Relief at 'new era' for Reading FC as club is sold to fresh owner
"We've got our Reading back!' That was the chant at the last match of the season on the May Day Bank Holiday weekend.
After two years of fan protests, points deductions, winding-up petitions, unpaid wages, parliamentary lobbying and constant worry about the future of the club, Reading Football Club is finally being sold to a new owner!
The sale represents the chance for a new era at Reading. The club's development must now come with a more sustainable business model – the 'Reading Way' of previous decades. The new buyer, Rob Couhig, has a track record of doing this. Wycombe fans agree that he left their club in a better place than he found it. I look forward to working with Mr. Couhig to ensure that fans' voices are heard and that the club becomes community-focused once again.
I've been joking with the fans I've worked with at Sell Before We Dai and the Supporters' Trust At Reading that we won't know what to do with our time now we're no longer worrying about ownership 24/7. I can definitely say my parliamentary staff and I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing we won't be having more late-night phone conferences on this particular topic! But I already know there's a lot I want to do to ensure the distress suffered by Reading fans can never be allowed to happen again.
No football club should need their MPs to make repeated interventions in Parliament, lobby government ministers, or gather 10,000 signatures on a petition, just to fight for their survival; we need to have stronger rules against absent and neglectful owners.
The Football Governance Bill is currently making its way through Parliament, and I am confident that this will start to fix football's governance problem. The 'New Ownership Test' and the new licensing rules within the Bill would have been so helpful when Dai Yongge was buying the club. I look forward to the Bill becoming law, as well as the new Independent Football Regulator starting their work. Football is a huge part of British life and shouldn't be used to manage the debt, or service the assets, of distant billionaires with no presence at the clubs they buy. Clubs must once again serve the communities that they are part of.
The future is bright for Reading FC – after an incredible season on the pitch, I can't wait to see how we do under better ownership next year. And while we rightly celebrate the performance of the men's team; we shouldn't forget about the parts of the club that receive less media coverage. The Reading Football Club Community Trust do brilliant work, and I've seen first-hand their impact on young people through community 'kick sessions' and educational provision. It's vital that they have the resources to continue this work. It is also important to ensure that the women's team is properly funded and can start to climb the divisions again after they withdrew from the women's Championship last year.
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