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Reading offer Bearwood training ground to Wycombe

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  • edited March 18

    “Importantly, it was agreed that while the details were being finalised and due diligence carried out, Feliciana would provide sufficient financing to Reading to allow it to pay its tax obligations and operating expenses, including payroll for the staff and players.”

    It will be outrageously embarrassing if Wycombe do not manage to receive this money back. What if Reading liquidates? What an utterly ridiculous situation.

  • Oh well, we’ve always got the Rye.

  • Time to go, Couhig.

  • Just as things on the pitch seem to have turned a corner and improved, things off the pitch slide from shitshow to shitshow

  • Surely you cannot have one club providing finance to another.

  • Why does this feel like:-

    You need to sell your wife's car as it's too expensive to run and funds are really low. You advertise it on Auto trader, some guy turns up and insists on haggling you down by 000's. You respond by saying, I have someone coming round later with cash on the hip who says he'll give me close to the asking price if the car is as described; when actually no such person exists. Current guy revises his offer and shakes your hand on the deal.

    Seems we (WWFC et al) could have been that mythical stooge!

  • edited March 18

    'it was agreed that...Feliciana would provide sufficient funding to Reading"

    I take that to mean that it was ready to go but no money actually changed hands. Still an absolute shitshow, mind.

  • edited March 18

    More questions for Rob now:

    - What involvement does / will Lomtadze have with the club?

    - How were the running costs calculated to be covered?

    - Can Pete Couhig stop getting involved with opposition fans on Twitter?

    - Now that we've shown our hand to developers or anyone selling that we have £20 million lying around for a training ground, what's the plan?

    - Was the negative press really all worth it?

    Embarrassing.

  • I've been told RC will be talking about this on the Heroes of HP12 podcast on Wednesday

  • He's our sporting director?! I genuinely thought he'd relinquished all involvement.

  • Club website still has him listed as sporting director (but also says he is on the board but we know that isn't true) so who knows?

  • Are any of the presenters on this website? Someone needs to finally ask him some difficult questions.

  • Ah yes I jumped the gun. Good spot. My apologies. Thanks.

  • I suspect there's even a chance here that Couhig (and Wycombe) have been used as patsies to speed up the sale of the club with the training ground to someone else.

    If Reading knew all along about the planning permission, then make it look like they're about to sell to a bunch of amateurs in order to make extra money when others panic as it looks like they'll only get 2/3 of the pie.

  • I mean, that's my interpretation, but it is worded a bit ambiguously.

  • I'll doff my cap to you for a decent attempt at thinking of a positive reason for this utter debacle.

  • Hello Netflix? Forget the Kone story, We've got a new one involving Triads and the Georgian Mafia in a literal turf war.

  • I know I've prattled on at length about this matter over the last few days, all I can say about the latest statement is "Jesus wept".

  • How do you run past all the red flags here , drag our club through the mud, press ahead and then come up with nothing? It's just bizarre. Hate to imagine how much we will have spent on various proposals over the last few years that haven't come to anything.

    The Trust or WWISC need to take a lead here, gather concerns and put them to the Couhigs and Mr Lomtadze and publish the response or lack of.

  • That was not a positive reaction by the way. Rob Couhig (and our club as a result) publicly being taken for first rate amateurs is an embarrassment.

  • It (probably) is embarrassing for the club / Couhigs, but they state the reason is the planning condition that would prevent the training grounds usage by anyone except Reading. It might have been better to find this out before the idea was made public, but making it public did speed up finding out that information.

    I still suspect this was always intended to be part of the negotiations / issues relating to our existing training agreements.

  • Not sure I get the "embarrassment" posts but each to their own.

    The big questions surely remain. It appears that Feliciana, presumably funded by Lomtadze has access to a probably eight figure sum that it was prepared to spend on a training ground (and short term in a loan to Reading FC if that is even allowed) . That implies significant funds are now available to the club. Why? How? Who from? On what terms?

  • Bit unfair. I mean, it's not as if RC is a lawyer or anything is it.......Oh wait.

  • I almost choked on my bacon butty reading this:-



  • We'd committed to a £20 million + purchase of a training facility. Generally, this was reported pretty negatively across the board. Our Sporting Director starts retweeting death threats from opposition fans and goading them in reply. Reading fans protest at our home ground, before news then breaks that the sale might actually help them sell the club. Our own manager said in his post match interview on Saturday afternoon just how exciting the training ground purchase was - it's been the biggest news across the EFL in recent weeks.

    Fast forward 48 hours, and we've been undone by one single line in a planning application. One line which incidentally, was pointed out by Reading fans on social media about 30 minutes after the story broke last week. How no one involved in the sale hadn't even given that a thought to look into before publicising it beats me.

    We pitched ourselves as mixing with the big boys with our multimillion purchase, and have retreated with our tail between our legs less than a week later. If I was in a senior position at the club, I would be hugely embarrassed by that.

  • It's OK, they'll just say we're 'Little Wycombe'

  • edited March 18

    How humiliating for Matt Cecil. There is no way someone of his professionalism would word the statement in a manner which suggests Wycombe were set to be the saviours of Reading Football Club. That statement has the Couhig surname all over it in size zero white font.

  • So have we actually given them cash? Or the proposal was simply made without an exchange?

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