Saved at Last: Reading FC Avoids Extinction
After eight years of financial chaos, sporting sanctions, and fan led resistance, Reading FC has been sold.
** This is a translated version of the original article published in spanish in the Mexican Sports Journal “Medio Tiempo” found here**
Reading fans are finally able to exhale, a collective breath so long held it seemed to ripple far beyond the stands of the Select Car Leasing Stadium. Even here in Mexico, you could almost feel the tension release, the quiet relief of a fanbase that has spent years under siege. For many supporters, that sigh has been building for nearly a decade, through points deductions, unpaid wages, failed sales, and a creeping fear that their club might not survive at all. Now, at last, lungs can reset, shoulders can lower, and thoughts can drift, cautiously, toward hope.
Breathe in. It’s been more than 550 days since Dai Yongge first claimed he had agreed to sell the club. Today, it’s finally over. Reading Football Club, a 153-year-old institution that came perilously close to collapse, has officially been saved. On the 14th of May, the English Football League (EFL) confirmed the completion of the club’s takeover by Redwood Holdings 1 Limited.
Breathe out. In a statement, the club said: “Redwood is ambitious and dedicated towards the club returning to its rightful place within the English football pyramid, while adhering to clear principles of honesty, transparency, and financial sustainability.”
The EFL approval came through on Tuesday morning. American businessman and lawyer Rob Couhig has been appointed chairman, with his Redwood partner Todd Trosclair also joining the board. The takeover includes both the Select Car Leasing Stadium and the Bearwood Park training ground. It marks the end of Dai Yongge’s deeply troubled tenure, one defined by financial turmoil, crumbling trust, and years of swelling fan unrest.
“The club is pleased to announce that Redwood Holdings Limited, a subsidiary company of Dogwood LLC, owned by Rob Couhig and Todd Trosclair of New Orleans, Louisiana, has completed the acquisition of 100% of the shareholding in Reading Football Club,” read the club’s statement.
After so many missed deadlines, failed negotiations, and anxious weeks spent decoding social media whispers, fans had once again braced for disappointment. The chest tightening uncertainty had returned, but this time, the final signature landed. The final hurdle cleared.
Even Couhig, no stranger to football’s challenges, called the takeover process “exhausting.” But now, Dai Yongge and his sister Dai Xiuli have stepped away entirely. No shares. No lingering influence. No hold over a club that, for too long, had been run into the ground.
Reading, though narrowly missing out on a playoff place, is breathing easily again. The scars remain, but so does the club. And that alone is reason enough to celebrate.
A Campaign Concludes, For Now
For the first time in years, the pressure may begin to ease for the campaigners at Sell Before We Dai. A group born out of necessity, formed to hold an absent owner to account, now looks to the future with cautious optimism.
As Becky Trotman, one of the group’s leading voices, told me last month, “If we got a new owner who was willing to communicate with fans, then there’s a willingness there from us fans to hear from them. Once this is all over there shouldn’t be a need for us to exist as a group anymore.”
It is a striking sentiment. A grassroots movement that has become a lifeline for many now hopes to make itself unnecessary. “We have a Supporters’ Trust who will still be around, so there are ways that a new owner can communicate with fans, through the club’s own channels or through the local media. There’s no shortage of opportunities.” said Trotman. It is not a demand for grand gestures, just a clear expectation of honesty, openness, and consistent communication.
Couhig, at least for now, appears to understand that. On the day the deal was confirmed, he addressed supporters directly. And while his tenure is just beginning, the early signs suggest a more transparent and engaged approach. “If you’re going to own Reading Football Club,” Trotman said, “then active communication is a requirement.”
This moment is not just about repairing the damage of the past. It is a chance to build something resilient, sustainable, and true to the values that made Reading matter. “An ideal buyer,” Trotman explained, “would be somebody who has a sustainable financial plan. We want someone with a realistic path to get Reading back up through the league... someone who can do that while maintaining our academy, our women’s team, and our links with the local community.”
Reading is very much a community club, and does lots of work with local schools, young people. There is no desire for lavish spending or reckless ambition. “We don’t expect somebody to come in and throw crazy amounts of money at things to try and get us promoted quickly. That’s how we got in this mess in the first place. Financial stability is key. The long-term plan. The community.” Trotman explains.
The foundations remain. A proud stadium, a respected academy, and a loyal fanbase that has proven time and again it will fight to protect what it loves. Reading does not need to be reinvented, it needs to be respected. The club is a great venture capital opportunity. If run correctly, like the Reading of Sir John Madejski’s days, they could be profitable once again and eventually sold at a gain.
Ultimately, football is a business, and Rob Couhig is a businessman. But no matter how promising the venture or how profitable the model, football does not belong to balance sheets or boardrooms. It belongs to the fans, the ones who show up in the rain, who generation after generation teach their children the chants, who wear the badge with pride long after the final whistle. However successful a club may become as an enterprise, that truth must never be forgotten.
But who is Rob Couhig?
If this week marked a moment of exhale for Reading fans, it is now Rob Couhig’s turn to breathe in and begin.
Born on the 20th of April, 1949 in New Orleans, Robert Emmet Couhig Jr. arrives at Reading with a well worn résumé spanning law, politics and sport. A lawyer by training and businessman by instinct, Couhig has worked across industries, from pharmaceuticals to real estate. He has twice run for mayor in his native New Orleans and been involved in several republican political campaigns. But in the UK, he is best known for what he achieved at the football club, Wycombe Wanderers.
In 2019, following an unsuccessful bid to buy Yeovil Town, Couhig acquired a 75 percent controlling stake in Wycombe. In his first season, the Chairboys secured promotion to the Championship for the first time in their history. Though relegated the following year, Wycombe remained competitive, eventually reaching multiple League One playoff campaigns and their first EFL Trophy final. This season, they finished nine points ahead of Reading and are still in the playoff race.
Under Couhig’s guidance, the club transitioned from League Two regulars to a side with sustained success. Alongside his nephew Pete, who served as sporting director, Couhig made a series of strategic decisions that lifted Wycombe’s standing in the English football pyramid. As one fan put it, “Say whatever you want about Couhig, but that promotion was a milestone.”
Couhig stepped down as chairman of Wycombe in June 2024 and completed the sale of the club to Kazakh billionaire Mikheil Lomtadze the following May. By then, he had already shifted focus to Reading. His first attempt to buy the club in 2023 collapsed in acrimony and courtroom drama, but now two years later, against the odds, the deal went through.
Now officially at the helm, Couhig brings with him the quiet assurance of someone who has weathered both success and missteps. His track record points to a preference for sustainable growth over reckless spending, a philosophy that Reading sorely needs after years of financial turmoil.
Still, for many Reading supporters, concerns linger not about what Couhig might do, but what he has already done.
In 2024, while still Wycombe chairman, Couhig entered negotiations with Dai Yongge to purchase Bearwood Park, Reading’s state of the art training ground and the heartbeat of the club’s academy. The move alarmed many fans. Bearwood is not just a facility, it is a symbol of the club’s long term vision, its investment in young talent, and its identity. The proposed sale came at a delicate moment and appeared to risk undermining the wider takeover process.
While Dai was largely blamed for entertaining the offer, Couhig’s involvement did not inspire trust. Reading fans responded with a demonstration outside Wycombe’s ground, and tensions escalated when Pete Couhig engaged in online spats with supporters. The optics were poor, and the episode left a lasting impression.
Eventually, Wycombe announced the deal was on hold, citing planning complications. On the ‘Heroes of HP12’ podcast, Couhig said: “We’re disappointed. Our club will continue to move forward and we will continue to look for a great training ground that fulfills what we want to do. We were going to lend those folks money this week to help with their financial crisis. In this past week the Reading fans, or at least a small portion of them, have caused issues. I don’t know if it’s causing issues, but it has been an uncomfortable situation.”
The Bearwood deal fell through, but it underscored a central truth: Couhig would need to win over a fanbase deeply wary of more mismanagement. Trust, long eroded, would not be handed over easily.
And yet, there are signs that Couhig may understand what is required. At Wycombe, he was known not just for results, but for presence. He spoke with local media, engaged with supporters, and maintained visibility. These soft skills matter. After eight years of silence and detachment under Dai, the simple act of being present is powerful.
If fans have learned anything from recent years, it is to greet promises with both hope and scrutiny. They are not asking for miracles. They are asking for openness, transparency, and a recognition that Reading FC is more than a badge or a balance sheet. It is, for many, a vital thread in the fabric of their lives.
Now, with a new chapter beginning, the opportunity is there. What matters next is how Rob Couhig chooses to write it.
Back To The Stands
For Reading, there is, at last, a sense of relief. After years spent bracing through crisis after crisis, fans can finally release the weight they’ve been carrying. The damage is still there, financial, emotional, and institutional, but so is the resilience of a club that refused to fade quietly. Supporters stood firm. They protested, they organised, they endured. And now, their persistence has been rewarded with something rare in modern football: a fresh start and a flicker of hope.
That flicker would not have survived without Sell Before We Dai. Which became a lifeline during the darkest chapter in the club’s modern history. From media advocacy to fan mobilisation, they kept the pressure on when others might have given up. Their work is a reminder that football, at its best, belongs to its people.
But this moment must also serve as a warning. “Football has an ownership problem” was not just a slogan painted across banners, it is a truth echoed far beyond Berkshire. From Sheffield Wednesday to Swindon, Morecambe to Southend, countless clubs remain caught in similar storms.
What Reading faced cannot be dismissed as an isolated collapse. It is the consequence of a system that too often places clubs in the hands of owners without oversight or consequence. If football is to remain tied to its communities, if it is to mean more than just business, then we must stop holding our breath. We must confront the deeper failures that allowed Reading to be brought to the edge, and make sure no one else has to come so close.
For now Sell Before We Dai has taken a moment to thank their families who stood by them, the ones who supported and endured the long hours, the late night calls, and the weekends spent marching or organising instead of resting. “This unconditional support saw us through,” they wrote. And also to the wider Reading FC fanbase, who turned up in all the ways that mattered, marching, protesting, making noise, donating, distributing red cards and tennis balls, backing the team through thick and thin, this outcome is as much theirs as anyone’s.
For the first time in a long time, Sell Before We Dai and the wider Reading community can return to the stands not as campaigners, but simply as fans. And that, in itself, is a victory. No more holding their breath.