Reading play-off confusion

The potential denial of Reading’s promotion to the Premier League threatened to throw the Championship play-offs into chaos last night after it emerged that there was no rule in place governing who would replace them.

The English Football League confirmed yesterday that it did not have a contingency plan for when a club are blocked from entering the top flight, something The Daily Telegraph revealed yesterday was a threat facing the Berkshire side.

The Premier League did not respond to requests for comment about what would happen in the unprecedented event of a team earning promotion to the richest league in the world and being forced to stay in the Championship.

That fate could befall fourthplaced Reading, after the EFL last week provisionally approved a takeover of the club by Chinese businessman Dai Yongge and his sister, Dai Xiu Li.

Yongge failed to acquire Hull City in September amid serious concerns from the Premier League about the way the proposed buyout had been constructed.

Although it is understood the deal for Reading has been structured differently, the Premier League will not disregard Yongge’s failure to satisfy its misgivings about the doomed Hull buyout during any assessment it conducts of the new owners.

One precedent for a club being denied promotion to the top flight came at the end of the 1989-90 season, when Swindon Town won the Second Division play-offs only to be demoted for making illegal payments to players. Beaten finalists Sunderland – who had finished sixth – went up instead, despite opposition from Newcastle United, who finished third.