Reading FC's £7m transfer mishap sums up dreadful Dai Yongge era | OneFootball

The new Royals owner splashed the cash on this player in 2017 but his lack of impact personified the awful mess Yongge would later get the club in.

The sale of Reading continues to drag on, leaving fans uncertain where the club is heading.

The Royals have made a relatively positive start to the season and are within touching distance of the play-offs as 2025 approaches. However, The Guardian recently reported that current owner Dai Yongge's attempts to sell the club have been hampered by his failure to repay debts of about £55 million to a bank in his native China.

It's fair to say the Yongge era of Reading will not be looked back upon with any fondness by the Royals fans due to the club's financial issues and relegation to League One in 2023.

The signing of Sone Aluko in 2017 proved to be a perfect personification of his time as Royals owner. The large fee meant that the Nigerian forward promised so much but delivered very little, echoing the way optimism of a strong future for Reading under Yongge evaporated.

Sone Aluko's pre-Reading career

Born in London to Nigerian parents, Aluko is the younger brother of pundit and former Lionesses international Eni. He began his career at Birmingham City but made a name for himself in Scotland after spells with Aberdeen and Rangers.

Aluko moved to Hull City in 2012, where he featured regularly for an English club for the first time in his career. After joining Fulham for the 2016/17 season, he signed in Yongge's first summer as Royals owner - after the Chinese entrepreneur and his sister, Dai Xiu Li, bought 75% of the club in May 2017. Aluko's transfer fee was believed to be about £7.5 million.

He had featured in the Cottagers' first four games of the 2017/18 season before moving, but his fee demonstrated the Berkshire club's eagerness to bring him in. They had been narrowly defeated on penalties by Huddersfield Town in the previous season's Championship play-off final and were optimistic that the addition of Aluko could provide them with what the club required to win automatic promotion.

Sone Aluko disappointed with the Royals

Expectations were naturally high for an attacking player who generally provided assists from the right-wing, but also bagged the odd goal. It didn't take long for Aluko to register his first assist in blue and white in a 1-1 draw against his former club Hull. He made three more before finally getting his first goal in November against Derby County.

He added another goal and assist before the 2017/18 season was done. It was a pretty mediocre start, but many played Aluko off - with his four-year contract - as simply being a slow-burning project. This would be his best season for the Royals.

He had a single goal and assist in the next season before he was shipped on loan to Beijing Renhe, another club owned by the Dais, until the end of 2019. By this time, Reading had essentially paid £2.5 million for every goal Aluko had scored in blue and white.

After returning to the Royals the following January, Aluko struggled to break back into the side as the season was elongated due to the COVID-19 pandemic - failing to score or assist in two Championship appearances. He got more regular games during the behind-closed-doors 2020/21 season but his numbers again failed to live up to his notable price tag. He was eventually released at the end of the season, having made little impact at the Royals.

Aluko would go on to sign for Ipswich Town and help the club rise from League One to the Premier League, before retiring last season and taking up a coaching role at the club.

He was praised by Tractor Boys boss Kieran McKenna, who said: "I can't speak highly enough of him as a person. He holds really high standards of himself so he sets a good example for others to follow."

Yongge's early Reading statement failed to deliver

The alleged £7.5 million spent on bringing Aluko to Berkshire in 2017 was a clear statement by the Royals' new owner; he wanted to take Reading back to the top and could only do that through heavy spending.

However, this proved to be one of the biggest mistakes he made when it came to improving the squad. Aluko's paltry returns for the club over four years meant each goal he scored eventually cost the Royals over a million pounds.

When they were found to have breached the EFL's profit and sustainability regulations shortly after his departure, fans were left wondering how much of the mess was caused by the investment made in the Nigerian international.

Ultimately, the financial situation only got worse for the Royals and, while they now dither over their future ownership, many will look at Aluko's signing as the biggest warning sign of what was to come at Reading shortly after Yongge initially took over.