CONFRIMED: Takeover collapsed; Back to square one

[Silver Fox]

Why is it we play badly and lose one game and people are talking like the takeover is suddenly dead ffs?

You know why, it's because our fans (or at least a vocal subsection) are absolute helmets

[Snowflake Royal]

Why is it we play badly and lose one game and people are talking like the takeover is suddenly dead ffs?

You know why, it's because our fans (or at least a vocal subsection) are absolute helmets

Fair. I was expecting it to take two games on here, and 15 minutes on twitter

[Mid Sussex Royal]

I know the Howe appeal is mentioned on another thread, but just pointing out that one of the points he made was that if the ban was 6 months it may harm the sale of the club....given the ban starts Oct 4th and now ends Jan 4th following appeal, this sounds like he is anticipating this all dragging on a while yet....

[Forbury Lion]

I know the Howe appeal is mentioned on another thread, but just pointing out that one of the points he made was that if the ban was 6 months it may harm the sale of the club....given the ban starts Oct 4th and now ends Jan 4th following appeal, this sounds like he is anticipating this all dragging on a while yet....

Suspect once the sale happens he might ask to take the ban then rather than drag it on.
Suspect if he hasn't sold the club before Jan 4th then they may want to let someone else have a crack at it anyway, although to be fair the hold up is likely to be on the sellers side.

[Forbury Lion]

FYI

feck knows where to put this but nigel howe has had his suspension reduced by 3 months on appeal

https://www.thefa.com/news/2024/sep/16/ ... ate-160924

[South Coast Royal]

Why is it we play badly and lose one game and people are talking like the takeover is suddenly dead ffs?

You know why, it's because our fans (or at least a vocal subsection) are absolute helmets

Not just Reading fans.

[Pepe the Horseman]

On a night when 28,000 turn up to watch a game in English football’s third tier, there’s bad news elsewhere in League One. Rob Couhig’s takeover of Reading has hit the rocks. Worrying times for the club, as his loans have kept them going this summer.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/577198 ... ed_article doesn't really tell us anything we don't know tbf

[morganb]

On a night when 28,000 turn up to watch a game in English football’s third tier, there’s bad news elsewhere in League One. Rob Couhig’s takeover of Reading has hit the rocks. Worrying times for the club, as his loans have kept them going this summer.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/577198 ... ed_article doesn't really tell us anything we don't know tbf

Full text of article -

Reading takeover stalls after breakdown in talks between Rob Couhig and owner Dai Yongge

Matt Slater
2h ago
3

Former Wycombe Wanderers owner Rob Couhig’s attempt to buy Reading has stalled following the breakdown of talks between the American lawyer and the League One side’s current owner Dai Yongge.

Couhig and his business partner Todd Trosclair had hoped to complete the deal in August — and have already lent the club more than £5million ($6.6m) — but a series of deadlines to sign the agreement have passed, with the most recent coming and going on Friday.

The news will come as a huge blow for Reading’s supporters who have been protesting against Yongge’s ownership for more than a year. The Chinese businessman bought the club in May 2017, the same month they lost the Championship play-off final to Huddersfield Town on penalties.

Despite spending huge sums of money on managers and players, the next six seasons were mainly spent at the wrong end of the Championship table, with relegation to the third tier coming in 2023 when they were docked six points for late payments for the second season in a row.

The club hit new lows, though, last season, as staff were made redundant, the club struggled to pay running costs and the academy’s brightest talents were sold.

In March, the club very nearly sold its training ground to Couhig’s Wycombe only for that deal to collapse, too. And this summer, the women’s team were forced to pull out of the second-tier Championship as they could no longer operate on a professional basis.

But when Couhig sold Wycombe to Kazakh fintech billionaire Mikhail Lomtadze in May, the 75-year-old emerged as a potential saviour for Reading, a club that finished eighth in the Premier League in 2007.

In August, Couhig, Trosclair and their families came to watch the club beat Wigan Athletic and, two days later, the New Orleanian changed his profile picture on X to one of himself outside Reading’s training ground.

But, with Yongge a notoriously difficult man to pin down, a final agreement has proved elusive, with both sides blaming each other for the impasse.

Thanks to a sell-on clause windfall they received when former star Michael Olise moved from Crystal Palace to Bayern Munich this summer, Reading are not in immediate danger of insolvency but a new owner is needed by Christmas, particularly if the club is to have any chance of promotion this season.

The man leading that search for Yongge has been the club’s former chief executive Nigel Howe, who received some good personal news on Monday when an independent appeal panel reduced his ban “from all football-related activities” from six months to three.

Howe was originally given a 12-month ban in May for agreeing to make an illegal payment to an agent in 2019 but the first six months of that ban were limited to transactions involving players so that he could lead the club’s negotiations with potential buyers.

With the second and more restrictive half of his ban looming, Howe appealed against the length of the sanction and that has been partially upheld. However, this still means he cannot have anything to do with Reading until January 5, which raises serious questions about how much progress on any takeover proposal can be made until then.

Neither the club nor Couhig responded to requests for comment from The Athletic.


Based in North West England, Matt Slater is a senior football news reporter for The Athletic UK. Before that, he spent 16 years with the BBC and then three years as chief sports reporter for the UK/Ireland's main news agency, PA. Follow Matt on Twitter @mjshrimper


©2024 The Athletic Media Company, A New York Times Company

[WestYorksRoyal]

The article says "stalled", not "broken down". People had been joining the dots and figuring out that the issue was with Dai responding, and this article confirms that.

I stand that the clock is ticking on Dai. He won't be able to pay back the money loaned, so he can do this the easy way and sell, or the hard way and have it seized off him.

Definitely an annoyance that money like the Azeez sale and Olise sell on should be used to invest in the club but Dai is using it to cling on and spin out this saga.

[Sutekh]

FFS when is he going to get out of the club?

with both sides blaming each other for the impasse

Guess that's no time soon then, looking forward to another winter of cr@p

[Stranded]

So, if that report is accurate and The Athletic is normally pretty solid - then we are in a prolonged period again of treading water until Dai decides to do something, or a continued slow decay if he doesn't.

In other words, the status quo.

[Snowflake Royal]

So, if that report is accurate and The Athletic is normally pretty solid - then we are in a prolonged period again of treading water until Dai decides to do something, or a continued slow decay if he doesn't.

In other words, the status quo.

I'm not sure what there is for it to be right about. It has no new information, nothing actually attributable.

We've known for weeks that there's a hold up in the final sign off and Dai is being his usual unhelpful and uncommunicative self. We know the Olise and Azeez money has been helping us keep going and Couhig and co have put in substantial money to contribute to that as well.

We know from our itks like EPR that even the people in the club who should be itk don't know what's going on any more.

[Armadillo Roadkill]

The NYT is reliable and responsible, and this is not good news.

Confidently quoting the size of the loans made suggests there is an actually source to this story, and it's not just put together from things already in the public domain.

My belief all the way through is that it was more to do with timezones, priorities etc. I just couldn't believe it was down to Dai's malfeasance, as that's just irrational and self-destructive. It seems I was being too generous to him.

The only real conclusion to be drawn is that, until new ownership is credibly and verifiably confirmed (sorry, confimred), the worst seems about as likely as the best.

[Elm Park Kid]

Just to restate what the overall assumption is then:

- The club now has enough money to run until Christmas without any additional sums from Dai. Mainly thanks to Olise sale and just the fact that the club gets given tv and season ticket money upfront.
- Dai has decided to not sign off on the deal that he came to with Couhig for whatever reason. Maybe he is hoping to get more money.
- Both Couhig and the previous consortium loaned the club money to keep the show on the road over the summer. They now have enough legal control to ensure that Dai can't just liquidate the club.
- There is no obvious logical reason (beyond rumours about 'pride') why Dai would put the club into administration. He would simply lose control and a lot of money.

[blythspartan]

The NYT is reliable and responsible, and this is not good news.

Confidently quoting the size of the loans made suggests there is an actually source to this story, and it's not just put together from things already in the public domain.

My belief all the way through is that it was more to do with timezones, priorities etc. I just couldn't believe it was down to Dai's malfeasance, as that's just irrational and self-destructive. It seems I was being too generous to him.

The only real conclusion to be drawn is that, until new ownership is credibly and verifiably confirmed (sorry, confimred), the worst seems about as likely as the best.

Maybe with his ban looming NH has leaked the story to the Athletic. As IR has said the article isn’t really telling us much more than we already know.

I am hoping at worst the club gets put into administration and Dai finally oxf*rd off, but no idea if that’s even an option for Couhig and co. I can’t see them giving up after lending Dai millions.

[WestYorksRoyal]

The NYT is reliable and responsible, and this is not good news.

Confidently quoting the size of the loans made suggests there is an actually source to this story, and it's not just put together from things already in the public domain.

My belief all the way through is that it was more to do with timezones, priorities etc. I just couldn't believe it was down to Dai's malfeasance, as that's just irrational and self-destructive. It seems I was being too generous to him.

The only real conclusion to be drawn is that, until new ownership is credibly and verifiably confirmed (sorry, confimred), the worst seems about as likely as the best.

Maybe with his ban looming NH has leaked the story to the Athletic. As IR has said the article isn’t really telling us much more than we already know.

I am hoping at worst the club gets put into administration and Dai finally oxf*rd off, but no idea if that’s even an option for Couhig and co. I can’t see them giving up after lending Dai millions.

If they went the administration route, they would buy it cheaper but have to make up for it with extra investment as we'd fall even further and see even more damage to the club. It is clearly their preference not to go down this route, but if it's the only way to force Dai's hand....

[Mid Sussex Royal]

The NYT is reliable and responsible, and this is not good news.

Confidently quoting the size of the loans made suggests there is an actually source to this story, and it's not just put together from things already in the public domain.

My belief all the way through is that it was more to do with timezones, priorities etc. I just couldn't believe it was down to Dai's malfeasance, as that's just irrational and self-destructive. It seems I was being too generous to him.

The only real conclusion to be drawn is that, until new ownership is credibly and verifiably confirmed (sorry, confimred), the worst seems about as likely as the best.

Maybe with his ban looming NH has leaked the story to the Athletic. As IR has said the article isn’t really telling us much more than we already know.

I am hoping at worst the club gets put into administration and Dai finally oxf*rd off, but no idea if that’s even an option for Couhig and co. I can’t see them giving up after lending Dai millions.

There's a few new little bits in there, the £5m, the impasse on both sides, and numerous signing deadlines not met....

[Snowflake Royal]

The NYT is reliable and responsible, and this is not good news.

Confidently quoting the size of the loans made suggests there is an actually source to this story, and it's not just put together from things already in the public domain.

My belief all the way through is that it was more to do with timezones, priorities etc. I just couldn't believe it was down to Dai's malfeasance, as that's just irrational and self-destructive. It seems I was being too generous to him.

The only real conclusion to be drawn is that, until new ownership is credibly and verifiably confirmed (sorry, confimred), the worst seems about as likely as the best.

Maybe with his ban looming NH has leaked the story to the Athletic. As IR has said the article isn’t really telling us much more than we already know.

I am hoping at worst the club gets put into administration and Dai finally oxf*rd off, but no idea if that’s even an option for Couhig and co. I can’t see them giving up after lending Dai millions.

There's a few new little bits in there, the £5m, the impasse on both sides, and numerous signing deadlines not met....

Of that, only the size of the loan is new, and journos always bandy about figures that are frequently unreliable, see transfer fees for example

[Royal_jimmy]

Just to restate what the overall assumption is then:

- The club now has enough money to run until Christmas without any additional sums from Dai. Mainly thanks to Olise sale and just the fact that the club gets given tv and season ticket money upfront.
- Dai has decided to not sign off on the deal that he came to with Couhig for whatever reason. Maybe he is hoping to get more money.
- Both Couhig and the previous consortium loaned the club money to keep the show on the road over the summer. They now have enough legal control to ensure that Dai can't just liquidate the club.
- There is no obvious logical reason (beyond rumours about 'pride') why Dai would put the club into administration. He would simply lose control and a lot of money.

How much did we get from the sell on for Olise?

[Royal_jimmy]

Hard to understand what Dai actually gets out of holding the club. Realistically we aren't going up anytime soon we'll either stay in league one or drop further without investment which he obviously isn't committed to. The longer he holds on, the less he's going to get.

This is certainly a blow for us and we need to turn up the heat with protests that;
1) Show that we approve of Couhig
2) Continue to support the players who have been through so much crap
3) Give further bad publicity to Dai

Fortunately as other posters have said we are ok financially for now with the Olise and Azeez money + Couhig's benevolence in keeping the club afloat. If we didn't have that we'd be finished.