Reading’s dire finances have led staff to rejig training plans to avoid paying for undersoil heating, as the crisis club look to curb costs. The League One side, owned by the Chinese businessman Dai Yongge, have implemented a number of drastic cost-cutting measures, including 19 redundancies, and owe about £4m to suppliers.
Staff and former employees talk of “firefighting” on a daily basis as the club fights a series of off-field problems. The English Football League has called for Dai to fund or sell the club after displaying a “clear disregard” for his duties.
Reading trained on the one practice pitch with undersoil heating on Thursday and an under-21s match was played on the surface on Monday but first-team staff have been encouraged to minimise usage. There have been instances in recent weeks when the manager, Rubén Sellés, has been asked to adjust training schedules or use the gym to save on the cost of undersoil heating, which is turned on before sessions and switched off immediately after. The first team can train on other pitches but freezing temperatures of late have led them to train later, once those have thawed.
Reading said payments for the undersoil heating were taken automatically upon use and that it had been general practice for a while to activate it only when essential. They acknowledged that the club’s financial troubles meant it was imperative they were savvy with how much they use it.
Despite the cold conditions, on occasions staff at the club’s impressive £50m Bearwood training base, opened by Dai in 2019, have been wearing coats and jackets inside the main first-team building because the upstairs heating does not work. The club said a maintenanceproblem was unresolved but some staff believe the lack of heating is to keep costs down. The club has made 19 redundancies, including in the new year the assistant manager, Andrew Sparkes, and the head of player development, Eddie Niedzwiecki. Most roles have gone in the academy, which is at risk of losing its category one status, and more first-team staff jobs are understood to be in danger. The club insisted no further roles had been identified as at risk.
A number of suppliers have lost patience. The data company StatsPerform, which provides Opta data, has frozen its account with the club and another, the catering firm Levy, has pulled out of the training ground but remains at the stadium. As a result, medical staff are sourcing meals for players. Dai acquired control of the club with his sister Dai Xiu Li in 2017, when they were a Championship playoff final victory from promotion to the Premier League, and is thought to have invested in excess of £250m in an attempt to reach the top flight. Now the club is taking desperate measures to “save pennies”, as one insider puts it.
Post-match food provided at Reading Women’s FA Cup tie at home to Wolves last Sunday, played at Aldershot, has led to illnesses among both sets of playersand forced Wolves to postpone a game against West Brom because a number of their squad were affected.
In November, the EFL pushed for Dai to be disqualified as an owner after a financial breach but an independent panel felt such action would not solve Reading’s problems. The commission instead fined him £20,000 for failing to adhere to meet the EFL’s financial demands of depositing 125% of the monthly wage bill into a holding account. A suspended £50,000 fine was activated last Friday after he again failed to meet those demands. Dai is not thought to have paid either of the charges. Reading have been deducted 16 points since November 2021 for financial breaches, including the late payment of wages. The club has spent much of the past two years under transfer embargoes owing to their failure to pay HMRC on time.
The under-fire chief executive, Dayong Pang, has sanctioned the sales of the defenders Tom Holmes and Nelson Abbey, both to Luton – though it remains to be seen whether the latter will join – and other players, such as Tyler Bindon and Charlie Savage, could follow. Savage is stuck on 14 league starts because if he makes another he will trigger a £2,000-a-month pay rise. Before Christmas the club terminated the contract of Ovie Ejaria, who signed a lucrative four-year contract after arriving from Liverpool in 2020, saving the club about £200,000.
There are understood to be three or four parties interested in purchasing Reading who have non-disclosure agreements but there are concerns within the club that prospective buyers could “run a mile” because of the bleak financial picture. Reading, who visit Wigan on Saturday, are 21st in League One and at risk of successive relegations. Overnight stays have largely been scrapped but Reading will have one on Friday. “We cannot move on as a club unless we get new owners,” one staff member said.
This weekend the Football Supporters’ Association is encouraging clubs to show solidarity with Reading supporters by having a minute’s applause in the 16th minute, the point at which Reading fans invaded the pitch against Port Vale last Saturday, prompting the game to be abandoned. Exeter City, direct rivals of Reading, are among those that have pledged to do so. Reading could face a suspended points deduction as a sanction for the invasion, as Blackpool did in 2015 in protest at their then owners.
The EFL, which has in effect conceded Dai is unfit to run the club, are relatively powerless to overthrow him. On Wednesday the EFL board debated whether the league should have a golden share in all of its 72 clubs but its chairman, Rick Parry, acknowledged that would create “a right hornets’ nest”. “We can’t actually force the sale, we can’t seize the shares, [because] it is company law,” Parry said. “Short of seizing the club, the [EFL’s] powers, sadly, are limited.”
Reading released a statement on Wednesday saying “Mr Dai has agreed that he will sell the club at the earliest opportunity”. The club’s former chief executive Nigel Howe is leading the process and said Dai had enlisted the help of “lawyers to assist in the disposal” of the club.
