Reducibility of covers of AFT shifts

In this paper we show that the reducibility structure of several covers of sofic shifts is a flow invariant. In addition, we prove that for an irreducible subshift of almost finite type the left Krieger cover and the past set cover are reducible. We provide an example which shows that there are non almost finite type shifts which have reducible left Krieger covers. As an application we show that the Matsumoto algebra of an irreducible, strictly sofic shift of almost finite type is not simple.