Linden Jones' TashClyde1998Reading FC owner: 'We pay £1 million nearly every month' [Reading Chronicle] Reading FC owner Rob Couhig has revealed that the shareholders have been paying £1 million nearly every month to bolster the club.
After a busy start to the January transfer window, and with Reading FC making a permanent signing in the winter transfer window for the first time in years, the Royals chairman has revealed that players isn't the only department receiving financial backing.
When asked about the financial position of the club following his takeover alongside investor and co-owner Todd Troslcair, he told The Reading Chronicle: "Strong.
"Todd and I put in a million pounds almost every month because we haven't drawn the crowds that we've expected to.
"We're limited in what we can spend on our players by SCMP."
He added: "We're not going to miss a bill. We're going to pay our bills."
Redwood Holdings, Couhig and Trosclair's consortium, completed the long-awaited takeover from former owner Dai Yongge in May last year.
During Yongge’s tenure the club fell from the brink of the Premier League to the brink of League Two, mired in financial difficulties for the last three years – including restrictions on Reading’s transfer budget and Salary Cost Management Protocol.
Whetting supporters' appetite by labelling the summer as 'potentially spectacular', Couhig and co-CEO Joe Jacobson explained to supporters how the club's Spending Cap Management Protocol work.
During their explanation, Couhig admitted that he and business partner Trosclair injected more money into the club to improve their financial muscle.
However, he also revealed that more money had exited the club than first anticipated, with the balance between incomings and outgoings needing a re-alignment.
He said at the time: "I thought it would be different, in the sense of what we were told.
"I want to be careful how I describe it because of some other things going on. I had a basic understanding of what our probably SCMP would be from published figures but what we were not aware of was some of the things that would diminish that figure."
So for absolute clarity - 'we put in £1M almost every month' means the club is losing around £12M/annum at the current rate of income vs expenditure...
Please correct me if I have misinterpreted the statement
That's how I interpret that statement. Worth noting our previous accounts (2023-24) showed a £15.6m annual loss - so it's an improvement on that, by perhaps £300k per month.
it’s pretty well documented. It’s totally naive to think a league one club will be turning a profit or even close to breaking even. If the quoted 1 million a month they are putting in shrank by, say 500k - with that increased attendance you’d be talking only a 6 million loss. Which is inline with the average loss of a league one club last season