I've posted the article in full as the Times is a paid for paper therefore many won't be able to access it.
Not one of Liddle's best pieces but another piece of anti-Duchatalet press albeit from a Millwall fan. His Valley comments are of the most concern but it's nothing more than speculation.
Why would intelligent businessman lose plot at The Valley?
Why would anyone buy a football club? It is a good question for fans of all teams to ponder, or at least all except for the top dozen or so. As risky investments go, football clubs are right up there with that scheme outlined to you recently in an email from a Nigerian gentleman who has just “come into some money” and wishes to share it with you. You would have to be a cretin, or at best seriously confused, to forward him your bank details.
The same applies, you might argue, to buying a football club. Unless, that is, you have some other devious plan in mind. So this is the thing with which supporters have to wrestle, when some foreign bloke snaps up your club. Is he an idiot, or up to no good? And you note that he has amassed two hundred million quid in his previous ventures and you wonder if, given this, he really can be berserk.
They are certainly asking those sorts of questions at Charlton Athletic. I have bored you about the apparent destruction of this once great club before and risk doing so again. But something is afoot at The Valley. The club’s owner is a strange Belgian called Roland Duchatelet who has just appointed his seventh manager in two years and sees Charlton now occupying their worst league position since the three-day week.
The previous manager, Russell Slade, was sacked just as the team were putting together a bit of a run. Karl Robinson is now in charge, but God alone knows for how long. Duchatelet operates a cunning network between his Belgian and British football clubs, employing people who seemingly possess the level of understanding of football you might expect from a largeish raptor — an Osprey, say, or a Marsh Harrier.
In an interview recently he outlined some of his views. Football matches are simply social occasions for people to meet up and have a nice drink. Winning is not terribly important, although it does improve the atmosphere. Charlton have certainly abided by this ethic in recent seasons, although the social occasion stuff is dwindling because people aren’t turning up any more. Many Charlton fans seem to loathe Duchatelet and have staged a series of protests. Duchatelet opined that these outpourings of loathing were “sociologically interesting”, if upsetting.
The view among most Charlton fans seem to be that Duchatelet is simply staggeringly useless, rather than malign. They want him gone — and it wouldn’t surprise me if there were moves in that direction quite soon. But again, we have to remind ourselves that the Belgian is an extremely successful businessman. He does not have a track record of idiocy. He has a track record of making very large amounts of money.
And so you wonder. When Duchatelet took over the club in January 2014 it was stated that there had been no rival bids at all. But I know of at least two consortiums which had been interested. More to the point is the worry now over the future of Charlton’s beautiful and historic ground, The Valley. I spoke to an estate agent who valued the ground, were it to be redeveloped, at more than £100m. A prime site suddenly becoming available in the affluent and sought-after Royal Borough of Greenwich, at a time when councils are being exhorted to build more and more homes (especially in London).
It is true that Charlton Athletic Football Club has been designated a “community asset” by the local council — but this agreeable little title has only a couple of years left to run. Nor, interestingly, does it preserve The Valley for the club. All it does is demand that the owner, if he were to sell the ground, must find another site for it. Perhaps not in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, perhaps somewhere closer to Charlton’s large Kent fanbase. Somewhere quite a bit cheaper. Bromley? The Medway towns?
Further, the decline of Charlton Athletic from potential Premier League contenders to League One mid-table mediocrity means that the value of the club, per se, has reduced enormously over the two years since Duchatelet has been in charge.
In fairness, asset-stripping is not something which Duchatelet has indulged in at any of his previous clubs. It may simply be that he really is as unversed and magnificently clueless about British football as he appears. And equally, while Charlton are languishing at the moment, the third tier is not exactly unknown to them. But the notion that even medium-sized clubs will last for ever, because the fans love them, has winnowed away in an economic climate where the market determines everything.
The continued existence of Charlton is fraught, and in the hands of people who have no sense of the community history which attends to every side, from Chelsea down to Newport County.
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Comments
My biggest worry is RD sells to the highest bidder who could even be worse than him.
Hoping Peter Varney's been busy over Christmas.
He's highlighting serious concerns in our national press that many Charlton supporters have about Roland Duchatelet's ownership of the football club.
It shows, despite hiring an expensive PR machine, the regime message is not getting through, because it is rightly seen as the nonsense it is, and every time Roland opens his mouth to talk about football, he is exposed as not understanding the concept of football club ownership in the slightest.
So thank you Rod Liddle, for keeping it in the public domain. Aside from the fact it is Charlton, there needs to be a complete overhaul on what constitutes the fit and proper criteria for ownership of a football club. Otherwise you get the sort of nonsense we are currently experiencing at Charlton.
If we were a challenging championship side with 20,000 home crowds I wouldn't be so concerned but with 8/9000 in the third??
A sale of the club (with The Valley) as a football club is likely to be more profitable to the owner than a property deal, which is the best protection we have, along with the fraught, risky and very lengthy process entailed in redevelopment. For similar reasons it makes little sense to put the club out of business.
The East and North stands can be considered for closure. The police would want separation of the away and home crowds. Pretty sure that could be worked around. Does Duchatelet need crowds of more than six or seven thousand to showcase the Academy talent ? Does it really matter to Duchatelet if Charlton if Charlton is in League One or League Two ?
One thing is for sure is that Duchatelet, the old goat is looking for a way to make some money out of the venture. Trouble is, that there will be nothing recognisable of the club left in the process.
The danger, as Liddle points out, is who comes next. There are a lot of even worse men with money to spend who might buy the club, although suspect we will never look back on the Duchatalet era as anything other than a terrible one.
I've supported Charlton since 1966 and most supporters do not recognise this description of "the apparent destruction of this once great club".
The "worry" over the future of "Charlton’s beautiful and historic ground" is a figment of Mr Liddle's imagination. Does it have anything to do with the fact that he's a supporter of Millwall, a club that not so long ago sold its own "historic ground" and moved to a new site? Mr Liddle's team visit The Valley in 14 days time. He will be made welcome but he will see a very different and far more positive picture than the one he so luridly paints here.
For the record, the ground celebrates its centenary as Charlton Athletic's home in 2019 and plans are already well advanced for the club to mark the anniversary with a series of commemorative events. Two years after that in 2021, Charlton will still be at the Valley to celebrate another significant anniversary - the centenary of the club's admission to the Football League. Far from the club being "in the hands of people who have no sense of the community history", it is exactly that community history which the programme of anniversary events currently will honour and celebrate.
It's actually an exciting time to be a Charlton supporter and the vast majority are sick to death of the futile and self-destructive protests by a small group of militant agitators. The owner has pumped millions into the club, which was facing the prospect of administration when he rescued it. The club has just appointed an inspirational young manager, the team sits six points off a play-off place and two new signings were in place before the January transfer window had even opened.
Mr Liddle's close interest in his own club's oldest rival is appreciated. But the narrative he tries to present here is just plain wrong.
So has he realised he is on a bit of a loser here, which though the sale of Lookman may offset losses, unless those sort of profit making players keep turning up, it's not actually sustainable? If he cannot put his other commercial dream in place, and there are not sufficient Lookman's to turn his losses to profit, then he will surely abandon ship like the proverbial rat, because although it's about dancing, for Roland, it's mainly about the money.
The Valley may well be worth +£100M once developed but the development would cost what £50M + to do. Not an easy site to develop in that it is a valley! Using a GDV figure is irrelevant, what it the value of the site today is the only relevant thing with maybe some hope value added.
He asset stripped players from Standard before sale and has, I think asset stripped the ground fromSTTV by separating ownership.
Article is crap but any anti Duchbag media is good news so fair play to Rod Liddle IMO.
'Most supporters do not recognise this description of 'this apparent destruction of this once great club''
Is that due to the use of the word 'apparent' rather than 'in-train'?
This opens another question: what do people believe the split between the pro and anti-Roland factions to be? I read CL, no other forum and quit the Facebook group some time ago. I follow a few Charlton fans on Twitter, all of whom seem to be in the CARD camp. Yet here's a guy claiming the vast majority of fans are in support of the regime. And if it's such an exciting time to be a Charlton fan, why are attendances so low?
I'm looking at this as someone unable to attend or join in the protests. The one game I made was the cup game v Scunthorpe so a somewhat different atmosphere that day. My view from afar has been that the vast majority are anti-Duchatalet. Am I wrong?
Either way, the protestors/dissafected/anti regime or whatever you want to call them vastly outnumber the pro regime fans. Purely guess work but I would imagine it is well north of 80% who would like to see ownership change. Not all will protest though.
The 'pro' group seem to have a very small number of very regular social media posters but it would seem it is the same small handful of names time and time again who post positive comments and most of their 'positivity' is actually just anti fan stuff rather than pro owner stuff as there is not much they can say about the owners which is positive no matter what slant you put upn it.
We seem to be getting our knickers twisted that Liddle has mentioned a possible development of The Valley but I don't think it has any substance that he knows of and has been used by him to give a scare to a purely non fact filled piece.
I don't actually think he's written anything we should worry about.