Earlier this year, being suspended from the Sky Bet EFL was a very real possibility for Reading Football Club.

In February, former owner Dai Yongge was disqualified under the EFL’s owners’ and directors’ test and was ordered to divest or risk the imposition of sanctions.

Former Wycombe owner Rob Couhig attempted to take over the Berkshire club in August 2024, but was unsuccessful in his attempt. Against a backdrop of impassioned fan protests, led by the ‘Sell Before We Dai’ group, the US businessman – an attorney by trade – stuck it out, however.

On May 3, it was announced a sale in principle had finally been agreed – and 11 days later came the moment everyone associated with the club had been waiting for: Couhig’s company Redwood Holdings completed the purchase of the club, the Select Car Leasing Stadium and the training ground at Bearwood Park.

There is little talk about the past now. Memories of a turbulent past that threatened the very existence of the club will not be forgotten, just tucked away somewhere for a good while to come.

The only way is up. And the man on the ground orchestrating that is Reading’s co-CEO Joe Jacobson.

Yes, that Joe Jacobson. The former Wycombe captain, the set-piece specialist, the regular Sky Sports EFL pundit. The one that played his last game of professional football on April 27 2024, less than 18 months ago.

The 38-year-old had worked under Couhig during his time as Chairboys owner and knew he wanted to transition to the business side of football after his playing career.

“I’m quite inquisitive and, weirdly, like numbers and strategy,” Jacobson says, speaking in an exclusive interview with Sky Sports at Bearwood – which is almost derailed by the noise of a helicopter hovering a few hundred metres away.

“I would speak to Rob and his nephew Pete whenever I could about the business and how they operate. What I loved about Rob was the fact he was over as much as he could be, he’d always interact, he’d always be at the training ground, he’d be forward-facing with the fans and not shy away from anything.

“I really liked how he built the club up, how he didn’t just think about signing players to get more bums on seats. It was about trying to make a long-term strategy, how he could improve the infrastructure and the revenue of the football club, and make it sustainable for the next person.

“There was never a promise of ‘I’m going to take this club to the Premier League in a couple of years’, it was about wanting to improve the club and take it to the next level.”

So how did such a unique opportunity arise?

“In the last year at Wycombe, I would spend my days off in the offices, learning about what it takes to run a football club,” he says. “There’s a lot of really good people behind every football team, not just the managers, coaches and physios.

“Later, Rob approached me and said he was going to sell Wycombe, was thinking about going to Reading and he wanted me to come with him. I was taken aback.”

There were offers to continue playing, and coaching was never an option. “I got put in interim charge at Wycombe for about 45 minutes when Gareth Ainsworth left before Matt Bloomfield came in and stole my thunder quite soon afterwards!”

The failure of the initial takeover attempt allowed Jacobson time to focus on a football business management course with the PFA, undertake media work and do some networking. He was often at Reading games anyway, researching, analysing in the hope that the chance to work there would eventually materialise.

In hindsight, he says he is grateful the leap from the pitch to such a high-profile role was not immediate.

There was relief when the sale in principle was first announced. But the gravity of what lay ahead soon hit when Couhig called him late on the night before the final game of the season against Barnsley, to say he was flying over to the UK.

The co-CEOs are in constant contact now, with Couhig floating ideas at all hours from his US base. “He’s an incredible mentor,” Jacobson adds.

The Welshman is still adjusting to the realities of the new role; in addition the one with his boss, he had 39 WhatsApp conversations to reply to. But you would never have known it by the fact he stuck around for a good 20 minutes to chat once the cameras stopped rolling.

The rarity of such a situation is not lost on him.

“I’m in a position at the minute where people spend years to build up their profile, so I’m incredibly lucky and humbled that I’ve been entrusted with this by Rob,” he says.

“I just want to make him feel like he’s made the right decision. I want to make people proud at the football club as well and show them I can do the job properly.

“I spent 20 years in survival mode of making sure I did everything I could to be in the manager’s plans for that weekend and my attitude is the same now, if not more, about trying to make sure everyone around me is in a really good place.”

One of the very first tasks he was involved in was a highly significant one – offering contracts to the group of around 20 out of contract. Being on the other side of things in the transfer window has opened his eyes.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with Brian Carey, the head of recruitment, and his team, but I’ll never put players to them, that’s not my job.

“We trust them, they are really good people and we want to give the manager as much authority and autonomy over his role and who he picks and signs as possible. A lot goes into it, but I like that strategy, that puzzle.

“I’m a football fan, so I understand fans’ frustrations at not signing players every single day, but trust me when I say there’s a lot of people working hard behind the scenes.

“I’m quite impatient, so when we start speaking to a player or an agent, I want that deal to be done today! One of the things I’m learning is some of these deals take a lot longer than expected. I just want to hash it out and get it done, but sometimes it doesn’t quite work like that.

“We still need a couple more faces in the building, but I feel like the core of the squad is where we want it to be.”

Huge change is not needed. Not when you take into account that, despite everything going on off the pitch last term, Noel Hunt and his squad finished seventh, three points off the play-offs.

If they can do that under the most testing circumstances, what could they produce with stability?

Throughout the conversation, Jacobson mentions ‘building’ often.

Building the club for the fans, the community and the town of Reading. Building on commercial deals, but ensuring they fit with the values of the club. Building ambitions on the pitch because “if you don’t, you’re going backwards”. Building on the ‘us against the world’ mentality adopted during the troubles of the recent past.

There is a feeling processes can be improved, rather than changed altogether, to help achieve that growth.

“I was always in leadership groups and I’ve been captain at clubs before. Empowering people and getting the best out of people is something I’ve always done.

“Here, we’ve got a great group of people who’ve maybe not been able to grow, but now it’s about how I can get the best out of people. People is where I thrive. I love making someone better. I thrived as a player on making the guy next to me as good as he could be.

“It’s changing the mindset of people as well. When we came in, because of the situation the club was in, it was almost like, we just need to survive. That was how they needed to be and that was the directive they had. Now it’s about thriving, thinking differently – thinking bigger.

“We believe this can be a huge football club and we want everyone to think that way by driving people, empowering people to do their jobs, rather than the five or six jobs they’ve ended up doing because of the situation.

“Now they are able to ask if there’s a budget for putting a plan together or putting something in motion that maybe they couldn’t do before. We want to grow as much as possible and you need to spent money to do that in order to bring in more revenue.

“Ultimately, the more revenue we can bring in, the more money we can spend on the pitch, and the better the team is to go up the pyramid. Everything goes hand in hand and everyone plays their part.

“There are some amazing people that have kept this football club alive. We thank them very much that we still have a football club.”

On the topic of ambitions, becoming a sustainable Championship club is the explicit aim of Jacobson and his colleagues. Reading are on their longest run in the third tier since 1998/99 to 2001/02 and, ideally, want to get back as quickly as possible.

But they want to do it properly, sensibly.

“I don’t think we’re going to go and spend stupid amounts of money,” Jacobson adds.

“Rob has said many times there are three main characteristics of how he wants to run the football club; through honesty, transparency and sustainability. We have to make sure we adapt those three guardian principles into the football club with every decision we make. I feel like we have a great solid foundation for that.

“Michael Gilkes [Reading’s academy manager] is doing an amazing job of producing players consistently and over the last few years, when the squad has been thin and the club hasn’t been able to sign players, we’ve had to rely on the academy and it’s bearing its fruits for us.

“Rob’s not going to promise anyone he’s going to take the club to the Premier League in a couple of years, but he’ll promise that, whenever he does leave, he’ll hand it to someone with deeper pockets whose got a greater ambitions for the next stage.”

Jacobson rounds off the interview with a word for the fans. Those who stuck by the club in their hour of need and still have a football club to support as a result.

“They are probably the biggest reason why this club is still alive,” he concludes.

“The campaigning they did, the work they did – not just at the club, but in the courts – parading around London, tennis balls. Whatever it was, they did it because they love this football club and they want the best for it. It was a frustrating time for them, but they stuck together.

“We want to thank them, not just for supporting the club this season, but previous seasons as well. They play a huge part here. They will be here longer than we will and they are the ones we have to make sure we look after.

“We want to give them a great experience when they come to the games, give them a team they can be proud of and if they can help us achieve that and we can help them, too, we’ll have a really successful period.”

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