Reading followers to ‘put pressure’ on EFL amid fears for membership’s future

Concerned Reading followers plan to focus future protests in direction of the English Football League amid real fears the membership may exit of enterprise beneath proprietor Dai Yongge. Saturday’s Sky Bet League One match between the Royals and Port Vale was deserted after roughly 1,000 house supporters invaded the pitch on the Select Car Leasing Stadium. Sell Before We Dai, a fan-led group urging Chinese businessman Yongge – Reading’s majority shareholder since May 2017 – to promote up, stated the incident was “just the start”.

Group member Eleanor Flood, a season-ticket holder who has been watching Reading since 1994, known as for help from the EFL to assist stave off the opportunity of liquidation. “I think the people who can put the pressure on is the EFL, so I think we will turn our attentions to something there,” she informed the PA information company. “They’ve got their head office in Preston and the London office, so I think we’ll look to do something that focuses more on them and their ability to really intervene in this.

“We don’t want them to let us go under when they could actually step up and help. “I think that’s where the focus will be – PR stunts to keep it in everybody’s mind, but ultimately the next stage will be to put pressure on people who can actually help us. “We were in the Premier League (most recently in the 2012-13 season) and now there’s a real possibility that we might not exist.

“For one of the oldest clubs in the football league, that’s just unimaginable, that we might go into liquidation. ” As a membership organisation and competitors organiser, the EFL’s position is to make sure compliance and work inside the bounds of rules set by member golf equipment. The League, which helps the brand new impartial regulator, was just lately unsuccessful in a proposal to have Yongge disqualified from all soccer exercise for 12 months in relation to a monetary misconduct cost.

Reading, shaped in 1871, have been hit with a sequence of factors deductions and monetary penalties beneath his stewardship. The Berkshire membership have been relegated from the Championship final time period as a result of a six-point penalty and sit within the League One relegation zone after being stripped of 4 factors this marketing campaign. Saturday’s pitch invasion occurred within the sixteenth minute, representing the entire variety of factors deducted throughout Yongge’s reign.

Fans chanted anti-Yongge slogans and unveiled a banner within the centre circle which learn ‘Football has an ownership problem’. The 55-year-old Yongge, whose takeover got here simply earlier than the Royals’ penalty shoot-out defeat to Huddersfield within the 2017 Championship play-off closing, was beforehand concerned with Chinese membership Beijing Renhe and Belgian aspect KSV Roeselare, each of which have been dissolved. Flood stated efforts to focus on the EFL may very well be carried out in collaboration with followers of different golf equipment troubled by current possession points, comparable to subsequent weekend’s opponents Wigan.

You need there to be that membership that is handed from era to era and at this level we’re actually scared that subsequent season it won’t exist “It’s important to reference that he’s liquidated two other clubs as well, one in China and one in Belgium,” Flood stated of Yongge. “They don’t exist anymore – and we don’t want to be the third. “You want there to be that club that’s passed from generation to generation and at this point we’re really scared that next season it might not exist.

” The EFL is about to debate the implications of the deserted match with Reading and Port Vale. Ruthless Ronnie O’Sullivan beats Ali Carter to land document eighth Masters title.