Reading owner Dai Yongge sanctions training ground sale to rivals Wycombe

The beleaguered Reading owner, Dai Yongge, has sanctioned the cut-price sale of their state-of-the-art training ground to local rivals Wycombe to aid cashflow in his club’s financial crisis.

In the absence of a takeover, there are serious concerns within the League One club about covering March’s wages and required HMRC payments, with a £1m shortfall to overcome this month. Failure to pay wages or HMRC would almost certainly result in a further points deduction from the English Football League. Reading have been docked six points this season because of financial difficulties.

In an extraordinary statement on Monday, Reading publicly put their Bearwood Park training base up for sale. It read: “Mr Dai is currently evaluating every option at present to secure sufficient funding new ownership is confirmed. In doing so, he is open to the sale of Bearwood Park, should an appropriate offer be received.”

Potential buyers for the club are understood to have withdrawn from proceeding with a sale when it became clear that the training ground would not be part of any deal. Monday’s statement said talks with potential owners were progressing but that “no single party has been granted exclusivity”.

Reading’s move into the £50m training facility in 2019 was supposed to signal their intent to return to the Premier League but they have been unable to overcome financial problems that began when they missed out on promotion to Huddersfield in 2017.

Wycombe have been searching for their own training facility since being priced out of a deal to buy the Marlow Road site they lease from a three-man consortium. They have trained on local 4G pitches when the facility in Marlow has been flooded and could move into Reading’s site in the summer.

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Mikhail Lomtadze, a Georgian billionaire who resides in Kazakhstan, is believed to be an investor in Wycombe. It is thought Lomtadze will soon become a board member under the Wycombe owner, Rob Couhig.