Suggested Open Letter to our Club
I trust the Gasroom.
Below is a draft letter @railwaybeth and I have composed. I will post it on a open letter hosting site by the end of the day with links to a new thread unless something dramatic changes, so long as people on here are broadly in favour and would sign it.
Suggestions as to who to address it to are welcome. Suggestions of major rewording probably won't be met with enthusiam.
Take care all.
To Wycombe Wanderers FC:
We recognise the anxiety and pain of Reading fans who are concerned for the very future of their club. There is a tension throughout professional football between a club as a community asset and a club as a business opportunity.
We mean it when we sing “Wycombe ‘til I Die”
We were surprised to learn on Thursday morning that the purchase of Bearwood Park - Reading FC’s training facility - by the company that owns Wycombe Wanderers. Fans of both clubs have made, do make and will make substantial vocal, emotional and financial commitments to their clubs. History, support across generations and dreams for the future are the real identity of our football clubs. We should be heard.
We do not want the club we support to sign the death warrant of Reading FC. The football community needs to be stronger than that.
The ownership of Reading FC have shown themselves to be completely irresponsible. In solidarity with Reading fans we call on you as responsible people to only enter into a deal which has some degree of mutuality and is not just a one month fix for Reading. We call on you to clearly explain in statements to both sets of fans the outline structure of the benefits to both clubs. If you are signing a death warrant then you are betraying us as well as the Reading fans.
Comments
The ‘degree of mutuality’ is key for me @railwaysteve and not forgetting @railwaybeth .
Use the same text that Blackpool fans wrote when they f'd us for the Phillips money.
I've got no time for this. Reading fans and their insatiable thirst for a return to the Premier League with a sense of 'big club' entitlement is as much to blame as the guy who sold them magic beans.
The same fans on their time lines today who are pleading for clemency for not paying their bills will have demands for signing big name players. Sometimes the piper has to be paid.
They are fucked. They have been fucked for years. But they have carried on paying top dollar for players as part of a jam tomorrow business strategy they all bought into. As for the details of this deal I will criticise it when I know what it is. If it turns out to be a mutually beneficial one that sees them survive and retain use of the stadium I assume Pete's timeline will be full of wholesome apologies etc. Until then the villans of this piece are the same ones that they were yesterday along with their enablers.
I do love this message, and totally agree. Not sure how it’s going to happen but hopefully regulation or something similar can prevent opportunistic businessmen exploiting football fans and their communities one day.
I’ve seen no evidence to suggest Wycombe are signing Reading’s death warrant. No sides need to own their own training ground, it’s a modern fad that not all EFL clubs own anyway. I don’t get or understand the death warrant argument.
Wycombe are benefitting from Reading’s situation in the same way that Luton, who signed two players at knockdown prices, last month.
It could be argued that Reading did something very similar to Wycombe last summer by stripping us of our one of our best players in Lewis Wing because they could afford to pay him more money. Or at least thought they could.
Yes, it's a slightly odd argument that buying something off them for 20-25million pounds is killing them.
If their owner pockets it and refuses to do anything to help them, what can be done?
They'd then be in the same sh!te creek without the money.
Lewis Wing was out of contract (in other words not our asset)
As I say “it could be argued”.
Much as I agree with the sentiments @railwaysteve @railwaybeth I'll wait to see if some f***knuckle from Reading takes a swing at me before I sign.
We might be better off sending an open letter to the club asking what the hell is going on? Perhaps a Rob Q&A before the Cobblers game?
They absolutely signed him on a free. And they signed him on a 3-year deal too. One of our big money earners went to a club that gave him more wages and a longer contract. No loss to us financially but the club that signed him didn't have the cash to pay his wages for the duration of his contract I would argue. And if you look at their signings in the last two windows 3 year contracts, or 4 in Savage's case, are the norm. How the fans cheered. What? We have to pay? And HMRC? WYCOMBE YOU BASTARDS!!!!!! Same old story.
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.
I definitely agree in principle with @railwaybeth and @railwaysteve's letter. The deal would be more palatable if the deal was contingent on the funds being held in escrow for the sole use of meeting Reading FC's running costs. As it stands, Yongge is free to do what he wants with money coming into Reading, little if any proceeds from the sale of the training ground are likely to do anything to back up the claim from the Couhigs that the deal will fund Reading.
There is the completely separate matter of how do we fund running a huge facility like that? Whose name will be on the deeds? Who gets the proceeds from selling the facility and/or land its built on?
I'm struggling to see how this deal does WWFC any good, nevermind all the other reasons for it to make me angry our club's name is associated with doing business with Yongge in such a grubby manner.
i chucked a few quid into a 'save our club' bucket at Huddersfield one year. A few seasons later, that Jordan Rhodes chap who always scores against us was helping himself to hat-tricks galore, and we were being ritually humiliated on live tv by them, because although still in the same division at the time, by then they could afford Rhodes and we couldn't. I never got my money back...
I also think about, when we were forced, on financial grounds, to make the difficult but club-saving decision scrap our youth team (making us the only EFL club not to have a youth set up at the time), how many of our prospective young starlets-to-be went off to "Premier League Reading" to continue their football education...
If Bury can bounce back with crowds of 4,000 in the North West Counties League, there's hope for Reading Phoenix in the Berkshire Senior Combination.
Onwards and upwards.
I have sympathy for small clubs that have struggled to pay their bills down the years and have had talent poached away from them by bigger clubs. I have chucked money in the buckets of many a club down the years to help relatable clubs. Reading is not that. They have spunked away tens of millions over decades. They have not just hit a wall last season this has been a financial time bomb waiting to go off for years. But the signings kept on coming, the vanity project was built (and if they paid £50 million maybe that was a bit of their issue), and the fans kept cheering. Comparing them to Bury is an insult. Their arrogance and entitlement is writ large on social media. How dare shitty little Wycombe have a training ground that we built? Reading are a fable to other clubs, they are not a tragic tale of plucky underdogs.
And if we pay £25m for something that is worth £25m they should thank us all day long for saving their club. It will pay for the inflated wages they are paying to this day.
If we've learned anything over the years it's that football fans cannot be reasoned with. We're the baddies, just like we were with Peterborough and Derby. Because that's a simple solution for simple, tribal people.
I live near to where Oxford Utd want to build their new stadium. There are various reasons why it's a bad place to build it but because anyone voicing even the merest hint of doubt get a tirade of abuse and in some cases threats of violence, opposition is now pretty much extinct. Any intelligent discourse around the subject is effectively over.
No way will many Reading fans contemplate the bigger picture and the true root of their demise. Far easier to blame evil Wycombe.
I do trust the Gasrrom - I now want to write rebutting the arguments for not sending a letter. This with the clear understanding that sending a letter asking for information is not much action.
@TheAndyGrahamFanClub - it is information we would be asking for. Information that I think we have a moral right to have. The extent to which this is just a deal between Dai Yongge and Mr Mikhail Lomtadze is important to Reading and Wycombe fans. The way in which Wycombe would fund the training facility in the future is important to Wycombe fans and possibily to Reading fans. When the deal is signed it will be too late to do anything about it. Would you consider signing the letter?
@Midlander - Derby survived because there was someone willing to pay their debts. The Reading fans on their forum are not trusting that the £25m would go to their club. To them this looks like asset stripping You can see questions asking how much of the £25 million is going to pay off the interest free loans to Dai Yongge. Do you think there will be someone willing to pick up Reading's debts? Both sets of fans deserve to understand the consequences of this deal. Would you consider signing the letter?
@Wendoverman - I could make the letter ask for a Q and A lesson at the earliest possible opportunity. This is one of the biggest thing that has happened to our club - I think it deserves such. Would you consider signing the letter?
I reckon the letter is worth putting on a Open Letter Site if the Gasroom is at least around 75% in favour.
Do we know for sure that Reading Football Club actually owns the training facilities and it’s not owned by DY himself or a network of shell companies in tax havens?
I'm trying to find that one out. The implication from Reading fans on social media is that money from the deal will be spirited away into Mr Dai's cavernous back pocket. Whether that is through his controlling stake in Reading or because the training ground is owned by a holding company that Reading FC nominally own is another matter.
I’m afraid I do not feel strongly enough as to your point of view to sign anything.
i think at some point someone will be willing to sort Reading out like with Derby.
I don't remember them helping us when we were in trouble,so why should we be to worried for them,got dog abuse from reading fans on the way home on Saturday cause we beat them. It's a great deal for us bring it on
It’s owned by RFC Bearwood Ltd, which is a subsidiary of The Reading Football Club Ltd, which in turn is a subsidiary of Great Shine International Ltd.
Basically, Dai Yongge would trouser the money from selling the training ground. On that basis alone we should have no part in it.
I donated to AFC Wimbledon back in the day. They still sing Wanky Wanderers at us and rightly so.
As mentioned elsewhere, the football family is an illusion, grasped at by desperate fans when the dream becomes a nightmare. I don’t remember us feeling the warm embrace of the family in the past.
A Reading ex season ticket holder pal of mine of 30 years (gave up this year) reckons its a straight forward club own the stadium, chairman owns the rest.
Which is why the fear this sale simply goes into his pocket and doesn't sort out any of their issues.
If that’s true then the sale is largely irrelevant to the fate of the football club.
I think there isn’t such a clear distinction. The club owns the stadium, but the chairman (through his control of another company RENHE SPORTS MANAGEMENT CO LIMITED) owns the club.
The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that we can’t fix Reading, sympathy for the fans yes but they should look at their clubs ownership and nobody else certainly not us .
However is the deal good from our point of view.
further information required.
You could just as easily sub in Wycombe's situation here...
Club (via the Trust) own the stadium, Couhigs own the club via their company. (Albeit the training ground has already been lifted out of our control.)
Apparently Reading Council put in a control on the stadium when it was clear the direction things were going. No such control exists on the rest.
Thus the fear amongst Reading fans is this sale won't actually benefit the club.
The stadium also is a designated "asset of community value", reducing the scope of selling it. The statement on the WWFC website about the deal providing "financial support to ensure that [Reading FC] are able to meet their ongoing financial obligations" seems extremely hollow if all we have is the honourable word of errrm... Dai Yongge that the proceeds will being doing that.
Exactly this. Which is why the "how are we killing their club giving them 20-25m" argument is based on the very flimsy premise that Dai uses it for the club's betterment!
What a ridiculous letter. Until you know the substance of the deal don’t even consider sending your joke letter.
A. We might be sharing the facility with them
B.It could end up being a sale and lease back
C. The club might not own it. Feliciana will!