Former Reading midfielder Dave Edwards explained that 'something wasn't right at the top' even during his time at the club.

A Shrewsbury Town and Wolverhampton Wanderers legend, Edwards made 35 appearances for the Royals between 2017 and 2019.

The sixth signing of the Dai Yongge era, with the businessman taking over at the end of 2016/17, the Wales international arrived at the start of the fall from grace which the club are still suffering from.

While sanctions, late wages and overall crises did not kick in until after Edwards had left, the combative midfielder explained that even in the early days, before points deductions, fan protests and pitch invasions, 'something wasn't right.'

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"Even in the back end of my time, it was starting to feel that something wasn’t right at the top," Edwards told BBC Radio Berkshire. "The way I left and the desperation to get people off the wage bill, it was remarkable. It hasn’t got better since then I feel sorry for everyone because it’s a club which deserves to have some solidity at the top end to make sure it’s being run the right way. They’re paying the price for some bad decisions."

Asked to delve deeper by fellow Welshman and former Royal, Ady Williams, Edwards explained: "When I left Reading, I was 33 and I had signed a two-year contract but in my second year I got injured on the last day of pre-season, which was really frustrating, and I just got fit around November. You could tell that things were starting to change. We had Jaap Stam initially when I came in and then Paul Clement came in. Then Jose Gomes came in as I was leaving but at that point there, I had never experienced this in my career.

"Out of nowhere, there were lads being ostracised out of the dressing room. I always consider myself a good egg in terms of being professional and giving my all in every session. I was one that was said ‘you need to change in a separate dressing room to everyone else, we want you gone as quickly as possible.’ They had ear-marked me as someone they weren’t going to renew with and wanted me off the wage bill as quickly as possible. That is always quite alarming and was the start of it. There was chaos at the top in terms of the players they wanted to keep and wanted to get rid of. There was no real structure, and it seemed desperate.

"I was missing home and missing my family in Shrewsbury and was ready to go home and I was able to leave, but I know there would have been players who wouldn’t have been able to leave in that situation."

Returning to his hometown club, Shrewsbury, in 2019, the midfielder now regularly works as a pundit for Sky Sports and hopes the club can be taken out of Dai Yongge's hands as numerous takeover bids have failed over the past 18 months.