A 7th place finish in the 2020/21 Championship season remains as Reading’s last somewhat positive season was a disaster for the long-term future of the club. Although a strong side, featuring Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise, along with solid Championship options in John Swift and Lucas Joao, breaking into the Playoffs proved too difficult for manager Veljko Paunovic and his players.
Furthermore, this came with the backdrop of massive, unsustainable spending by Yongge and the Reading board.
Between 2018 and 2021, the club’s financial losses exceeded £30m per season, with Reading’s wage bill being one of the highest in the division. Enormous transfer fees hardly helped Yongge’s reputation for recklessness either, with the signings of Lucas Joao and George Puscas in 19/20 costing a combined £12.5m – a ridiculous expense for any Championship club, let alone one that had ended the previous season sat in 20th place. Even the sale of Michael Olise to Crystal Palace for a ‘club-record fee’ couldn’t prevent coming disaster. Dai-re straights awaited The Royals.
Since 2021’s 7th place finish, Reading have been on a constant, miserable decline. Missing and late payments to HMRC have led to two consecutive transfer embargos, most recently in October of this year, limiting transfer activity to loans and free signings. Yongge’s mismanagement has further resulted in 18 total points being deducted by the EFL across his 7-year tenure as chairman, causing relegation to League One in 2022 and disappointing performances ever since.
Tensions between fans and ownership reached boiling point earlier this year as Wycombe Wanderers confirmed that a deal had been reached with Dai Yongge for the sale of Reading FC’s state-of-the-art training facilities at Bearwood Park. While the deal collapsed in March following pressure from fan-led organisation ‘Sell before we Dai’, further conflict emerged in June as Reading Women were forced to accept relegation to the 5th-tier of women’s football to prevent liquidation.
Fan protests have been an ever-present since Covid, led by ‘Sell before we Dai’ and described as “civil war” by inews. The Majeski Stadium faithful are fighting tooth-and-nail to avoid becoming another KSV Roeselare, which folded under Yongge’s ownership in 2020. A pitch invasion in January forced Reading’s home tie against Port Vale to be abandoned, with manager Ruben Selles saying he understood fan “frustration”.
With Reading’s chairman now facing 32 judicial cases in his native China, the threat to the club’s 152-year history has never felt more real, and fans are responding accordingly.
Some comfort has emerged for supporters however, as Kier Starmer’s new government presses forward with its plans for an independent football regulator, which aims to hold owners more accountable for mismanagement of football clubs across the UK. With multiple fanbases now in open revolt against their ownership, notably Sheffield Wednesday, Morecambe and Swindon, regulation is sorely needed to prevent another Bury FC-style liquidation. Furthermore, an October club statement revealed that Yongge had agreed to a period of exclusivity for a potential, unnamed buyer, although slow progress on a potential takeover has done little to ease anger in the stands.
Football has an ownership crisis. As our game becomes more and more commercialised, fans become little more than another commodity, while the clubs they spend their lives following become nothing but investments. The system is broken. Derby County barely escaped Liquidation in 2022; Rangers and Bury FC weren’t so lucky. Without decisive action, Reading could be next on the chopping block. While owners continue to play fast-and-loose with entire communities, and while the powers that be continue to allow them to do so, there will be many more Readings in years to come.
