Reading FC: Wild £180m Dai Yongge figure revealed following Rob Couhig agreement | OneFootball

The Royals are set to be taken over by Redwood Holdings Limited.

Reading made a whopping £180 million loss throughout the bulk of Dai Yongge's tenure in charge of the club.

The club's accounts for the 2024/25 season have finally been published on Companies House.

They were supposed to have been published by 31st March but, as has been the way with the Royals for a long time, things don't always run smoothly at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.

Instead, the accounts were delayed, but they have now become available to the public following the announcement that Yongge is set to officially sever his ties with the club.

The Chinese businessman's long-standing association with Reading is going to come to an end sooner or later. It was announced on Saturday, prior to the Royals' last game of the 2024/25 season, that Yongge and Redwood Holdings Limited, who are led by former Wycombe Wanderers chairman Rob Couhig, had agreed on a sale in principle.

All that is left is for the t's to be crossed and the i's to be dotted, but that won't relieve Reading of the scars of yesteryear.

Yongge's negative effect on the club may well be long-lasting.

Their standing in League One, which they failed to change at the weekend when they lost 4-2 at home to Barnsley, although Leyton Orient's 4-1 victory over Huddersfield Town wouldn't have allowed Noel Hunt's side to get into the top six anyway, all comes back to the points deduction that they were handed in their final Championship season, as a result of Yongge's poor financial actions.

The extent of his recklessness has now been further exposed thanks to the new accounts, which have revealed that between the 2017/18 - Yongge's first season in charge of the club - and 2023/24 campaigns, Reading lost £180.1 million. The accounts also revealed that £12.4 million of losses in that figure came in 23/24.

We will only know the full extent to which Reading were financially hamstrung by Yongge once the current season's accounts are revealed next year, but they are likely to paint a pretty similar picture.

The conditions that players and staff have had to work under at the Select Car Leasing Stadium have been well documented. The ground's title sponsor had to help pay the players' wages in November 2023. Staff have had to wear coats indoors due to the inability to heat the stadium properly. Ready meals and no overnight stays before games for the players, all per The Athletic.

All of these problems were brought about by Yongge's inability to sufficiently fund the club.

The losses revealed in the latest set of accounts put it in more black and white terms, but, sadly, the numbers don't come as a shock, more of a further confirmation of what we already knew. And yet, on the pitch, they are still very competitive.

Amid all the drama and setbacks, Reading's players and manager, whether it be Hunt or Ruben Selles, have continued to fight on and inspire the supporters, giving them hope of a brighter day.