In the fanzone outside the Select Car Leasing Stadium, the band’s lead singer tries a joke: “I hear Peterborough are going to win today.” It lands with silence. Reading fans aren’t in the mood. Their minds are elsewhere — on the small matter of whether their club will still exist in a week’s time.
The EFL’s disqualification of Reading’s deeply unpopular owner, Dai Yongge, has triggered a deadline: he must sell the club by April 5 or risk leaving their fate in the hands of the league. If he fails to show sufficient progress toward a sale, the EFL could declare Reading unable to fulfil their fixtures — suspending them from the league and plunging League One into chaos.
A deal is believed to be on the table, with the American investor Robert Platek in an exclusivity period. Platek is also the present owner of the Portuguese side Casa Pia. But Reading fans have been here before — Platek is the fifth prospective buyer to enter exclusivity since Yongge put the club up for sale more than 500 days ago.
In the fanzone, clusters of fans talk about little else. But after years of protests and pleas, they have learned not to expect much. “It’s unimaginable,” Sue Symes, 54, said when asked about the worst-case scenario. “Each time I try to think about it, I shut my mind down, I won’t even go there.”
“We’ve watched something we love turn into a shell of itself,” added Sarah Turner, 57, chair of the supporters’ trust. “Every time we think something’s going to happen and it doesn’t, it just hurts a bit more.”
Asked what they’d say to Yongge if given the chance, the group exchanged glances and chuckled — not out of amusement, but exhaustion. “You have the opportunity to safely pass on the custodianship of this wonderful football club,” Symes said. “Please take it now.”
Looming over us is a poster of Sir John Madejski, the beloved former owner who presided over Reading’s rise to the Premier League. “It’s a reminder of what a well-run club looked like,” Turner said. “We look at that poster and remember what we had — and that makes it even sadder.”
Speaking before Saturday’s match, the football finance expert Kieran Maguire outlined the stark reality. Yongge was disqualified after failing to pay debts in China, making him an “unreliable debtor” under the EFL’s owners’ and directors’ test.
While Maguire believes the EFL will do everything possible to avoid terminal consequences, he warned that administration is the most likely outcome if no sale is agreed. “This situation is now crystallising,” he said. “It’s like visiting a relative in hospital where you don’t know what the outcome’s going to be.
“Owners like Yongge get seduced by football. They see it as a trophy asset and get their fingers burnt. We don’t know who he owes money to — and that could mean he’s holding out for an unfeasible price.”
One such creditor is Rob Couhig, the former Wycombe Wanderers owner, who believed he had a deal to buy Reading last summer. He loaned the club £5million before the deal collapsed, and is now pursuing £12million in damages. To protect his investment, Couhig secured a mortgage over key assets — including the stadium and training ground — which any incoming buyer must now resolve.
Until the impasse ends, Reading remain unable to raise funds, surviving on Couhig’s cash and a £5million sell-on fee windfall from Michael Olise’s move from Crystal Palace to Bayern Munich last summer.
Becky Trotman, 44, a spokesperson for pressure group “Sell Before We Dai” said the community has been left powerless. “Dai Yongge has been the worst thing that’s ever happened to Reading Football Club,” she said.
Since his 2017 takeover, Yongge has presided over relegation, 18 points in deductions, transfer embargoes and the collapse of the women’s team, who were withdrawn from the Championship to the fifth tier.
“Our players haven’t been paid on time, they couldn’t afford hotels for away games, and the pitch is a disgrace,” Trotman said. “There were even stories going around about there being no sugar for the half-time coffees because the caterers hadn’t been paid.
“We were relegated in 2023 because of points deductions. That doesn’t affect Yongge, who doesn’t give two hoots about Reading.”
Yet amid the turmoil, the team is somehow thriving. Saturday’s 3–1 win over Peterborough stretched Reading’s unbeaten run to 11 games — their best form since 2012, when the manager, Noel Hunt, was part of the side that won the Championship.
The opening goal came just seven minutes in — a slick one-touch move involving Lewis Wing, Charlie Savage and Mamadi Camara, ending with Chem Campbell finishing off a flowing team move, even if it was officially credited as a Sam Hughes own goal.
By the end, they were in the play-off places, with fans singing, “We’re on our way to the Championship,” above a banner that read: “No community should lose their club.”
Hunt’s starting XI had an average age of only 24. Key players like Femi Azeez and Sam Smith have been sold, and even the 20-year-old fan favourite Tyler Bindon — sold to Nottingham Forest in January for £700,000, but loaned back — was missing due to illness.
“We’ve lost so many players, and now we’re sixth — last year we finished 17th,” Savage, the 21-year-old scorer of Reading’s third goal, said. “It’s a credit to everybody.”
Hunt’s focus remains on protecting his players from the off-pitch disorder. “I say to the players, if you’ve got £28million then let’s go discuss it,” he said. “If you don’t, then what’s the point? We focus on what happens inside these four lines.”
Thanks to Hunt, his players, and the foundations laid by Madejski, Reading remain a club with potential — if they can survive. Lawrie Sanchez, who played 262 times for them, was among the crowd on Saturday.
“There’s been a complete lack of transparency over time,” he said. “But this is a tremendous buy. You see the stadium, the training ground — it’s Premier League standard. If the right people come in and do the right thing, we can bounce back.”
