Rob Couhig talks of having been “jilted at the altar” when he describes the unceremonious end of his previous Reading takeover bid but eight months on he hasfinally consummated his on-off relationshipwith the troubled club.
The divorce from the previous owner, Dai Yongge, was a long and painful one which had passed the 600-day mark by the time Couhig’s £25m purchase was completed last Wednesday. From his home in New Orleans, Couhig talks at length about the extraordinary process, including the revelation that he did not speak to Dai and had only occasional contact with the formerReadingchief executive Nigel Howe. The image of the 75-year-old lawyer being stood up at a popular Reading nightspot, The Purple Turtle, when he went to exchange contracts last September also boggles the mind, although much about the saga made little sense.
Couhig was one of five bidders to enter exclusive negotiations with Dai and had drifted from the picture until a judgment from London’s commercial court last month upheld his claim to have security over the stadium and training ground resulting from last year’s aborted deal. “I always thought it was going to happen because we’re not idiots,” Couhig says. “When we did the deal [last summer] we did what we thought was right, and our lawyers did a terrific job for us. I was just at home when it happened after my experience last year.
“I went to The Purple Turtle club in Reading of all places. I thought it’d be a great place for us to go and be able to sort of softly make the announcement. I realised while I was there that it wasn’t happening and I had to go home. We were jilted at the altar. Nobody said a word, did a thing, anything.
“I never spoke to Mr Dai. I spoke to Nigel twice in a year, maybe three times. I spoke to several sets of lawyers representing Mr Dai at various times. And that’s as close as I came to having any real discussions with anybody. We worked almost around the clock for two weeks to get it done. So it wasn’t a feeling of: ‘Let’s go pop the champagne!’ Instead we’ve just plunged straight into it.”
The uncertainty surrounding Dai’s ownership means Couhig bought a club with only six first-team players under contract for next season, although new deals were offered to 11 other players last week in an attempt to retain the bulk of the squad which finished seventh inLeague One, three points off the playoffs.
The manager, Noel Hunt, will be staying after doing a hugely impressive job in difficult circumstances since replacing Rubén Sellés in December. Couhig’s focus, as during his ownership of Wycombe, who were promoted to the Championship for the first time on his watch, will be on obtaining value via the best free transfers.
“I’m a big believer that at this level of football there’s a lot of people who are coming out of other clubs, Championship clubs, Premier League clubs, even League One clubs, who are going to be looking for a new home in a place where they can succeed,” Couhig says. “I think we’re going to be much more oriented towards frees. Transfer fees will be not excluded from our consideration, but will be an anomaly.
“We’re always going to ask: ‘Does it make sensible business?’ I would rather spend extra money on infrastructure than extra money on a specific player. Because if I go out and I build the infrastructure, I know I’m going to get a return on it. With a player, some of them end up injured or something happens in their life, and all of a sudden you’ve got a player who’s not the same person that you bought.”
Having owned Wycombe for more than four years, Couhig is well versed on life in the English Football League and has strong views on how it operates. He advocates tougher spending controls in League One to prevent cash-rich clubs such as Birmingham and Wrexham from running away with promotion as they did this season, and also argues that the EFL should be doing far more to promote the competition in the United States.
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“If I could be the tsar of football for the day I would tell all clubs in League One you can only use twice what you get from the league in payment for your first-team players,” Couhig says. “Make it a real meritocracy and not so dependent upon how much money a club brings compared to another club.
“The EFL is a hugely undervalued asset, particularly in the United States. It’s the biggest market in the world and we’re barely tapping into it. Sometimes the assumption is made that people only worry about the Premier League, but I think there is a real market for all three divisions of the EFL.
“Most people over here live in small towns so have a natural affinity with smaller clubs. They like to adopt them as their own. We don’t have promotion and relegation over here, so should be marketing the hell out of that. Every game matters in the EFL, which isn’t the case in the States.”
Couhig’s immediate targets for Reading are a playoff place and a period of stability. “On the pitch I would expect to do better than we did this season,” he says. “Off the pitch it would be reasonable to expect not to have as many disruptions.
“People can say all the bad things they want about Mr Dai, but he has assembled an impressive collection of assets. The stadium, the training ground, the fact that Reading have a history of success, and a solid fanbase that’s proven its mettle. What I want to do is take a troubled business and turn it into a hugely successful one.
“My goal is always to leave a place better than I found it. And I think we will be well on that road by this time next year.”