The two faces of Reading Football Club

On the one, the club is still perilously close to a complete meltdown. But on the other, manager Ruben Selles is building a team that is out-performing all expectations.

It had, to be fair, been a long time coming. Reading’s 2-1 win at Exeter City was their first away win in six and a half months, and it wasn’t just any win, either. This was a win against an Exeter team that has had a good start to the season themselves, and it started in the first minute with a goal from Jayden Wareham, who was making his first start for the club after having been released by Chelsea in the summer.

More than 700 supporters made the long trip down to Devon on this October Tuesday evening even though both Champions League and EFL football were live on the television, a message which in itself should really send a message to any potential buyers for the club. And it is important to highlight this, because for all the (often well-deserved) catastro-talk surrounding this particular club over the last couple of years, there is something positive being built at Reading despite the enormous structural issues that they currently face.

The win bumped the Royals up from 13th place to 7th in League One, separated from the play-off places from Exeter and Huddersfield Town by goal difference only. With Birmingham City already streaking off into the distance at the top of the table, there may already only realistically be one automatic promotion place up for grabs this season, and second-placed Wrexham remain hotly-tipped to follow them, even though they’re only a point above Wycombe Wanderers and surprise newly-promoteds Mansfield Town.

It was also their fourth win in five games in the League, coming on top of previous wins against Huddersfield Town, Crawley Town and Burton Albion. And the one person who probably deserves credit more than anyone else for this is manager Ruben Selles, who steered the team away from the relegation places last season despite points deductions and an atmosphere of mutiny around the club, and who seems to have built upon last year’s team and improved it, despite having no money to do so. It’s taken the team 11 games to get to 19 points this season. Last time it was 23, more than twice as many.

But behind the scenes, everything else seems pretty much as chaotic as ever. The latest attention-grabbing headline regarding this was the news that the club’s holding company has been issued with a winding up order over unpaid fees by the solicitors firm Walker Morris, relating to fees connected to Rob Couhig's failed takeover attempt to buy the club over the summer. Walker Morris had previously been the club’s legal representatives, but switched sides after the takeover talks fell through, which is, if nothing else, at least quite funny.

The Reading Football Club Limited were served two winding-up petitions last season for unpaid taxes and also received one in 2020 over unpaid agents fees, so this is nothing especially new, and reports indicate that this winding-up order doesn’t materially impact the club or its operating at present and there are no threats of action being taken by the EFL over it.

The club was also hit with a transfer embargo by the EFL on the 7th October, even though they’re already under one over last season’s financial shenanigans. On this occasion, it was handed out because of the club’s late filing of annual accounts to Companies House. These were due to be received by the end of June 2024 so are now almost four months late, and the real life effect of this is that the last set of accounts that are publicly available apply to a time period which ended almost two and half years ago.

There’s a lot still to fix. The women’s team were callously culled from Yongge’s priority list in the summer, demoted several divisions down and made to play their home matches twenty miles away in Slough as a cost-cutting measure. And it may well be that the accounts that will be visible to anybody buying the club could harbour some very dark secrets indeed from the last couple of years. Until they’re posted to Companies House, we can’t get any indication of how bad things have got over the last couple of years.

The reason why the Couhig takeover didn’t get over the line remains unknown, with the club Chief Executive Nigel Howe only able to say that, “It’s simple; two parties are talking to each other about a set of terms and if the terms don’t get agreed finally, the situation breaks down.” Well yes, that is what happens in those situations, and it is completely understandable non-disclosure agreements will hamstring any further comment on the matter.

But the ultimate result of it all is that no-one outside of the negotiation process is going to say anything about it, and that’s extremely unhelpful. With no recent accounts available and ownership of the stadium in play, it’s practically impossible to say what the problem was for Couhig other than that it must have been pretty well concealed if it only came to light at the last minute. The extent to which it could also be an issue for any other buyer is similarly unknown, and none of this says anything terribly optimistic about the prognosis for the club.

It has, of course, been abundantly clear for years that club owner Dai Yongge doesn’t particularly care for it any more, and the contrast with what Ruben Selles is building on the pitch could scarcely be more stark. If anything, Selles is doing more than anybody else to sell the idea of Reading Football Club at the moment.

This recent upswing in form, after three pretty dismal seasons, is at least reinvigorating something within the club. Despite apocalyptic pre-season premonitions their average home attendance this season remains at over 12,000 (and would be higher were it not for a Tuesday night match against Burton Albion dragging it down), with over 13,000 having attended their last home game against Crawley Town, who are not a club noted for having the biggest away support.

If that many people can be tempted to home matches because of a bit of an upturn in form, despite the last couple of seasons, what is the potential for Reading Football Club? Well, we all know the answer to this because they’ve been there before. Reading have had three seasons in the Premier League (their only seasons in the top flight since joining the Football League in 1920), of course, of which two ended in relegation but of which the other ended with finishing 8th in the Premier League.

That will be the aspiration for any new owner because, despite the fact that it’s become a money pit itself in recent years, the Premier League remains the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in terms of football in England. It’s what Dai Yongge wanted more than anything, but his maladministration has instead left the club in the desperate condition in which it finds itself today.

But any new owner should also watch those ambitions. Three years in the top flight should lead to a belief that it can be done, but it doesn’t entitle anyone to consider it a ‘right’. For now, Ruben Selles is moving Reading FC in the right direction on the pitch in League One, and that’s more than the club’s supporters have had to look forward to for some time. All it needs now is for Dai Yongge to get the hell out of their club. Same as it ever was.