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Re: Reading offer Bearwood training ground to Wycombe
I have been involved in business deals throughout my working career and running into £100s of millions and we certainly would not enter into a discussion over such a deal without a legally binding NDA in place.
My take on the Bearwood deal is that someone was loose lipped and stepped outside the terms of the NDA, either deliberately or out of ignorance, hence the attempt to smooth things over with the press releases last week. That initial press leak was the embarrassing part of all of this. If that leak hadn’t happened, I doubt that any of us would have known anything about this whole episode until there was a deal in principle in place.
I do agree that due diligence would certainly have unearthed the usage restriction and I suspect that is what actually happened. Rob is by no means stupid and would have been through many successful deals and had his share of unsuccessful deals as well. I do not see any blame on Robs part at all.
Bearwood. A view from the other side.
As you will gather from my "name" I am a Reading FC supporter, and have seen them play in all four tiers as well as the Third Division South. That should show you how long I have followed my club. When I started going to Elm Park our rivals were that team from along the A4 (now the M4) and that lot from the barrack town over the border in Hampshire. Then someone let that lot from that city up the Thames in the League and joined in my list of most hated clubs. Strangely, when that team from up in those hills, Wycombe Wanderers, joined the League, I was pleased to see them and have always treated them as friendly rivals, as I think most of your fans do. My club was once a club that was well run by John Madejski, but since then have been owned by asset strippers. Firstly, The Thais who sold the land outside the Stadium to themselves to build a housing/retail development, from which the club will get no benefit. Then came this Chinese bloke, Dai Yongge who has taken us to a new low. during his tenure we have been docked eighteen points and are still under a transfer embargo for the year or two. Reading FC are on the brink of going out of business after over 150 years of ups and downs, the nearest we have been to oblivion since Maxwell' attempt to "merge" with O*F***. (that is the only time I have agreed with their fans). Reading have built an amazing academy which has served us well keeping up a supply of young players as we are only allowed to sign free agents or free transfers, thanks to Dai. Some of these players have as you know played for you team and have done well, in most cases. So, please don't get too upset, if our fans got angry with our owner and you got caught in the crossfire. Our owner recently said he was looking to sell the club. stadium and training ground as one package. A few weeks later he announced he would be open to offers for Bearwood on it's own. Then within 48 hours it was almost a done deal to sell to Wycombe Wanderers! Whilst no one, other than Dai, really knows if the academy players are part of the sale as details are not available. It appears that the training ground does not belong to Reading FC but to a company owned by Dai Tongge,. Will my club ever see any of the proceeds from the sale? Maybe enough to see us thought this season, but Dai will then liquidate us, as he has done to TWO other clubs, one in Belgium the other in China, a unique hat trick in football that will be. Even if we do survive to next season, I can't see Dai showing that he has the funds to complete next season, leaving the EFL with no option but to expel us from the League.
As Dai Yongge has be proven to be a liar and totally untrustworthy, I hope your lawyers will be on the ball as it appears that Bearwood's planning consent was for "the sole use of Reading FC" no doubt to prevent the club to hire out pitches to Rugby/hockey clubs for them to use for matches. When this agreement between Wycombe and Dai was announced it was revelled that buyers walked away as there were under the impression that the training ground was included in their bids.
As Dai Yongge has been proven a liar and totally untrustworthy I hope you lawyers will take the utmost care when dealing with him and will expect the goalposts to be moved at the last minute, as happened last year when a different group of buyers walked out.
As the Reading FC website made it clear that they are talks with Wycombe Wanderers i cannot help but wonder how you will be able to afford to run it, as it seems we are unable to as the latest group to be rumoured (and that is all it is at the moment - a rumour) does not and never did want the training ground included. So if we see none of the money from this deal, which is quite likely, don't be surprised if you hear angry noises coming across the border or if you see wry smiles from former Reading supporters faces if the expense of running Bearwood puts you in the position we are now in.
In the meantime all the best for the rest of this season and hopefully we will both survive and meet in the Championship or better still in the Premier League. Thanks for reading al through this.
Re: Bearwood. A view from the other side.
I think @theRoyalBiscuit has behaved as a perfect guest fan on here during a very hot button issue between the clubs, so full respect for that!
Re: Bearwood. A view from the other side.
Thanks Shev and MDH. I have enjoyed the "chats" on this subject. Oh, and thanks also to the moderators who allowed me to give my views in the first place, especially as when asked why I wanted to join I said "so I can put my view as a Reading fan on Bearwood". They took a chance that I could have been abusive, I hope they feel that their decision was right. Thank you everyone, yes everyone, including those who don't see Reading fans as their friends. No doubt when this mess is all sorted, I won't grace your forum so much. So in the meantime All the best for the rest of the season and beyond, and I hope you bring that cup back from Wembley.
Re: Bearwood. A view from the other side.
What makes me laugh is that when these ‘larger clubs’ get themselves into a mess through massive overspending, fans of other clubs are expected to rally round, show support, put up with protests, put money in buckets.
When they get taken over and can pay bigger wages than everyone else again, it’s all ‘We’ll never play you again’, HMS Piss the League, all other clubs are ‘tinpot’.
Restricts my sympathy really.
Re: Bearwood. A view from the other side.
Quick question in response.
Are you, or indeed any Reading fans, aware that we lost our training ground, youth academy and reserve team when we were in financial difficulties?
I don’t get a sense that any of you do.
Re: Suggested Open Letter to our Club
Brighton 1997. Club in deep trouble organised 'fan days' and passed the buckets around at pretty much every football club to try and keep themselves afloat.
Succeeded and a couple of years later, when storming up the table, the fans sang 'We'll never play you again' at a fair few of the grounds that helped them out. That's football. Boo Hoo when in trouble and Fuck You when things are going well.
It's a shit business.
Re: Reading offer Bearwood training ground to Wycombe
So I set off for work today thinking we’re all but safe and have a day out at Wembley to enjoy. A nice calm end to a turbulent season.
Now I’m home and after reading 10 pages on here I’ve learned that people want to kill our owners and possibly me. Our owners may fight back; you can lose a lot of bodies in the Bayou.
Rob seems to have found £25 million down the back of a billionaire and somehow that has been spent on a facility that was going absurdly cheap but was still absurdly expensive.
Even DevC can’t explain what this all means but we may be in the Champions League in 5 years or we may be called Thames Valley Wasps and be playing in Reading.
The Trust are silent or silenced, hordes of Reading supporters will be besieging Adams Park tomorrow and I’ll still have to sit under a leak from the FA roof on Saturday.
All my football loving friends who support other clubs have blocked me on their socials and the dog took a shit on my 125th anniversary Wycombe shirt.
I still have no idea why we’re buying the training ground.
Re: Reading offer Bearwood training ground to Wycombe
So we walk away from this deal as morally it is the right think to do (which I am not sure it is) and Reading don't pay their £1m shortfall at the end of the month. Another points deduction. Another step to oblivion? Maybe this time someone pulls the plug. With only a few games to go and then the dreaded cashflow abyss that is the summer what then? Game over?
The football family never came to our aid when we had to sell our training ground. The football family never said 'ohh don't take the short term cash for Matt Phillips he's gonna be sold for a shit load in a couple of weeks' we were f'd then and football knew it. The football family is bullshit. We have lost and gained players down the years due to the rising and falling of various club fortunes. The Reading fans getting on their high horses about this deal is as daft as Derby. This overspending has been going on for YEARS, YEARS AND YEARS. They were not sustainable when Madeski was bankrolling it and they are not now. They rolled the dice time and time again to get to the promised land and they lost. They are not entitled to anything different to me, you or any company that does not pay it's bills.
Reading face unfunded £1m shortfall for March
As a postscript to the jubilant scenes amongst us in the away end on Saturday, the situation at Reading becomes more dire by the day. Dai Yongge's rubbing supporters' faces in his brazen asset stripping of the club by announcing he's looking to flog Reading's training facilities (opened only 5 years ago) to funnel funds back to himself, meanwhile the "Sell before we Dai" campaign revealed that the club faced a £1m shortfall for March alone. With Yongge seemingly too obscenely wealthy to care if he loses a few million on this venture, and too indifferent to care about his broken plaything's long-term future, I really struggle to see a way out for Reading save for another obscenely wealthy individual paying well over the odds to buy Yongge out.
There is talk on Twitter of Reading fans crowdfunding the loss for March, which (aside from being utterly bonkers) only kicks the can down the A33 for another month. Anyone following my posts on here will know my time living in Biscuitville hasn't made many any fonder of the club, but any club (except Franchise) being asset stripped and torn limb from limb by a capricious sociopathic owner who is far too wealthy to barely notice the hit on their net worth makes it more likely that owners of other clubs resenting covering ever greater losses will think that's a viable way for them to behave. It made me pretty angry hearing the shandy lads on Saturday "You're going bust in the morning" as if it's the height of hilarious bantz - if only they knew how perilously close we've come to the abyss ourselves in the not-too distant past.
I really hope Reading find a way out of their current predicament. There I said it...