On the 29 May 2017, Reading were 90 minutes away from returning to the Premier League.
Instead of a date with the promised land, the Royals would fall short on penalties and in the years that followed fall through the hands of mismanagement leading them to be teetering on the edge of existence in League One.
Whilst the club has since been saved by former Wycombe Wanderers owner Rob Couhig, Reading fans have been through a number of close calls with the destruction in the eight years since Dai Yongge gained control of the historic club.
In a world where untrustworthy club ownership is a recurring theme, I spoke to Reading FC Supporters Trust member and lifelong Royals fan, Johnny Hunt about what the journey to this point, and what it is like to be a fan in such dark times.
MB: Let’s take it back to the beginning, my first question is, when the Dai Yongge ownership was announced, it was the eve of the 2017 playoff final and from that he obviously promised the world like most owners, what I want to know is as fans, did you believe in that? Did you did you buy into that sort of the whole world of promises given you’re that you’re potentially on the cusp promotion, do you believe all the stuff that’s there?
JH: You kind of go, well, like, it’s a hard one because, you know, that we lost to Huddersfield in the playoff final.
And, you know, you know, for all that we weren’t that great, to be honest, and the the playoff final was probably one of the worst ever, and Liam Moore’s penalty landed in my garden in Ireland. You know? That’s how bad it was. But it was like it was kinda like a new era after probably five ownerships since, you know, we had a proper probably run club with John Majewski. You know?
Then, the Russian guy came in. It’s kind of got us back into the Premier League, but then there’s all issues around him. And then then it was three for three, four different owners. And then he came in and splashed the cash, got Ron Gourlay in who, you know, on paper, a lot of things on paper looked good because, you know, he’s the next CEO at, you know, big clubs.
But then, basically, it was it was Dross. You know? The yeah. We had inflated squad. We had players on $25 a week on four-year contracts.
That’s not sustainable at that level. But I think, you know, like any overseas owner, he thinks you just chuck money at it, you get in the Premier League. And we all know that that doesn’t work. You have to have so many different to make it happen.
We were, you know, close to relegation in the championship. We had a bit of an upturn with Paunovic. You know, we looked good for the first eight games and then missed out on the playoffs. But, you know, it was ridiculous amounts of money, with Kia Joorabchian, the, super agent in his pocket at the time. You know, we had so many random signings that you’re kind of like there’s no plan.
The football club that works well has a plan. We had it under Steve Copel, Brian McDermott. You know? Yeah.
You build and you do it properly, but this is, like, just hoping it will work. Like, you know, buying Sonny Aluko for eight million, George Puskas for not much less. Yeah. It was just it’s just crazy, crazy stuff. And, you know, proved itself, you know, for a club to be, you know, in the old EFL, you know, 39 million in debt over three years, and we were something close to 200.
It kind of sums up what exactly the hell he was doing because he didn’t have a clue about football business.
I’m on the board of the supporters trust at Reading, and you watch what’s going on, and you hear things, and you’re looking at this. You know, Ron Gourley was vile. He destroyed the whole culture at the club as well. Got rid of a lot of good people that in, the backroom people that were the nuts and bolts of a club like Reading, which is, you know, a good community club, a good town, because he was all ego.
He’s stuffed up West Brom. He’s stuffed up a club in United Arab Emirates or wherever. You know, people like that, just makes it horrible. And, like, so we you know, I think well, I think that one of the things that Reading fans said was live fast, die young was the one of the slogans that we had at the time.
Because we thought, you know, he’s coming in. We did hear the rumours about, he didn’t get to buy Hull, but you think the best of it.
Years later, we, you know, we found a different, view of that, if you like. You get to a playoff final and you you’ve got a decent squad, and you kind of think, yeah, we buy this and we buy that. But we you know, to be honest, we’re an average team, and Jaap Stam was, he’d got he’d done a good job in the season, but he kind of got found out about the way his style of play and wouldn’t change. You know? And then the second season, it fell off.
We had some horrible results under him. I think we lost to Norwich seven one in the playoff season. And then the second season, you could see it wasn’t working. You could see it whether, he didn’t have the players or the, plan b, whatever you want to call it.
It was it was horrible. And then, I think, if my memory serves me correct, Paul Clement came in. I think at the end of that season. He was, you know, one of the worst, most negative coaches. And, yeah, we stayed up, you know, but, like, you’re going from playoff to staying up with the same squad roughly and a few add ons.
And you look at that, and you’re kind of going, jeez. We’re in trouble here. And that’s just on the pitch. You know? Yeah.
MB: Like you have said when, things were kind of going wrong you were just chucking money at sort of fixing a problem without any sort of idea. This kind of brings me on to my next question is so, obviously, the results on the pitch were up and down and you had overachieved, so money was thrown into the wrong places.
At what point did you, like, for you for yourself as a supporter become aware of the financial problems, because obviously in 2021 was the first visible financial discretion under Yongge, when people were starting to end up unpaid and the debts were kind of being sort of more visible. Prior to this point, did you see any red flags in terms of your ownership?
JH: Well, I think, you know, when you’re buying someone like Sonny Aluko for a ridiculous amount of money at that level, he was an okay player. He’s not, you know, he’s not Michael Olise, just to be honest.
That but those kind of signings, and I think we were placed under kind of a some sort of embargo, and then all of a sudden, we signed Puskas. And then he scored against Cardiff on the first day of the season. He scored a couple. Probably should’ve got a hat trick, and we’re thinking, jeez.
Who’s this young lad? And then that that kind of was flattered to deceive. And then, you know, obviously, from being on supporter’s trust, you get wind of the issues around the finances and what’s going on, and then you’re like, oh, Jesus. Kind of like, in a lot of clubs, I don’t think is the only one. I think a lot of clubs have kind of gambled on, if we throw money at this, we’ll get out of this league, and we won’t be caught for the financial problems.
But, unfortunately, we didn’t. So then all of a sudden, you got this massive headache. And rather than try and fix it, it just got worse. You know? That’s the craziness of what he was doing.
The problem with Dai Yongge, one of the main problems was that he was an absent owner a lot of the time. He’d turn up occasionally. Obviously, he didn’t speak English. He wasn’t from the area.
He had a CEO, Dai Yongge Pang, who was about as much use as a, you know, astronaut motorbike, to be honest. But they’re yes people to him. So he basically did what he wanted to do.
But as you’ve seen, from those seasons where we had the points deductions, really kicked in. And then, yeah, you’re getting Paul Ince in as a manager and it was just gambling. It’s like going to going to the poker machines and putting a hundred quid and hoping you’re going to win a million. You know?
Like the six point deduction that season relegated us, from the Championship to League One regardless of Ince’s foolish management. I guess it’s kind of like a round peg in a square hole kind of thing.
Yeah. You know, you’re not picking a left winger. You’re not picking a right winger. You’re not picking this. You’re picking anyone that’s available because that’s all we could get.
It’s almost like you’ve gone shopping and you’re in the bargain bucket to what’s left at 5pm in the evening. You know, we got, you some interesting ones like Andy Carroll. But there’s no logic to the plan.
Then on the other side, because of the bad organizational stuff, you let Omar Richards go to Bayern Munich on a free. And then, obviously, the biggest one is Michael Olise.
Yeah. He was allowed to run down his contract and left for 8 million to Crystal Palace when everyone knows that he’s worth was at that time, was worth so much more. And then even before that, I think it was Brighton tried to sign Liam Moore for 20 odd million. Yes. I thought he stuck his stuck his nose in and turned that one down.
It’s been, it’s just it’s a complete **** show. Yeah. And, like, any fan of a football club, any anyone that supports a football club, you know, watching it being destroyed.
I love women’s football and Reading’s women’s team was one of the groundbreaking women’s teams in women’s league where they were the fir one of the first, if not the first, to actually play on the men’s ground. And we were challenging top four or five in the in the Super League, whatever it’s called, for a few years. You know, we’ve produced good players like Fran Kirby and, Mary Earps. From Reading to bigger things. And then we got relegated basically because there was no money put into the club when at the time bigger clubs like Man United that were weren’t even interested in women’s football.
And then to, you know, to see them in the Premier League and to do what they did and then to then get relegated to the Championship because they were the semi pro. And then now we’re playing tier five Sunday League football, to be honest, in in women’s games because of that bad management. And, like, that’s cruel.
MB: As the club itself was dismantling other things, did you worry that it would all kind of got to free fall? That the team would keep falling down and the club would kind of just continue on this trend that it was going on?
JH: Absolutely. All you want is your club to exist.
I think that, you get promoted, you get relegated, you win, you lose. Your Boton beat us in the playoff final in 1995, which I’ve not got over yet. But I’ll let you off. But, you know, that’s football.
That’s football, isn’t it? We all can debate about the games and who was best and who was worst. But the fear and you know this, the fear of losing your club.
My Mum sadly passed just before we were having a protest march up to the ground from Reading. And my mum’s Reading through and through, born and bred there. You know, the thought of losing my mum and losing my football club at the same time was horrific.
We have a talk in Royals for fans because of we had to set that up to try and help people because of all the stress that was going on. But the thought of, you know, to me, thought was an escape from life. You go to the game, you meet your friends, you do all the stuff.
Like, it was, oh, no. It won’t happen to us. It won’t happen to us. But it’s actually well, it actually could.
And that’s, you know, the really genuine fear that I’ve had and so many Reading fans have had. You know, we see it with Bury. We see it with so many other sides that, you know, Reading has got a club of history. We’re probably I think it’s the seventh or eighth oldest club in the country, going back to 1871. And we’ve got, you know, we’ve played a part in in the football culture.
And it wasn’t it wasn’t overreaction. When you see, you know, as I talked about the women’s team being run into the ground and you see, you know, three opportunities for him to sell the club, and he didn’t. And you’re looking at all these other things that are going on, and you’re like, where’s this going to stop? Where’s this going to go ? Like, yep.
Going into League One is horrible. Been there before, but that’s football. Like but you’re looking at the bigger picture stuff, and you’re going like, we don’t you know, Mark Bowen was in the director of football. He left because of his issues with gambling. I hope he gets them fixed.
And, you know, it’s like, what else what else could actually go wrong with us? You know? It’s like the players having to bring in microwave meals. The women’s team then have microwave meals, and everyone gets food poisoning before a game. And you’re, like, going, you cannot believe what’s next?
With Rob Couhig taking over. Like, you know, he tried to buy the training ground at Reading when he was chairman of Wycombe, and it was, like, announced as a done deal with Dai Yongge He’s literally just trying to get money from anyone. And it’s like, well, hold on a second.
You Bolton or Man United buying your rivals training ground and just get over it. And it’s like, hold a second. That’s absolutely insane. Like, Reading’s training facility at Bearwood is unreal. It’s one of the best in the country.
You know, that’s how insane it got. And then now he’s buying the club. And I’ve actually met Rob game back in August when he was supposed to be buying the club, and, you know, he’s very, you know, typical American and full but he ran Wycombe very well.
What normal football owners do is run a club properly. We haven’t had one for years. We’re more interested in court cases and I mean, it’s nice to talk about talk about football for once as a running fan. You know, that’s insane. Yeah.
MB: With new ownership about to be in place are you after all this, after so much sort of hell that you’ve had, are you sort of as much as you are optimistic, obviously, because it’s different, are you still quite cautious about, you know, looking to the future of this football club?
JH: I think for worse, we’ve been, you know, led down the line so many times about things happening. Until I see like, even today, I think, you know, people are going, oh, it’s you know, I see there’s some tweets from, was it, Rob Couhig’s partner, and, you know, it’s nearly done. It’s like, until somebody’s standing here saying, we have bought Reading Football Club, I won’t believe it.
We didn’t make the playoffs, but it was a hell of a season Yeah. With a group of guys that have put the Reading identity back that we haven’t had for probably going back to the days of Brian McDermott where this team would run through brick walls. You guys have had it at Bolton, I’m sure. When you to see a team that go out there and give everything for the team, they may not win every game.
They’re one of us. And, like, that group of players that we’ve had this season. But, you know, under Ruben Sellers initially, then went through holes.
I think he basically had enough of all the **** that he had to deal with. And Noel, who, you know, Reading legend, and what a job he’s done with the men’s team.
I think we’re just waiting till this gets done. And then hopefully, we you know, we’ve got some great players that are out of contract. And Charlie Savage dropped down from Man United’s under 23’s because he wanted to play men’s football, and he’s done brilliantly.
I know we know Rob Couhig and what he does and how he’s run Wycombe, which I think is great as in you know, he gets football. He gets the business. There’s things that kind of, you know, will he help the women’s team? Will he help the academy?
Will he work with us on the supporters’ trust? That’s a big thing that it got so bad. I don’t know if you heard that, you know, the supporters’ trust had to fund a couple of the away games hotels this season,
Like, because we’re all in it together, but it’s absolutely ridiculous as well as in, that kind of sustainability. And I think, you know, Rob will do that. I think he’ll run the club, but, will he cut other things? You know, it’s an unknown thing.
I don’t know if he’ll be a long term owner. I think it will be a case of he’ll get the club in order and for a few years and then sell it on when it’s sustainable and running better. And I get that. But to be honest, at the minute, anyone other than the clown of an owner that we’ve had is a blessing.
That, but, yeah, you know, that that’s the EFL at the time. Like, you know, the EFL has been great recently in working with the club and everyone to get things done. But it shouldn’t have got to this point. You know? I think the FL tried to get rid of him as an owner last year, but an independent committee overruled that and said, no.
We’ve been as probably as close than any club recently to going out of business. And I wouldn’t wish it on any other club that the effect of all this on your mental health, your life, your stress levels, your everything. Regardless of who we support, we’re all football fans. We’re all we’re all we’re all in it together, and we all care about our clubs. And it’s bigger than a club.
It’s a community. It’s, you know, like I say about my mum passing. When my mum was involved, my grandparents were involved, their generations passed them. And then, the younger generation’s fans.
