The beleaguered Reading owner, Dai Yongge, has sanctioned the cut-price sale of their state-of-the-art training ground to local rivals Wycombe to aid cashflow in his club’s financial crisis.
In the absence of a takeover, there are serious concerns within the League One club about covering March’s wages and required HMRC payments, with a £1m shortfall to overcome this month. Failure to pay wages or HMRC would almost certainly result in a further points deduction from the English Football League. Reading have been docked six points this season because of financial difficulties.
In an extraordinary statement on Sunday, Reading publicly put their Bearwood Park training base up for sale. It read: “Mr Dai is currently evaluating every option at present to secure sufficient funding new ownership is confirmed. In doing so, he is open to the sale of Bearwood Park, should an appropriate offer be received.”
Potential buyers for the club are understood to have withdrawn from proceeding with a sale when it became clear that the training ground would not be part of any deal. Monday’s statement said talks with potential owners were progressing but that “no single party has been granted exclusivity”.
Reading’s move into the £50m training facility in 2019 was supposed to signal their intent to return to the Premier League but they have been unable to overcome financial problems that began when they missed out on promotion to Huddersfield in 2017.
Wycombe have been searching for their own training facility since being priced out of a deal to buy the Marlow Road site they lease from a three-man consortium. They have trained on local 4G pitches when the facility in Marlow has been flooded and could move into Reading’s site in the summer.
“The parties are moving forward on an exclusive basis with the expectation of completion,” Wycombe said of talks with Reading. “In the interim, Wycombe hope that if a transaction completes it will provide Reading with necessary financial support to ensure that they are able to meet their ongoing financial obligations.”
Mikhail Lomtadze, a Georgian billionaire who resides in Kazakhstan, is believed to be an investor in Wycombe. It is thought Lomtadze will soon become a board member under the Wycombe owner, Rob Couhig.
A spokesperson for the Sell Before We Dai group of Reading supporters, Caroline Parker, said: “This club is now firmly on life support. Selling one of Reading’s key assets makes the club even less attractive to a new owner.”
