John Mousinho's crucial message to Portsmouth players as Reading trip coincides with Royals' biggest protest for 40 years

Supporters of the Royals are plotting their biggest ownership protest for 40 years amid anger at Dai Yongge’s handling of the club.

The Chinese Tycoon has overseen ongoing financial problems at the Madejski Stadium, with a total of 16 points deducted over the last three seasons as a consequence.

Following relegation from the Championship, the Royals were last month deducted four points, leaving them second from bottom of League One, having lost nine of their 13 matches so far.

And following previous supporter protests involving throwing tennis balls on the pitch against Bolton and Burton, Mousinho wants his men to focus solely on claiming victory over Reading on Saturday.

He told The News: ‘The hardest thing in football is to try to block out all the noise and sometimes you can look too much at external factors.

‘We have no idea what it’s going to be like on Saturday, we have no idea if they are going to throw tennis balls onto the pitch or if there’s going to be a disruption. We can’t prepare for any of that.

‘If these things happen fine, get on with it, it’s not a problem. If a referee gets injured and there’s 25 minutes of stoppage time, we get on with it. If we have back-to-back away games great, if we have injuries, illnesses, whatever, we have to get on with it.

‘It’s just another example of football and how many, many different factors go on which you can’t control. You can’t possibly control what the Reading fans are going to do in protest, we’ll do everything as per usual for ourselves and be as best prepared as we can.

‘The only thing we are concerned about is us and the away fans. It feels like we are all travelling there together, in it together, that’s the Pompey unit when we go to Reading. I know we’ll take huge amount of fans because we do anywhere and everywhere.

‘We just have to focus on making sure we go there and try to win the game.’

Only Cheltenham are below the Royals in the League One table at present.

Yet even if the four-point deduction hadn’t been implemented, they would still find themselves in 23rd place, having won just three of their opening 13 fixtures.

Mousinho added: ‘It’s not an ideal situation, they’ve had the points deduction, they were relegated last season and now find themselves at the wrong end of the table.

‘Unfortunately Pompey have seen similar times and it’s not nice as a fan. Thankfully we are out the other end of it and hopefully looking to be on the way up.

‘It’s one of the sad things in football – but the fans will always be there, they will be the ones that are loyal and the ones that suffer the most.’