The Reading FC, Dai Yongge transfer disaster that lost the Royals £7.5m | OneFootball

Former Reading owner Dai Yongge's decision to pay €7.7 million for striker George Puscas proved to be a big mistake.

After a nightmare few years under the ownership of Dai Yongge, a new era is underway at Reading after Rob Couhig completed his takeover of the club.

Couhig had seen his initial bid to buy Reading collapse at the last minute in September, and he subsequently became involved in a bitter legal battle with former owner Yongge, but after reigniting his interest in the club, he completed his takeover at the second attempt in May.

It is fair to say that the news of Couhig's takeover came as a huge relief to the long-suffering Royals supporters, who were delighted to see Yongge's disastrous tenure come to an end after a turbulent period that had seen the club relegated to League One and have a total of 18 points deducted amid a host of other off-field issues.

However, while Yongge almost led Reading to the brink of expulsion from the EFL, he was not always an unpopular figure at the Select Car Leasing Stadium, and he invested heavily in the early stages of his reign as he looked to guide the club back to the Premier League.

In a clear indication of Yongge's initial ambition for the Royals, he broke the club's transfer record to sign striker George Puscas from Inter Milan for a fee of £7.5 million in August 2019, with bonuses said to have been included in the deal if they achieved promotion to the top flight, but he did not reach anywhere near the heights that were expected of him after his big-money arrival.

Yongge was certainly not afraid to splash out on big transfer fees in his first few years at Reading, with the likes of Sam Baldock and Sone Aluko among his more expensive additions, but he took his spending to another level in the summer of 2019.

Just one day after completing the signing of striker Lucas Joao from Sheffield Wednesday for a fee in the region of £5 million, the Royals spent a club-record fee on Puscas, and the double deal certainly sent out a message to the rest of the Championship about Yongge's intentions for the season.

After beginning his career in his native Romania, Puscas joined Inter Milan in 2013, but while he featured just seven times for the club, he made his name during a series of loan spells with sides from across Italy, and Reading clearly saw enough evidence to convince them to break the bank to sign the striker.

Puscas may have failed to reach double figures for goals at any of his previous clubs, but at 23 years of age, he was already a regular for Romania at international level and was seen as a player with a lot of potential, so it is easy to see why the Royals believed he was a worthwhile investment.

However, Reading had been under a soft transfer embargo earlier in the summer after Yongge's excessive spending during the previous two years, so some supporters raised concerns about his decision to shell out such a substantial fee on Puscas, and those fears were proven to be correct.

Dai Yongge's bold George Puscas transfer call backfired spectacularly for Reading

Puscas enjoyed a dream start to his Reading career as he scored twice on just his second appearance for the club in a 3-0 win over Cardiff City, but that explosive display turned out to be nothing more than a false dawn as he struggled to build on his early momentum.

The striker ended his first season at the Select Car Leasing Stadium with 14 goals in 42 appearances as the Royals finished 14th in the Championship under Mark Bowen, with the highlight of his campaign coming when he netted a hat-trick in a 3-1 win at Wigan Athletic.

The following season proved to be much more successful for Reading as they only narrowly missed out on a play-off place under Veljko Paunovic, but Puscas did not quite make the same improvement as the rest of his team-mates as he scored just four goals in 22 games during an injury-disrupted campaign.

After Puscas scored just two goals in 27 appearances during the first half of the 2021-22 season, he was loaned out to Pisa in January 2022, and he scored eight goals in 22 games in what was an impressive loan spell with the Italian second division outfit.

Puscas was sent out on loan to Italy once again in the summer of 2022, this time to Genoa, and after scoring four goals in 27 appearances to help the club to promotion to Serie A, the deal was made permanent for a fee of around €4 million (£3.4 million) that summer, bringing his frustrating stint in Berkshire to an end.

In total, Puscas scored just 20 goals and provided five assists in 91 games for Reading, so he certainly did not repay their significant investment in him, and the deal became symptomatic of Yongge's disastrous mismanagement, with his reckless spending and lack of a sustainable plan contributing to the club's demise.

While he was not specifically referring to Puscas, Jose Gomes, who was in charge of the Royals when the striker arrived, revealed that he nearly walked away from the club in the summer of 2019 due to what he described as a "disheartening situation" as he was not given a say in transfers, and he claimed that the money spent "could have been better invested".

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