David Sullivan David Gold and Karen Brady know what it takes to run a profitable business within a football club. Shame RD KM (KB wannabe) & RM ( Dick our man on the inside) haven't got a Scoobee.
And the Wet Spammers still moan. They should try supporting a club in SE7
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It's hardly good business just very lucky.
To compare them to us, or any other business, is just ridiculous. They have been given a stadium worth over £500m paid for by the tax payer. Any and all businesses in the world would look good with a £500m gift!
Before getting the stadium thanks to the taxpayer they got themselves promoted to the Premiership. They have ambition for WH to be a top club. With the new stadium they are taking past, present & future supporters that we could attract if only RD invested in the First team and wanted the same.
I've written off the near, post-tax grand I've spent on two halfway line ST's as the loyal CAFC fans have voted with their feet, as is their right, and dumped the Club in financial do-do by boycotting.
We now have a League Two squad at best, more like Conference.
Congrats to all boycotters - I'm the mug for buying my ST when we had a full Championship squad - still, give us all something else to moan about now, eh?
Really feel for Russell Slade who has been systematically shafted since giving up a semi-comfortable post at Cardiff.
Whatever happens, I will never support West Ham but look forward eagerly to the increased traffic jams near Stratford as I make my way to the Valley of Fan Nightmares from Suffolk each time we share a home game on the same day.
Duchatelet is bad enough but he's just deluded not venal and rotten like them.
All clubs can arguably say they are going through hell and back and a bit of a tough time. It just depends on perspective and how much you focus on the negative.
Anyone and everyone, football fans...will say that this seems like an especially crap period to be a Charlton fan.
I imagine alot of west ham fans will be moaning down the pub saying how much they miss Upton park and that the soul of the club is in jeopardy etc.
Think I could still argue it was a championship squad.
As for Slade, was he not sacked from Cardiff? He certainly didn't give that job up to join tho circus. I have no sympathy for him, everyone in football knows what a complete shambles cafc is so he was desperate and joined. No crime in that, but while he gets my support he doesn't get my sympathy.
One set of owners care about their club and have its best interests at heart.
The others treat their customers with nothing but contempt and go out of their way to drive them away.
Nobody has yet mentioned that in his interview in the first of the new generation Voice of the Valley, Peter Varney wrote that he had tried to persuade "his good friends" Gullivan to buy Charlton.
Now I must say that I was gob smacked when I read it, on several levels.
Firstly I have never met PV , although I have had a couple of lengthy phone chats with him when he was our CEO in the good days; and together with everything I have learnt about him from @Airman Brown , I was a bit surprised to read of Peter's choice of "friends". I have always been a fan of PV's work and overall attitude, and I think he may have used the word "friend" in a business context. But, the possibility was there that the OP s question would have been more than hypothetical.
Second, because this attempt came not long before they bought West Ham, it begs the huge question; why would they have been interested? Surely they would not have tried to move us to the OS? More likely though, did they have their eyes on the Peninsula, which at the time was still very much in play as a stadium site ? Certainly I cannot imagine why Gullivan would have been content to buy us as was, at the Valley, and, if I recall, already in the 3rd division. What business plan would they have had, that didn't involve a new stadium?
Thirdly, when I once discussed this with @Airman Brown I asked him how many minutes he thought he would have lasted in his job at Charlton, once Karren Brady moved in. I cannot remember his exact answer, maybe he will come on here and remind me, but he definitely looked at me rather ruefully, whereas his default expression is to fix me with a steely glare :-)
So when answering the OP's question its worth considering it in the context that as great "business people" they would have wanted us out of the Valley PDQ. And there would have been no question of the fans voice being heard anywhere near Karren Brady. Only yesterday in the OS thread I mentioned the female West Ham fan I met at the Supporters Summit who represents the only real attempt to organize fan opposition to the OS move. She has some pretty hair-raising stories of intimidation from people connected to the club, which people from other London Trusts who know her better, take seriously. Indeed I was witness to a feisty conversation between her and a stroppy lawyer who asked us ( the OS coalition ) hostile questions about our campaign during our presentation, and whose reason for being at the Summit was entirely vague. And West Ham is the only club in London that has no Supporters Trust.
That gives us some clues to how it might have panned out if they were our owners. It's never enough to say someone will be good for a football club because they are "good business people". In the world of microelectronics, RD is doubtless widely respected, and microelectronics isn't pornography.A lot of good that business acumen has done us...
Very miffed at the loss of virtually all of our stars after I'd coughed up my ST money - really thought we had aspirations of a quick return but clearly the Club's finances are shot after poor ST sales and pre-season merchandise revenues, I guess.
How many football Clubs in the UK, especially the Premiership and, to a lesser degree The Championship, are financed by ethically/morally, potentially dodgy money - whether it be gambling money, oil money from countries with a history of human rights abuse, various unfounded (and occasionally founded) accusations of money laundering ...... and so on.
A colleague of mine is a huge Man City fan and he tells me that he knows not one City fan who gives a toss where the billions come from - they are just loving the success. Same with Chelsea.
The one issue last season I had which really touched a nerve was Newcastle United's sponsorship deal with Wonga which I personally thought was just one step too far yet it strangely highlighted the irony of £150k per week footballers being supported by, in some cases, people in poverty and unable to make ends meet - the really ugly face of capitalism.
The current regime have openly admitted footballing success is not their main concern.
I thought we would hold on to half of the decent players. Silly me!
Please enlighten me.
One thing's for sure and that is our beloved leaders would much rather be where they were as a Club at the beginning of last season compared to where they are at the beginning of this. You'd have to be a nugget to risk losing Championship status for 'other concerns'.
If they cared that much about not getting relegated, KF would have been sacked off much earlier, the fact he was working for 20p a week kept him in his job.
If they cared that much we'd have signed some players weeks/months ago, like we did last time we won the league.
In the case of Gullivan buying us; PV -and RM - always had an honourable argument as to why we might have to move to the Pen. If we wanted to compete with West Ham moving into the OS (because PV and RM always believed that would happen, regardless of who owned West Ham) - we would need a bigger stadium ourselves.I could just about have stomached that argument. But if that argument were put forward by owners Gullivan and Brady I would have turned against it again because I would have felt they would rip the soul out of the club, it would be no more my club than when we were at Selhurst, because they would show no affinity with our history, and the Valley's part in it. It would have been simply a money making vehicle for them, as West Ham is for them now.
Incidentally I dont have details to hand , but I believe the truth about the state in which they left Birmingham is not as rosy as Brady likes to portray.