Like a giant hailstorm, the tennis balls bounced up off the turf inside the Select Car Leasing Stadium. A few to begin with and then dozens. More than 200 were thrown in total, bringing play to a standstill for two minutes. At a club used to losing points, here was one being made by Reading’s disaffected supporters.
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The League One visit of Bolton Wanderers this month had been targeted as the day fans took a stand against Dai Yongge, the Chinese businessman who has owned Reading since May 2017.
Dai arrived with ambitions to lead Reading back to the Premier League, a level they fell from in 2012-13, but has instead left them hamstrung in the third tier following relegation in May, bound by financial constraints brought on by his folly. Reading’s total losses now stand at £191million ($232m) after five consecutive years where wages have eclipsed income. The club’s women’s team has been sacrificed, being downgraded to a part-time operation this summer.
Reading fans have thrown tennis balls on the pitch during todays game in protest against their ownership.
The travelling Bolton fans applaud their efforts. 👏 pic.twitter.com/7yYhtGau3n
— Football Away Days (@FBAwayDays) September 16, 2023
Finding the good in Dai’s six-year reign gets no easier for a club where fans worry the nadir has not yet arrived.
The minute chosen for the latest protest was symbolic.
Reading have now been deducted 16 points by the English Football League (EFL) inside the last two years, punishments that have dragged them out of the Championship and into their current position in League One’s relegation zone.
One supporter, seeking solace in dark humour, worked out that no opponent had taken more points from Reading since 2020-21 than the club’s silent, withdrawn owner. A lamentable honour.
Of all its 72 clubs, Reading have gradually become the EFL’s greatest and most pressing concern. There are uncomfortable parallels with the still raw demise of their fellow third-tier side Derby County, another club who overspent in pursuit of a return to the Premier League and lived to regret their complete reliance on an owner who first would lose millions and then all interest.
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The EFL said last month it was “extremely frustrated at the consistent failures of the club’s ownership to meet its ongoing obligations”. It has already docked four points from Reading’s total for this season.
Dai, who was fined £10,000 in August when a one-point penalty was initially imposed for the late payments of wages last season, is facing a misconduct charge after his failure to deposit 125 per cent of the club’s monthly wage bill in a designated account, as agreed, that cost Reading a further three points this month.
Failure to pay wages on time again this season will see more points lost and ensures a pinch-point is coming this week.
Reading’s monthly wage bill, which is in the region of £700,000, is due on Friday. Manager Ruben Selles said on Thursday it was his expectation that players would be paid their salary for September. “If they told us they are confident it will happen then I don’t need to think about why not. It is not excellent news, it is normal. You are doing your job, you get paid for that.”
Meeting last month’s payroll was dependent on a short-term loan from the owners of Select Car Leasing, a local firm run by two lifelong Reading supporters, James O’Malley and Mark Tongue, which also sponsors the club’s shirts and their stadium. That, along with an academy funding grant from the Premier League, meant wages could be paid.
A spokesperson for Select Car Leasing said: “As company policy, Select Car Leasing does not publicly comment on any details of its commercial sponsorship deals.”
The deadline for an overdue tax bill was missed last week, heightening the danger of Reading facing a winding-up petition — a request to close down a company — from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the UK tax authority, in the coming weeks, which is the first step towards the liquidation of a company. Reading faced one of those in June, before it was eventually cleared a month later.
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Dai’s money can no longer be relied upon after failing to pay players punctually and in full on three different occasions last season, and that reality demands change among a fanbase losing patience.
The EFL calls these Dai’s “repeated failings” and laments this is now having a “detrimental impact” on the club’s prospects in League One. Reading supporters are less diplomatic.
“He’s had a go, but he’s failed,” says Nick Houlton of Sell Before We Dai, a campaign group set up this summer which is planning another tennis ball protest for the visit of Burton Albion tomorrow (Saturday). “We’ve never been run this poorly. It’s been awful. No one is getting answers from the owner and that’s what is worrying. We’ll back the players, the staff but we can’t back Dai Yongge any more.”
The concerns over Reading’s future extend to political circles.
James Sunderland, Conservative MP for nearby Bracknell, and Matt Rodda, Labour MP for Reading East, met Lucy Frazer, Secretary of State for Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), in July to put their local club’s future “on the government’s radar”. Theresa May, a former British prime minister, is part of a cross-party group set up to support Reading’s plight.
Fresh letters were sent to DCMS this week. Rodda said the “desperate situation… is causing significant concern for fans, players, staff and our local community”, while four Conservative MPs, including Sunderland, warned of the risks of Reading “being placed in administration”. They added: “Reading Football Club must not be allowed to fail.” All MPs involved proposed Reading could be the pilot club for an independent regulator due to be introduced into English football.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was also asked about Reading’s uncertain future when appearing on local BBC Radio Berkshire on Thursday morning. He said he had “enormous sympathy” for the club’s plight but declined the presenter’s invitation to buy Reading from Dai.
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It was a more lighthearted moment in an increasingly difficult situation, and the almost non-existent lines of communication from the club’s hierarchy have done little to pacify the worry.
The last statement of note came on the eve of this season early last month when it outlined that Reading were seeking “significant financial support” but that Dai remained “fully committed to the club”. It was added that “ongoing complex cashflow constraints” were at the root of Reading’s funding problems, with the Covid-19 pandemic said to be having a lasting impact on business in China.
According to numerous sources, speaking on the grounds of anonymity to protect relationships, a number of groups have held talks with the representatives of Dai but, to date, have been unable to strike a deal to buy the club.
It is thought that Dai values Reading in the region of £70million to £80million. Any takeover would need to include ownership of the stadium, sold to Prestige Fortune Asia Limited, a holding company owned by Dai, for £24.5m during the 2017-18 season, and the state-of-the-art training ground at Bearwood, south of the town.
Dai is a figure uniting supporters in opposition. He and his sister, Dai Xiu Li, first invested in Reading, based in a commuter town a short distance west of London, six years ago, taking an initial 75 per cent stake from the previous Thai owners, Lady Sasima Srivikorn, Sumrith Thanakarnjanasuth and Narin Niruttinanon.
The siblings had failed in a bid to buy Hull City in late 2016. Hull’s then owners, the Allam family, were told the proposed takeover would be unlikely to be ratified by the Premier League. The EFL, however, did not stand in the way of the Dais’ pursuit of Reading, approving the deal two weeks before the 2017 Championship play-off final defeat to Huddersfield Town.
Their arrival helped to form a pattern of Chinese owners running English clubs. Aston Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Southampton, Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion had all been the subject of takeovers from there. A small stake in City Football Group, owners of Manchester City, was bought by Chinese investors in 2015.
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Dai, whose family fortune was amassed through owning shopping malls, was part of that wave but the phase proved short-lived owing to a pivot in government policy back home. Chinese money has left Villa, Birmingham and Southampton, with the state no longer willing to see money funnelled out of the country as it once did.
Renhe Sports Management still holds a 97.96 per cent stake in Reading and it is Dai, as the only director of that company with significant control, who decides what comes next. Loans owed to the owners stood at £83million in the club’s most recent set of accounts, a figure that would have been significantly higher without a further £26m being exchanged for shares.
Read more: Special report: The ‘bewildering’ decline of Reading Football Club
Dai is seldom seen around the Select Car Leasing Stadium anymore. He has attended home games this season but was absent for that visit of Bolton that brought the most visible protest to date. He has a home in central London — regularly attending the exclusive Les Ambassadeurs Club in the posh Mayfair district — but still speaks little or no English.
Meetings with Reading managers tend to come casually over dinner, with Dai flanked by a translator and demonstrating a limited knowledge of the squad assembled on his watch.
Dai’s visits to Reading’s offices are said to be infrequent and communication from the top of the club is rare. Chief executive Dayong Pang, an ally of Dai, has not been seen at the club since May and a common complaint among staff is that updates come first in the media. One member of staff, speaking anonymously to The Athletic — like others in this article — to protect their job, called it a “car crash” working environment.
Head of football operations Mark Bowen, who was Reading’s manager between October 2019 and August 2020, has been left as the besieged figurehead. Day-to-day running of the club, as well as communication with supporters, has primarily become his responsibility, with former Southampton boss Selles (pictured below) appointed manager in July.
It was Bowen, not Dai nor Dayong, who wrote an open letter to fans when Reading were docked six points in April, a deduction that effectively condemned them to relegation from the Championship. “We are very confident this penalty is the last of our medicine,” wrote Bowen with misguided optimism. Two further points deductions have followed.
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“It’s shambolic that we’re in this position,” says one staff member with links to the first team. “The owner is the one that’s responsible for running the club, paying people on time, and he doesn’t do it. He’s been asleep at the wheel.”
Reading fans just want something to cling to.
“The worst thing with the situation at the moment with Reading is there’s no sign of any hope,” says Paul Mann from the Elm Park Royals podcast. “Once you take away the glimmer of hope and feeling like there’s an end goal, you’re thinking about the points deductions, unpaid wages and tax, it’s a circle of pain. It’s really hard to see how we’re going to get out of it unless the owner shows some common sense and decides to sell the club.
“There’s been multiple times where I’ve questioned why I’m still doing this. You can accept the ups and downs on the pitch with relegation, but there are times where I just can’t see any positivity anywhere. There’s a big increase in fans that have had enough now with the relegation, the deductions, the wages, the tax, where they feel he is not doing any good now and he’s damaging the club. People have serious fears about the future of the club. Most fans are thinking about the team, the manager, the formations but that’s all peripheral now.”
Dai used to command a level of sympathy. His level of investment is beyond reproach, with the training ground, opened in 2019, seen to be the equal of Premier League clubs.
Not that it took Reading far. Dai’s limited knowledge of football saw him entrust the Iranian businessman and agent Kia Joorabchian as an unofficial advisor throughout much of his tenure, shaping decisions over recruitment and the hiring of managers.
Joorabchian has never held a formal position with Reading but his close relations with Dai are not disputed by those who have worked within the club. Relegation — and Dai’s lack of involvement — is understood to have seen Joorabchian’s influence wane in the past six months, but sometimes he is the only one who can get through to the club’s owner.
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Reading have been unravelling ever since their historic overspending first brought EFL punishments in the 2021-22 season.
Breaching the EFL’s permitted loss limit between the period of 2017-18 to 2020-21, with a deficit of £57.8million comfortably exceeding the permitted threshold of £39m, brought the first six-point deduction, before the club’s failure to abide by a budget agreed with the EFL resulted in that far-more damaging six-point fine last April.
A tired, ageing squad could not find the results needed to stave off the threat of relegation and, for the first time since 2001-02, the third tier of English football is their home. Reading had sacked Paul Ince by the time relegation was confirmed in the final week of last season, with academy boss Noel Hunt given the reins for the run-in.
“The whole place was toxic with the players they had,” said one employee. “You had players on these ridiculous salaries, strolling out of the building and into taxis. They were not motivated. If the club had stayed in the Championship then they might have tried keeping hold of players like that. Going down to League One has brought a complete rebuild, despite all the bulls**t behind the scenes.”
The noise, though, cannot be ignored. Players and staff who have survived the various points deductions tell of their psychological impact, the drain on belief.
“The fact they have had points deducted already makes them wary their season will be decided off the pitch,” says one source with close links to the first team. “Going into games thinking they have to win to make up for points deductions, it’s a different kind of pressure — having to win as much as they can in case there are more to come.
“They don’t get to hear much. They hear much of the news when it is released in the media.”
Nothing illustrates the gross financial mismanagement of Reading in recent times quite like the black and white of their annual accounts.
In every season since 2017-18, Dai’s first as owner, more has been spent on wages than the club has generated. And not just narrowly, either. For three of those seasons, when the dice were rolled on returning to the Premier League, the wages-to-turnover ratio stood at a shuddering 226 per cent (2018-19), 222 per cent (2019-20) and 243 per cent (2020-21).
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That imbalance was finally addressed, under duress, in the 2021-22 season, with EFL measures enforced change via a transfer embargo and spending limits. Even then, though, the club’s historic excess meant a wage bill of £25.3million still dwarfed the modest turnover of £16.9m in the Championship.
The outlays tumbled again last season on the way to relegation from that second tier of the English game, as the EFL imposed another reduced budget of £16million but only this summer, when the last of the lucrative contracts expired, have Reading been able to rid themselves of the costly mistakes.
Liam Moore, George Puscas, Lucas Joao and Yakou Meite all formally left the club — players who collectively earned in the region of £125,000 a week between them. Or £6.5million a year, which is broadly what Reading’s total wage bill has now fallen to this season.
There has been little choice but to trust in youth, even if a two-year transfer embargo finally ended this summer. Academy graduates Nelson Abbey, Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan, Femi Azeez and Caylan Vickers have all become established first-team players, along with fellow youngster Charlie Savage, who left Manchester United to join Reading in the summer. Reading did not pay a fee for Savage but a sell-on clause guarantees United 50 per cent of any future transfer.
“The fans want a club that’s sustainable,” says Mann. “Dai Yongge had the period of spending ridiculous amounts of money on players that were never going to go up in value, and we want to return to the world where we buy young players. We have done that this summer but how many of those players will be here in January, or even at the end of the summer if they’re not being paid on time — who would blame them for wanting to leave?
“I feel for Ruben because I look at him and wonder if he’s a good manager, a bad manager or somewhere in between. And we just don’t know because the circumstances that he has been left in are so bad that it’s probably the worst situation for any Reading manager in my lifetime — and I’ve been going since 1985.
“He’s dealing with everything behind the scenes and when there’s a CEO who doesn’t speak, an owner who barely speaks and only occasionally we hear from Mark Bowen, he’s (Selles) the voice for everything and that’s tough.”
The gravity of Reading’s short-term financial situation may yet see some players sold in the coming weeks.
Staff have been braced for assets to be off-loaded at a reduced cost in return for the player remaining with Reading until the January transfer window, so the club could receive the money immediately but not lose their services until the new year.
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Reading have not sold a player for a significant sum since 2021, when Crystal Palace of the Premier League activated a £6million clause to sign Michael Olise. Bowen has previously accepted there was no sell-on clause in that deal for a player who was courted by Chelsea and Manchester City for a £35m move this summer.
It is the make-up of Selles’ new-look team that is giving supporters something to pin hope on.
The average age of the squad was slashed in the summer months, with a group growing old together broken up and replaced with vigour and enthusiasm. Selles has become an apt leader, attempting to introduce a new culture. Changes to team meals have introduced healthier options, and a young set of players have been reminded of Reading’s former glories in the top flight — they finished eighth in the 2006-07 Premier League — with pictures from those days placed around the building at the training ground.
If the first team is showing the green shoots of recovery, the same cannot be said for the women’s team.
Having been ever-presents in the Women’s Super League since 2015, relegation last season saw funding slashed by Dai. They are a part-time team in 2023-24. A club statement announcing the regression said Dai had put in £6million of funding across six seasons, including £1m last term. There was a reluctance to do the same again in the WSL Championship.
“The decision to operate Reading FC Women on a part-time basis represents the most viable solution at the present time,” explained Dayong. Long-serving manager Kelly Cousins subsequently quit, paving the way for her to become sporting director of the Utah Royals in the NWSL, the top division of women’s football in the U.S.
Money is too tight to fund a full-time women’s team and in such short supply that staff have complained of having to buy their own equipment. The men’s first team have been told that overnight stays before away games will also cease to be a given, while a recent fixture on their travels was initially planned without a post-match meal for the players. Limitations are being felt across the club.
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That reality leads Reading’s supporters to face worst-case scenario planning under an ownership group that has already taken two clubs to the wall.
KSV Roeselare, who were in the Belgian top flight as recently as 2010, and Beijing Renhe, a Chinese Super League club who won China’s FA Cup in 2013 and competed in the Asian Champions League the following year, both fell into huge financial trouble under the Dai ownership umbrella before eventually going under after misguided gambles led to greater troubles. Reading are now the last of the three Dai clubs to exist.
“With his history of what’s happened with Roeselare and Beijing Renhe, it’s worrying,” says Reading campaigner Houlton. “It’s felt like the Grim Reaper has come for both of those clubs and now is at our door, knocking.”
Additional contributors: Jacob Tanswell and Nancy Froston
(Top photos: Kieran Cleeves/PA Images via Getty Images; Simon Marper/PA Images via Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)