this season may be just out of reach again. But that’s fine: Reading should be happy to just be for a while, waiting to see what might happen rather than desperately needing it to.
“I do like to remind myself every now and again that we’re lucky to have a club,” says Pickup.
“I can’t easily forget the genuine dread about the club’s future that I went through. The greatest thing about this season is that the stakes are so much lower than before. I don’t have to worry about points deductions or players being sold to pay the bills – the club is gradually on the way back up now, not fighting for its existence.”
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