‘We have our blinkers on': Reading push for playoffs amid bleak backdrop

The Guardian

06-04-2025

Was Dai Yongge, Reading's disreputable owner, watching? Is he keeping abreast of his club's League One promotion challenge or does he choose to spend sunny spring afternoons in alternative pleasures?
Rumour has it, the Chinese billionaire remains holed up somewhere in Britain, but no one really knows. That tends to be the way with this troubled club at the moment: unanswered questions, wary suspicions and the unsubstantiated hearsay of an existential crisis that heaps shame on English football.
'Don't worry about a thing,' sang Bob Marley at half-time of Saturday's unlikely 1-0 win over high-flying Wycombe as the Reading DJ tried to keep spirits up. Worryingly, no one has the slightest idea if any little thing is going to be all right.
It is approaching two years since Dai was last spotted at the Select Car Leasing Stadium. The club has been available to buy for most of that time. Actually buying it is a different matter. Many have tried, some coming closer than others, but none have succeeded.
So, after financial-related points deductions in three successive seasons, transfer embargos, threats of a winding-up order, numerous late payment of wages, the contemptuous defunding of the women's team – forcing them from the Championship to the part-time fifth tier – and attempts to flog the training ground to Wycombe, Reading remain in the unwanted hands of Dai.
As burgers sizzled and pre-match pints were pulled, the desire of the season's largest attendance – 15,228 – was simply to forget for a few hours. Only a few days earlier, they did not know whether the match would go ahead.
Belatedly disqualified by the English Football League after failing to pay debts in China – and thus unable to fulfil the much-maligned owners' and directors' test he somehow passed back in 2017 – Dai had been given a deadline of Friday night to sell the club, before a last-minute extension until 22 April.
With the club on the market for more than 500 days, many fear the extra couple of weeks will provide little more than a prolonged stay of execution. It has, at the very least, guaranteed a few more games before the very real threat of suspension from the EFL; blissful moments of relief from the perpetual anxiety.
'Football is meant to be an escape, but at the moment it's the cause of our stress rather than our escape from it,' said Greg Double, part of the campaign group Sell Before We Dai, which has organised numerous protests in recent years. 'I have a strict rule where I don't talk about the ownership stuff on a Saturday because you have to preserve the 90 minutes where you just focus on the team. Just one normal day would be nice.'
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It is wishful thinking so long as the club remains under the ownership of a shady figure who made his fortune navigating Chinese retail tax regulations by converting air raid shelters into underground shopping malls. Dai's clubs in China (Beijing Chengfeng) and Belgium (KSV Roeselare) fell into liquidation under his watch, before he broke all financial rules in trying to reach the Premier League, at one point spending 234% of the club's revenue on player wages. Then he lost interest.
'They say if you shoot for the moon, you end up at the stars,' said Double. 'Occasionally you end up at the bottom of the ocean as well. That's what's happened to us and it's a cautionary tale.'
A potential deal with the American investor Robert Platek is complicated by the former Wycombe owner Rob Couhig retaining securities over the club's assets after coming close to buying Reading last year. Couhig is suing Dai over that failed purchase. All the while, despite the repeated off-loading of their best players, the club somehow occupy a playoff spot, ignoring off-field concerns and riding Wycombe's sustained pressure to triumph on Saturday thanks to a Harvey Knibbs penalty.
'We keep our focus on what we can control on the pitch,' said the manager, Noel Hunt. 'It's hard because the boys hear and read things. I just tell them to stay away from it. It can be off-putting, but we have our blinkers on.'
Yet only five senior players are contracted beyond the end of the season and huge uncertainty remains. 'We're chasing the playoffs, but we might not even be allowed to take part in it,' said the third-generation Reading fan Ben Langham, who watched the game with his father and grandfather. 'We're all trying to stay positive but it's worrying.'
Does Dai care? Is he even listening? Endless questions, but still no answers.