Former Reading striker Dave Kitson has admitted that 'tears have been shed' during the off-field crisis at the club witnessing his side's 'legacy' tarnished.

Kitson, a weekly columnist at the Reading Chronicle, continues to invest in the local area almost 15 years after leaving the Royals- setting up The Dave Kitson Academy and helping coach at Bluecoats School.

Since leaving with the club fresh out of the Premier League in 2008, the Royals now find themselves in League One and lurching from one financial crisis to another under the ownership of Dai Yongge.

Surviving last season despite being docked points for a third campaign in a row, there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel as exclusive negotiations rumble on with potential new owners.

Speaking to the award-winning Price of Football podcast, Kitson was asked about his feelings on the club.

"There have been some tears shed over it," he admitted. "Your legacy is whether you have left something in a better place than you found it. Have you spread good cheer and been decent to people? It’s not how many goals you scored or who you played for or against. Your legacy is did you find something, try to help it and did you leave it in a better shape?

"That is why there have been tears over this football club because we did do that and we’ve had to watch someone come in and completely destroy it. I still get choked up now because it’s really sad."

Since taking over in 2017, Reading have been taken on a turbulent trip by owner Yongge.

Smashing the club's transfer record on multiple occasions and, for a spell, paying for supporters' travel to away matches, the last four years has been nothing short of disaster with constant financial woes.

The last 18 months has been the worst period the club have meandered through for a generation, with missed wages and missed bills a common occurence.

"If you go back to a lot of the social media at the time and a lot of the columns written at the time about Reading, very few people were saying it was great or being really happy that we’d spent £8m on a striker," Kitson said on the owners. "Everyone, almost to a person, was really sceptical because we don’t do that at Reading- we never have.

Reading Chronicle:

"I don’t know what goes through the heads of some of these owners. If you buy a football club and say ‘Right, when was this club last successful and how did it do it?’ The two times Reading have been promoted to the Premier League it brought in young, hungry players and underpaid them. It had a staff that knew where they were and it broke the points record. The next time, most of the team were Academy graduates who were squad players when we were there and stepped in to take the mantle. Again, they were young, hungry and underpaid.

"That is what Reading is used to, so when somebody turns up and says they’re going to buy an £8m striker and all the rest of the players are from the same agent, nobody is asking for it or cares how much money they were spending. People were very wary around here. Nobody wanted it, nobody asked for it and nobody thought it would go well. When you build squads, you don’t go to one agent because you end up with an 18-year-old left-back, a 35-year-old right-back and a midfielder who has never played- a mishmash. It’s just gotten worse and worse."