Full Transcript of Rob Couhig interview on EFL Today.
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Delighted to say that Rob joins us now on EFL Today. Rob, what does Friday's decision mean for you? What does it mean for Reading Football Club? And what does it mean for Dayoung? Because this is, I mean, it's the latest and long line of announcements and statements. And the soap opera carries on.
Yeah, let's start with that. The soap opera continues. But really, it doesn't change the commercial reality that existed before they filed their most recent pleadings. We have always taken the position that we have a legitimate claim because they brought us to the altar. We spent over a million dollars hiring accountants and analysts and consultants and travel and the like, getting ready to do the purchase. We sent all of our money to England, expecting to be able to sign the documents.
In fact, when further than that, we signed the documents to complete the purchase that were drafted by Mr. Young's lawyers and told us that this is the deal. The minority shareholders who were scattered throughout the world signed them. And we were just sitting there and all of a sudden, without a phone call, a letter or anything, they wired us back our money that we had lent, but it left out there that all of these security devices were based on the likelihood or the eventuality and requirement that they would sell us the club on the terms that we had agreed.
So we have a claim now that we will pursue in June for our damages. We continue to tell them that we would be delighted to negotiate something else, but we've never heard from anybody.
Rob, so with all this going on and with the media kind of saying that you're the one blocking the move for potential new owners to take over the club, what's the message then to the fans of Reading who are kind of waiting on you to kind of move away so that they feel like they can then move on with what's going on for their football club?
Two messages, one, Mr. Justice Jacobs pointed out in a commercial world, there's no need, we are not an impediment to the sale, never have been, will not be. Anybody who's ever bought any business or a sophisticated piece of property deals with these issues all the time. So we fully expected somebody would call us and say, hey, how do we deal with it? We're willing to do that. The second thing is, I think they can take the message that I don't roll over for anybody. Well, you should know that, Joe. You used to try and negotiate me up for the players all the time.
Rob, put simply, what happens next? What happens next for Dye Young? He's got a deadline to sell this football club. What happens next for you? What happens next for Reading in later?
Well, for Reading, I guess they continue to operate as normal. I'm a little nervous whether they have the money to pay the king that they owe him this week and whether they can put the money aside for the players, which they have had problems doing. But they have sold enough assets since we were supposed to have completed in September that they should have enough money, I would assume, to pay all those things. So, the club itself, the players, and look, what a fantastic group of lads who have only two points out of the playoffs, despite all of the confusion that's gone on. Noel seems to be doing a fantastic job of unifying them in that age-old way that players do as us against the world, and they're doing extraordinarily well.
And I hope that that can continue. For us, we will continue to do what we've been doing, which is to make our preparations to be an English football somewhere, some place on good economic terms, where we can bring our vision of how to upgrade and enhance a club and bring its success on and off the pitch. And as for Mr. Die Young, I have no idea. I would be lying if I told you. I've never talked to him. None of the people that surround him talk to us. And they have concentrated, and I really, I don't know that I blame Mr. Young on this, Mr Die on this. They seem to have surrounded themselves with people who go out of their way to sort of blame the world for their issues. I mean, they've been on this campaign, and it drives me nuts.
He's a reporter from the BBC up there who went on the radio a month ago and said, deal's done, no problems, absolutely, it's all good, because he's hearing directly from the folks who work for the club. And then two weeks later, oh, it's all Couhig's fault that it's not going forward. And then, well, they're easily gonna get Couhig's lawsuit dismissed. And then after it's over, well, I guess I was wrong. He doesn't say he's ever wrong, but he proved out to be wrong. And so they concentrate too much, it seems to me, on blaming people who are trying to do good.
All we've ever wanted to do for this club is to help it fulfill its destiny as one of the top clubs in English football. It is a club that should escape League 1 and be playing mid-championship and contending for the Premiership, and it's not that far away. You know, we get blamed for a ton of stuff when we went over and spent five different trips going there, and we got blamed by fans because what were we doing going to the games? Todd and I and our wives, and we had been invited by the management to go to the games because they thought they could help them sell tickets. We had a negotiated deal for our women's team where we had a woman in the United States who was going to join our group who's a billionaire because she and her daughter wanted to own the English women's team. We get called one day and the team's gone the next, and during the course of that discussion, we told them, well, we'd need X or Y or Z, but it all disappears and we get blamed.
So the one thing, and I know you guys aren't interested in this, it kind of tells you, you can't listen to social media very much because they don't know what they're talking about 97% of the time.
Rob, you just mentioned along there about people from America wanting to invest in football. What is it about English football that Americans like yourself really want to get involved in English football? Is it because of the pyramid structure, the fact that you can progress and go up the leagues? There's a dream isn't there of every football club to make it to the Premier League? So what is it about English football that Americans want to invest in?
Well, I think we're very competitive people and we like the competition aspect. It's also a sport that the English don't recognize the value of internationally. It's got a global market and we live in an age in which the real deliverable for football clubs in particular is that you have live entertainment all the time. And so, you know, people want to see that and they want to be part of it. And then look, there's an ego factor. You can get into this for a lot cheaper than you can buy an NFL team or even a lower league baseball team or basketball team in the United States or a soccer team. You can take your resources in what you would perceive to be your intellectual ability, marshal it together with the right program, put it together and watch it progress or take the penalty of it not progressing. I mean, in my own case, we feel pretty strongly that our record in minor league baseball where we won the world championship and had the top five attendances in the United States. While we own the club, you know, Joe, when we were at Wickham, we produced up until this year, five of the best years, literal five best years that the club had had, and it's 135 year history.
I'm convinced that had we been able to purchase this club timely, the club, which is, as I say, only two points off the playoffs, would be firmly ensconced in that playoff drive. So, it's the ability to actually take something and see it develop in your own time.
Rob, what's the plan now? What do you do? How do you move forward? You sound passionate. You still want to be involved at Reading Football Club and you want to own Reading Football Club and you want to see Reading Football Club prosper. What's the plan?
Yeah, I would start it slightly backwards. I want to see Reading Football prosper, first and foremost. So, that means I have to look at what are the options that are presented to me. But the first person who's got to tell us what those are are the present owners, the incumbent owners. We have made, over the past seven months, a half a dozen suggestions as to how to relieve this. We've never gotten anywhere, for whatever reason.
So, they have to figure out what they want, why they want it, and talk to us. I will repeat here what I've told them multiple times through their lawyers and the like, or their agents, I guess I should say. You know, they lost their first set of lawyers the day they didn't sell it to me, and those lawyers ended up suing them, or making a claim, I guess, is the way you guys describe it.
You know, if given the right discussion points, I'd be there tomorrow morning. I will say this, I almost went last Friday for the hearing, but I would have been one of those guys circling around Heathrow and coming back home. Joe, imagine how I would have reacted if that had happened.
Yeah, that's true. You would have called me to invite to stay at my house. That was what would have happened. Rob Couhig, thank you so much for joining us on EFL Today. I really appreciate it, honestly. Best of luck with everything.
Thank you guys and good luck to y'all.”
From EFL Today: A defiant Rob Couhig, a passionate Bradford City fan base and a frustrating Wimbledon finish, 24 Mar 2025
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