Africa is a feeder for the Premier league and the rest of Europe. Imagine if an English club had been owned by an African consortium which had influence and control over the cream of African talent and fed it to a club they owned in England. Australia may not match up in size but the principle holds good.
My view too. If you take away the ground and traing ground, whst exactly does your 20m buy you? The prestige of being owner of a club in a tailspin, a fairly ordinary set of footballers, and the right to pay off ongoing debts. Plus being at the mercy of any future rises in the cost of leasing the ground the ex owner chooses to demand. Sounds a real bargain.
A lease doesn't have to work like that. Commercial leases I have dealt with seemed to work entirely in favour of the tenant. The devil is in the detail.
If RD is looking to retain The Valley but not Sparrows Lane it's almost certainly because he cannot recover his losses up front from selling the whole club. That's his own fault, but it's our problem.
The protection it may offer him is against a buyer going bust without achieving their PL ambitions, which would trigger a further payment. But that still wouldn't give him the right to develop the site.
We seem to be assuming anyone entering into such a lease is naive, which they might be but we cannot know at this stage.
It now ought to be clear to people why there is a distinction between (a) lending money to a club and (b) giving money to a club to invest. It's not so much the danger from being a tenant of Staprix, it's the danger from being a creditor of Staprix. His losses have not been crystallised, they have been converted to debt and it is debt that will stay with the club on a sale unless it is paid on top of the purchase price. That debt can only ever be recovered from future profits, assuming there is not a fairy godmother who conjures up £60m from thin air.
The combination of rent and debt repayment liabilities will now need to be funded by cash from turnover or, as now, new loans or cash in return for equity.
If the club fails to make it, cash dries up, and we default on debt repayments, then Staprix can put the club into administration and force a liquidation and sale of assets.
So Duchatalet shows his business acumen, he has failed to make a success of the business but by using debt, not equity, positioned himself so that he can withdraw and ensure his accumulated losses are repaid through the efforts of new owners or by liquidating the club whose existence he no longer has any interest in. Finding a buyer at that stage would entail repaying the whole debt, making it an impossible financial proposition.
Of course, if it is true, as is believed by fans in other places, that Duchatalet is our guardian angel he will have no hesitation in himself taking responsibility, acknowledging they are his own debts and writing off the loans rather than putting them on the shoulders of whoever wants to buy the club. If he does not, it will be a crime that the man who is 100% responsible for creating such losses can just walk away in the knowledge that it's someone else's responsibility to repay what are effectively his own debts.
So I agree, I don't have a real problem with being a tenant, as long as the ground and assets are not readily marketable, and the terms are commercially fair, my real concern is not having the debt written off and the club remaining a creditor of Duchatelet.
So yes, Duchatelet rescued Charlton with his money, but he made sure he could get it back one way or another, even if it means destroying the club in the process. Only the fools in other places thought he was giving away his money for the love of the club and i doubt they will even now get it.
So if the deal is as imagined, it will introduce more financial risk but a vast improvement in the probability of an improving squad and improving results. Despite all the potential negatives, I would rather have 5 years of hope than 5 years of misery and protesting.
All of what you say is factually correct but the only way the loans can be repaid is from revenues (0% chance) or from someone valuing the club highly enough that they will take it on with the debts intact.
Even if the club ends up in Administration those that come in to take the club over will probably only offer 1p in the £. In fact administration (ignoring a potential points reduction) might be the very best deal for the club and the fans. Once that happens RD will lose his control and even if he were to try to liquidate the assets he might find that very difficult. Look at how Palace managed to get RBS (a publicly owned bank) to sell the freehold for £3m. My best guess would be that administration would produce the worst result for RD. Holding The Valley until he gets some of his loans paid will only work if the club is fantastically successful. Ultimately the football club is just not going to be able to raise the money it owes him, and he is never going to be able to build houses on The Valley without the 'support' of the club. Let's remember that soon we will no longer be part pf the EU. What will a Belgian billionaire be able to do if the Local Authority and the UK Public refuse to allow him to destroy a football club by taking away it's stadium?
His best option, assuming he doesn't want to continue to bankroll the club indefinitely, is to find someone (with all due respect) more wealthy and/or stupid than he is. I keep reading about how someone is going to take the club to the Premier League and then make money. I don't think anyone has achieved that without finding a mug to overpay for the club.
It could, easily, cost £150m to get us to the Premier League from here. And it could easily cost just as much to still not be there. If you look at the wages of the players in the top Championship clubs many of them are on £80k a week. We need to be finishing above them to get to the Premier League.
I can't, personally, see how anyone can make money getting to the Premier League.
Are CARD planning to make a statement about the rumours?
Maybe there's insufficient agreement among fans, and can understand waiting til we have more details, but feel like it might be worth getting it out there that we are only happy if RD completely leaves, i.e. we won't accept the stadium not being part of a deal. Also maybe to say that we want assurances from any new owners that there won't be interference in player recruitment and selection etc...
won't we? It would all depend on the terms and whether there is a right to buy once in the PL etc.
Yeah I guess so, only just catching up with the Airman Brown article and all the info - just wondering if there was going to be any position from CARD about the rumours. If the press are going to be looking for quotes etc. it might be useful to have a line, I dunno
My view too. If you take away the ground and traing ground, whst exactly does your 20m buy you? The prestige of being owner of a club in a tailspin, a fairly ordinary set of footballers, and the right to pay off ongoing debts. Plus being at the mercy of any future rises in the cost of leasing the ground the ex owner chooses to demand. Sounds a real bargain.
A lease doesn't have to work like that. Commercial leases I have dealt with seemed to work entirely in favour of the tenant. The devil is in the detail.
If RD is looking to retain The Valley but not Sparrows Lane it's almost certainly because he cannot recover his losses up front from selling the whole club. That's his own fault, but it's our problem.
The protection it may offer him is against a buyer going bust without achieving their PL ambitions, which would trigger a further payment. But that still wouldn't give him the right to develop the site.
We seem to be assuming anyone entering into such a lease is naive, which they might be but we cannot know at this stage.
It now ought to be clear to people why there is a distinction between (a) lending money to a club and (b) giving money to a club to invest. It's not so much the danger from being a tenant of Staprix, it's the danger from being a creditor of Staprix. His losses have not been crystallised, they have been converted to debt and it is debt that will stay with the club on a sale unless it is paid on top of the purchase price. That debt can only ever be recovered from future profits, assuming there is not a fairy godmother who conjures up £60m from thin air.
The combination of rent and debt repayment liabilities will now need to be funded by cash from turnover or, as now, new loans or cash in return for equity.
If the club fails to make it, cash dries up, and we default on debt repayments, then Staprix can put the club into administration and force a liquidation and sale of assets.
So Duchatalet shows his business acumen, he has failed to make a success of the business but by using debt, not equity, positioned himself so that he can withdraw and ensure his accumulated losses are repaid through the efforts of new owners or by liquidating the club whose existence he no longer has any interest in. Finding a buyer at that stage would entail repaying the whole debt, making it an impossible financial proposition.
Of course, if it is true, as is believed by fans in other places, that Duchatalet is our guardian angel he will have no hesitation in himself taking responsibility, acknowledging they are his own debts and writing off the loans rather than putting them on the shoulders of whoever wants to buy the club. If he does not, it will be a crime that the man who is 100% responsible for creating such losses can just walk away in the knowledge that it's someone else's responsibility to repay what are effectively his own debts.
So I agree, I don't have a real problem with being a tenant, as long as the ground and assets are not readily marketable, and the terms are commercially fair, my real concern is not having the debt written off and the club remaining a creditor of Duchatelet.
So yes, Duchatelet rescued Charlton with his money, but he made sure he could get it back one way or another, even if it means destroying the club in the process. Only the fools in other places thought he was giving away his money for the love of the club and i doubt they will even now get it.
So if the deal is as imagined, it will introduce more financial risk but a vast improvement in the probability of an improving squad and improving results. Despite all the potential negatives, I would rather have 5 years of hope than 5 years of misery and protesting.
All of what you say is factually correct but the only way the loans can be repaid is from revenues (0% chance) or from someone valuing the club highly enough that they will take it on with the debts intact.
Even if the club ends up in Administration those that come in to take the club over will probably only offer 1p in the £. In fact administration (ignoring a potential points reduction) might be the very best deal for the club and the fans. Once that happens RD will lose his control and even if he were to try to liquidate the assets he might find that very difficult. Look at how Palace managed to get RBS (a publicly owned bank) to sell the freehold for £3m. My best guess would be that administration would produce the worst result for RD. Holding The Valley until he gets some of his loans paid will only work if the club is fantastically successful. Ultimately the football club is just not going to be able to raise the money it owes him, and he is never going to be able to build houses on The Valley without the 'support' of the club. Let's remember that soon we will no longer be part pf the EU. What will a Belgian billionaire be able to do if the Local Authority and the UK Public refuse to allow him to destroy a football club by taking away it's stadium?
His best option, assuming he doesn't want to continue to bankroll the club indefinitely, is to find someone (with all due respect) more wealthy and/or stupid than he is. I keep reading about how someone is going to take the club to the Premier League and then make money. I don't think anyone has achieved that without finding a mug to overpay for the club.
It could, easily, cost £150m to get us to the Premier League from here. And it could easily cost just as much to still not be there. If you look at the wages of the players in the top Championship clubs many of them are on £80k a week. We need to be finishing above them to get to the Premier League.
I can't, personally, see how anyone can make money getting to the Premier League.
I think Palace are averaging about £20m profit a season in teh Premier League
Maybe both of them have balanced the books this season but neither of them are likely to be sold for enough to fund a climb from League One to the Premier League.
Let's also remember that both of these clubs finished 6th and won the playoffs against the odds. Clearly we could do that but it happens once a decade, on average. Burnley have made money going up and coming down and they haven't established themselves yet and Palace survived by the skin of their teeth two years running anger building a squad coming out of administration.
I'm not saying that we can't make it, just that the chances of making money are slim. If it was easy everyone would be doing it and there are only three places up for grabs a season and the relegated sides have c. £50m income from parachute money.
It reminds man of the joke. How to make a small fortune in football? Start with a large one.
As things stand it appears that there is one consortium that has expressed an interest in buying CAFC. Their origins and intentions may not be what we expected but I am a little surprised by the antipathy being shown at this stage by many on here and the expressions that this consortium would not be acceptable.
One of the reasons that we ended up being purchased by RD in the first place was because there wasn't a queue of extremely wealthy Charlton loving philanthropists waiting to buy the club three years ago. This was despite that at that time we were in the Championship, had a manager who, in his two full seasons in charge, had a track record of success in getting us promoted and then finishing in the top half of the division. Three years of RD has seen us relegated and fighting further relegation. Our owner never attends games and is on record as saying that winning games doesn't matter. It has seen attendances shrink and almost certainly caused long term damage to our fan base. In 2016 we had five different managers. We have been run on a day to day basis by a hapless and helpless liar with no idea of how to connect with the majority of the fans at the club. All the while the debts to RD have been steadily accumulating.
This Australian consortium have emphasised the football nature of their interest and declared their aim as being promotion rather than dancing in a nightclub or having a sofa by the corner flag. They include people who have a background in sport and one who has played football at the highest levels. I doubt whether they would employ anyone as useless as Katrien in any management capacity.
As far as we know at the moment the choice is between the Australians having some control of the club or RD having total control and racking up further debt to deter any potential investors in the future. The ownership of the valley is a worry but based on, the admittedly little, information we have at the moment I would rather have plump for RD having less than the total control of our club than he currently excercises.
I'm away on hols , not reading 300+ posts , can someone summarise for me please
Sure - me personally think some of our fans pwn agenda was to kill us of just to say I told you so but why would somebody go to such lengths to do training ground and put that much money into something he wants to ruin like above messages it makes no sence plus why ruin something like what they are dying for us and I hope he doesn't sell and start kicking out the ringing leaders plus not many fans follow the chanting Roland out i last 2 games so is the card starting to lose their grip and the fans have realised they are fake and we want Roland in around the corner? its starting to look that way COYRNBAW
Yes, but that joke isn't entirely true! Of course you have to compete with clubs looking to strike it rich also. You need a better plan than they have! The Aussie link may be an advantage in this! Making 20m and 30m profits is more than balancing the books!
I'm away on hols , not reading 300+ posts , can someone summarise for me please
Sure - me personally think some of our fans pwn agenda was to kill us of just to say I told you so but why would somebody go to such lengths to do training ground and put that much money into something he wants to ruin like above messages it makes no sence plus why ruin something like what they are dying for us and I hope he doesn't sell and start kicking out the ringing leaders plus not many fans follow the chanting Roland out i last 2 games so is the card starting to lose their grip and the fans have realised they are fake and we want Roland in around the corner? its starting to look that way COYRNBAW
Mark Scwarzer is on talksport with Alan Brazil tomorrow, will be interesting to see if we are mentioned at all. If he says he can't because of the NDA then at least we will know the story is definitely true, regardless of the clubs "not for sale" statement.
I know it has been mentioned, but if the sale of The Valley is not included and RD will still own it, I hope the sale will not happen, I do not want RD anywhere near this club once sold
I can live with Roland owning the Valley for a few more years if the new owners have agreed a long term lease and a sale price for when we are hopefully a Premier League team in the not too distant future.
Still not ideal but much better then facing another season or more with RD & his even more incompetent staff making decisions on the future of our club.
I know it has been mentioned, but if the sale of The Valley is not included and RD will still own it, I hope the sale will not happen, I do not want RD anywhere near this club once sold
But he won't be anywhere near the club - he isn't now unless you class Belgium as near. The important thing is that the idiot has no influence. He will probably be getting a small rent with an agreement of something more substantial if we become successful. Letting him keep the Valley if done well could be a masterstroke.
Yes, but that joke isn't entirely true! Of course you have to compete with clubs looking to strike it rich also. You need a better plan than they have! The Aussie link may be an advantage in this! Making 20m and 30m profits is more than balancing the books!
Not if it takes you £150m, plus interest, to get there. You also need to factor in the very recent increase in Sky TV money. Typically when the new deal starts the clubs get a windfall - it normally takes a season or two for them to increase their spending.
Either way the worry for an investor - not necessarily us - is what happens if it doesn't work.
Richard Murray and most, if not all, of the directors from our Premier League years ended up 'losing' money - while we were in the Premier League! I'm not sure if Slater or Jimenez came out with as much as they went in with and I'm damn sure that RD isn't going to make money on us. This is before you look at the huge losses that Bolton, Portsmouth, Leeds, Leicester, Southampton, Cardiff, Middlesborough, QPR, West Ham, Blackburn, Sunderland, Newcastle and Palace have made, much of which has been wiped off when some of the clubs went into administration. Many of those clubs are similar in size/potential to us, and we didn't make money in the Premier League last time.
I'm not saying that it is not possible to make money from football clubs but the facts suggest that it is nothing like a foregone conclusion, and the potential for losses are massive if it doesn't work. Sure, administration is a possibility, and will save the club's future, but as the banks are not lending money to football clubs as much these days the debts that are written off will be the money owed to those that are 'Going to get us to the Premier League in five seasons'. The initial £20m would be gone and anyone that 'invests' would, likely, lose most of their money too.
If one looks as the risk/reward model of investing, if Gilts are at one end of the scale, say a 1, buying Charlton in the third division on the basis that all the money will be lost if the club is not promoted to the Premier League, before the cash runs out, must be close to a 9 with a 10 being a lottery ticket. To manage to get promoted twice without racking up huge debts would require that the new owners be, not only cleverer than everyone else, but also luckier too.
I'm away on hols , not reading 300+ posts , can someone summarise for me please
Sure - me personally think some of our fans pwn agenda was to kill us of just to say I told you so but why would somebody go to such lengths to do training ground and put that much money into something he wants to ruin like above messages it makes no sence plus why ruin something like what they are dying for us and I hope he doesn't sell and start kicking out the ringing leaders plus not many fans follow the chanting Roland out i last 2 games so is the card starting to lose their grip and the fans have realised they are fake and we want Roland in around the corner? its starting to look that way COYRNBAW
Well, I won't argue that there are going to be better investment opportunities than investing in a football club. I will argue that it can't be lucrative though. The premiership money has risen considerably from when we were in it for starters. Yes, your associated costs go up but there are clubs making good money in the Premier League now and they are not necessarily the top clubs! Last season Bournemouth earned over £70m in prize money - ok, wages, costs would have to come off, but they will be well short of that figure. They were in the bottom three in terms of earnings and the current deal with Sky promises £100m for the lowest eaners this season!
If we can be made into an Australian brand - I would suspect we have potential to make a lot more! That is why I can see why Australians would be interested in us. This is an opportunity to really grow the club.
The "feeder system" isn't really a bad system if correctly implemented. Duchatelet's was just so incompetently done that it really didn't work.
Let's not forget we were forming link ups with the likes of ASEC in Africa and other clubs around the world in our last prem season. There definitely is a future in network systems but duchatelets was rubbish.
Comments
Even if the club ends up in Administration those that come in to take the club over will probably only offer 1p in the £. In fact administration (ignoring a potential points reduction) might be the very best deal for the club and the fans. Once that happens RD will lose his control and even if he were to try to liquidate the assets he might find that very difficult. Look at how Palace managed to get RBS (a publicly owned bank) to sell the freehold for £3m. My best guess would be that administration would produce the worst result for RD. Holding The Valley until he gets some of his loans paid will only work if the club is fantastically successful. Ultimately the football club is just not going to be able to raise the money it owes him, and he is never going to be able to build houses on The Valley without the 'support' of the club. Let's remember that soon we will no longer be part pf the EU. What will a Belgian billionaire be able to do if the Local Authority and the UK Public refuse to allow him to destroy a football club by taking away it's stadium?
His best option, assuming he doesn't want to continue to bankroll the club indefinitely, is to find someone (with all due respect) more wealthy and/or stupid than he is. I keep reading about how someone is going to take the club to the Premier League and then make money. I don't think anyone has achieved that without finding a mug to overpay for the club.
It could, easily, cost £150m to get us to the Premier League from here. And it could easily cost just as much to still not be there. If you look at the wages of the players in the top Championship clubs many of them are on £80k a week. We need to be finishing above them to get to the Premier League.
I can't, personally, see how anyone can make money getting to the Premier League.
Let's also remember that both of these clubs finished 6th and won the playoffs against the odds. Clearly we could do that but it happens once a decade, on average. Burnley have made money going up and coming down and they haven't established themselves yet and Palace survived by the skin of their teeth two years running anger building a squad coming out of administration.
I'm not saying that we can't make it, just that the chances of making money are slim. If it was easy everyone would be doing it and there are only three places up for grabs a season and the relegated sides have c. £50m income from parachute money.
It reminds man of the joke. How to make a small fortune in football? Start with a large one.
One of the reasons that we ended up being purchased by RD in the first place was because there wasn't a queue of extremely wealthy Charlton loving philanthropists waiting to buy the club three years ago. This was despite that at that time we were in the Championship, had a manager who, in his two full seasons in charge, had a track record of success in getting us promoted and then finishing in the top half of the division. Three years of RD has seen us relegated and fighting further relegation. Our owner never attends games and is on record as saying that winning games doesn't matter. It has seen attendances shrink and almost certainly caused long term damage to our fan base. In 2016 we had five different managers. We have been run on a day to day basis by a hapless and helpless liar with no idea of how to connect with the majority of the fans at the club. All the while the debts to RD have been steadily accumulating.
This Australian consortium have emphasised the football nature of their interest and declared their aim as being promotion rather than dancing in a nightclub or having a sofa by the corner flag. They include people who have a background in sport and one who has played football at the highest levels. I doubt whether they would employ anyone as useless as Katrien in any management capacity.
As far as we know at the moment the choice is between the Australians having some control of the club or RD having total control and racking up further debt to deter any potential investors in the future. The ownership of the valley is a worry but based on, the admittedly little, information we have at the moment I would rather have plump for RD having less than the total control of our club than he currently excercises.
If he says he can't because of the NDA then at least we will know the story is definitely true, regardless of the clubs "not for sale" statement.
Still not ideal but much better then facing another season or more with RD & his even more incompetent staff making decisions on the future of our club.
Either way the worry for an investor - not necessarily us - is what happens if it doesn't work.
Richard Murray and most, if not all, of the directors from our Premier League years ended up 'losing' money - while we were in the Premier League! I'm not sure if Slater or Jimenez came out with as much as they went in with and I'm damn sure that RD isn't going to make money on us. This is before you look at the huge losses that Bolton, Portsmouth, Leeds, Leicester, Southampton, Cardiff, Middlesborough, QPR, West Ham, Blackburn, Sunderland, Newcastle and Palace have made, much of which has been wiped off when some of the clubs went into administration. Many of those clubs are similar in size/potential to us, and we didn't make money in the Premier League last time.
I'm not saying that it is not possible to make money from football clubs but the facts suggest that it is nothing like a foregone conclusion, and the potential for losses are massive if it doesn't work. Sure, administration is a possibility, and will save the club's future, but as the banks are not lending money to football clubs as much these days the debts that are written off will be the money owed to those that are 'Going to get us to the Premier League in five seasons'. The initial £20m would be gone and anyone that 'invests' would, likely, lose most of their money too.
If one looks as the risk/reward model of investing, if Gilts are at one end of the scale, say a 1, buying Charlton in the third division on the basis that all the money will be lost if the club is not promoted to the Premier League, before the cash runs out, must be close to a 9 with a 10 being a lottery ticket. To manage to get promoted twice without racking up huge debts would require that the new owners be, not only cleverer than everyone else, but also luckier too.
If we can be made into an Australian brand - I would suspect we have potential to make a lot more! That is why I can see why Australians would be interested in us. This is an opportunity to really grow the club.
Let's not forget we were forming link ups with the likes of ASEC in Africa and other clubs around the world in our last prem season. There definitely is a future in network systems but duchatelets was rubbish.