Reams is saying today is the day, so let's all fill up on coffee and start smashing that refresh button!!!
For me it happened on Tuesday once both the EFL & FA cleared it all. All we are going through now is a bit of housekeeping. Takeover is done & dusted. Now comes the hard part (for them) of putting their money where their mouth is. As they say......talk is cheap.
Also don't know what there is so much backbiting & animosity on here. Must be because I havent ben posting much of late so people have had to turn their attention to other posters.
I might be slightly more optimistic if I knew who the owners were or even which offshore tax haven they were hiding in.
And if I was a ruthless PR professional purchasing a football club, I would ensure that my chosen messaging and narrative was aggressively pushed via fan forums, even if that meant discrediting trusted stalwarts of the club.
We know who the owners are Friedman , Berber are the two main men
Friedman family 33.5% Berber 33.5%
Global Football Holdings 33%
Global holdings include ACA appox 10% and rest split between 5 individuals including CM
Oh Ronnie! I love the way you slavishly copy your god's typo!
It's BRENER, not Berber!
EDIT ... and Global Football PARTNERS, not Holdings, which is an entirely different company.
If the takeover does complete, i think we'll have a pretty clear idea of which direction the club will be heading, pretty quickly,just need to keep getting the recruitment right, and have a half decent SMT setup.
Need more quality signings , that are not going to end up on the physios table constantly.
I'm confused now - is this Warren Rosenfeld guy that Henners mentioned last week now a part of this GFP group with Methven , Lenaghan,ACA etc or is he a standalone investor at the same percentage as Friedman and Brener
I might be slightly more optimistic if I knew who the owners were or even which offshore tax haven they were hiding in.
And if I was a ruthless PR professional purchasing a football club, I would ensure that my chosen messaging and narrative was aggressively pushed via fan forums, even if that meant discrediting trusted stalwarts of the club.
We know who the owners are Friedman , Berber are the two main men
Friedman family 33.5% Berber 33.5%
Global Football Holdings 33%
Global holdings include ACA appox 10% and rest split between 5 individuals including CM
who is this Berber bloke? Not been mentioned before. Unless you mean Brener of course.
If the takeover does complete, i think we'll have a pretty clear idea of which direction the club will be heading, pretty quickly,just need to keep getting the recruitment right, and have a half decent SMT setup.
Need more quality signings , that are not going to end up on the physios table constantly.
Be good to start seeing some increased Staff in the Backroom teams as well
Better coaches with knowledge in specific areas (e.g. Conditioning) will surely help, if we dont already have them
If the takeover does complete, i think we'll have a pretty clear idea of which direction the club will be heading, pretty quickly,just need to keep getting the recruitment right, and have a half decent SMT setup.
Need more quality signings , that are not going to end up on the physios table constantly.
Be good to start seeing some increased Staff in the Backroom teams as well
Better coaches with knowledge in specific areas (e.g. Conditioning) will surely help as well, if we dont already have them
excellent point, I've thought out backroom staff has been slacking (in numbers) and a bit thrown together over the last few years
I might be slightly more optimistic if I knew who the owners were or even which offshore tax haven they were hiding in.
And if I was a ruthless PR professional purchasing a football club, I would ensure that my chosen messaging and narrative was aggressively pushed via fan forums, even if that meant discrediting trusted stalwarts of the club.
We know who the owners are Friedman , Berber are the two main men
Friedman family 33.5% Berber 33.5%
Global Football Holdings 33%
Global holdings include ACA appox 10% and rest split between 5 individuals including CM
Interesting speculation or maybe you are part of the consortium with insider knowledge.
However if those are facts, why are they not stated as such on the official CAFC website or the SE7 Partners listing at Companies House which shows two officers (Methven and Warwick) for a company founded in December last year.
Incidentally, that was the same month that Global Football Holdings Ltd was founded in Mansfield by a salesman called Ian Kenneth Taylor.
Once the facts are confirmed I will take an informed view.
It’s worth pointing out, and not just to correct Colin, that Methven corrected his May version of the structure. In May he said Global Football Partners ( not Holdings, a company not connected to this bid) would be a collection of smaller shareholders.
He now said (its in the interview) that “for EFL and legal” reasons, GFP is all of them together. So for that reason, Ronnie/Colin’s post is incorrect. Methven made a point of wanting it corrected so you have to assume it’s correct.
But let's face it, it's not rocket science* and HAS to be the default position. On the basis that success = promotion, the odds are stacked against any one team. In League 1 only 12.5% of clubs will be successful. (Of the remainder, 16.67% will suffer disaster and 70.83% will retain the dismal status quo.)
Now, of course those odds can be tweaked a bit; spending on quality players and a decent backroom team can increase the odds of promotion. But I would say not by much. Lob everything good into the pot add a little soupçon of fortune with injuries and referees (ha ha!) and you are in with a shout. What? Maybe 25% chance of success? Those are still crappy odds and are likely to lead to a lot of Charlton supporters being miserable come May 2024.
Even worse odds can probably be attributed to the chances of ANY owners of ANY club in the EFL being deemed as being successful over time. So the churn on football club ownership will continue unabated and at only a little less pace than the churn on football managers. 'Twas ever thus. (Frankly, Steve Gibson's spell at Middlesbrough is nothing short of heroic.)
So, in a nutshell, Airman is doing nothing other than stating the bleeding obvious and should not be castigated for it.
*Actually rocket science is overrated. It's pretty simple really and relies on stuff known since the days of Newton. Now rocket engineering, that's a whole different ball game!
Honestly, you have a night out and miss 150 posts. What do you come back to? A load bickering kids all trying to wave their dicks harder than each other.
Here's an idea why don't we see what happens. Actions will drive my opinion. The transfer window so far is all I have to go on and that is an improvement on the last two already so at the moment they are in credit.
If they actually start asset stripping, mugging off staff and fans then perhaps the flaming torches can come out.
Until something shit happens chill the fuck out.
I think the moral of the story here is.......don't have a night out so instead you can get right in amongst all the bickering.
I might be slightly more optimistic if I knew who the owners were or even which offshore tax haven they were hiding in.
And if I was a ruthless PR professional purchasing a football club, I would ensure that my chosen messaging and narrative was aggressively pushed via fan forums, even if that meant discrediting trusted stalwarts of the club.
We know who the owners are Friedman , Berber are the two main men
Friedman family 33.5% Berber 33.5%
Global Football Holdings 33%
Global holdings include ACA appox 10% and rest split between 5 individuals including CM
Interesting speculation or maybe you are part of the consortium with insider knowledge.
However if those are facts, why are they not stated as such on the official CAFC website or the SE7 Partners listing at Companies House which shows two officers (Methven and Warwick) for a company founded in December last year.
Incidentally, that was the same month that Global Football Holdings Ltd was founded in Mansfield by a salesman called Ian Kenneth Taylor.
Once the facts are confirmed I will take an informed view.
I would have ‘Come and get it if you really want it’, followed by ‘When the Levee Breaks’. Post match it would be ‘Days’. Half time would be ‘Don’t Stop the Carnival’.
Some of the people involved have lots of experience in football and add to that some wealthy business people I have reasonable expectations, especially with the types of new signing we have made and are about to. I also think they have been lucky and its good timing with the weaker League and a few golden nuggets from the Academy
It’s worth pointing out, and not just to correct Colin, that Methven corrected his May version of the structure. In May he said Global Football Partners ( not Holdings, a company not connected to this bid) would be a collection of smaller shareholders.
He now said (its in the interview) that “for EFL and legal” reasons, GFP is all of them together. So for that reason, Ronnie/Colin’s post is incorrect. Methven made a point of wanting it corrected so you have to assume it’s correct.
My mistake too. Global Football Partners is not Global Football Holdings in Mansfield but does anyone have any factual information about who they are or where they are listed?
In some ways sad to see Sandgaard sell up as (at first) he meant well & was nice to see an owner taking an interest for once. But 2nd season syndrome struck & he thought he knew best. And then there was that goddamn song.......
Far too early to judge the new owners & having read some of Methven's interview (sorry Richard, too busy to read it all today) we can only watch & wait. Good to read that there will be some experienced members of the SMT & hopefully they can make some decisions without having to have a zoom meeting with half of the USA.
All I do ask is that they realise success comes at a price & to get promoted (usually) means spending money to bring in quality players. Good start with May & Camara but a few more will be needed rather than trying to rely on the yoof too much.
Still wont be buying a ST but will be there against the Orient and then see how the season pans out.
This new dating match must be doing something right, you're a new man!!
As far as I can see – and I’ve done my own modest research
into each new shareholder name as it has surfaced via the rumour mill – there are
no wrong’uns in the Southall mould amongst them. Their intention to employ industry specialists
rather that winging it themselves is welcome, but should we wish for anything
less? That is all good but, in my
opinion, not sufficient to instantly hang all the flags out.
I want to see what the First Team looks like when the
window closes and how their first half dozen matches go, what happens with the
Academy and the Women’s Team, and how the existing staff are treated (including
whether Burger Boy gets his P45). Let’s
see how open they really are about who owns us and what their plans are, or
whether they hide behind the privacy afforded by Cayman Islands-registered
Global Football Partners.
If the new owners appear in the centre circle to take a
bow when I’m in the stands, they will receive polite welcoming applause from
me, but nothing more until they show they have earned it. There are still too many unknowns.
With a nod to Methven’s interests, are they, like
Sandgaard, sprinters? Good for one
season but thereafter rapidly losing first enthusiasm & then interest, and
swiftly entering Charlton in a selling plate?
Are they, like Duchatelet, plodding stayers? Hang around for years, unwilling to fund a
push for success (however that is defined in a given season) but holding out
for a payday which at least refunds their outlay.
Or will they demonstrate potential to be Classics or Grand
National winners? Do that, and I will
add cheers to my applause when they appear to celebrate our League or Cup
success.
In the interest of saving the planet I was going to write the China Syndrome part 3 and recycle most if not all of what I said when Duchatelet took over and when it looked like it was Spiegal's group coming in the door.
Firstly, I come to bury Sandgaard, not to praise him.
He pulled us out the ESI mess, for which he deserves credit.
After that he deserves very little other than scorn.
Built some nice and much needed buildings at the training ground but failed to get Cat 1 status for the academy, which was the purpose of them. Note that Reading just got Cat 1 restored to them despite being league 1.
Sandgaard hasn't built a squad, largely because we've not had a manager start and finish the same season under him. He's decimated the non-playing staff, lost a lot skilled, experienced staff while encouraging a culture of bullying, vindictive hire and fire and nepotism.
He failed to appoint a proper CEO until Storrie was forced on him and PS only had to be competent to show just how much we've missed proper leadership for a decade.
And he played that God awful song.
So we have to move on from Sandgaard but are the people he's selling to any better?
Right now we can't know either way but even this optimist has doubts.
Hopefully the convoluted ownership will be explained when the takeover is finalised. The rumours are that there are nine groups, all with multiple members.
Three, Friedman, Breber and Rosenfeld will, if the rumours are true (which is always a big risk to assume) hold 23.3% each. The remaining 30% will be split between the Singapore soccer school, Marc Boyan's marketing and bartering business and a number of other smaller investors which will probably include Charlie Methvan and perhaps someone from Lanaghan family late of Oxford Utd and Wigan Warriors.
Maybe not having one big ego owner (see RD and TS) will temper the map cap ideas.
But it could also mean that decision making becomes over complicated. But in our premier years we had a very large board and had success so it can work. But then the board were all fans and we had another supporter as CEO. And Varney's job managing all those directors wasn't easy.
The other way of looking at it is that with no one big owner the decision making is left to the Chairman and CEO which sounds like a good thing IF IF IF we have a good Chairman and CEO but we're likely to get Charlie Methvan. Maybe he's realised, after his time at Sunderland, that he's not a people manager and will take a back seat. But he will be involved.
I fully expect some money to be spent. The new owners will want to make a splash. May's deal was being delayed until the takeover but Leaburn's injury made it a priority. Other good players will come in and fans, me included, will be more optimistic about what could happen on the pitch. A few signings cheers everyone up, even Golfie for a few minutes.
And if we didn't have some small piece of hope somewhere in our hearts that this year, this ownership, would be the one to turn things around we couldn't be football fans. Even the most vocally negative fans (you know who you are) hope for better.
And some will say "All I care about is what happens on the pitch" which is understandable but what happens in the board room impacts directly onto playing performance so we can't separate the two. We need stable and forward looking management at Sparrows Lane and at the Valley for the club to progress. Can this new consortium offer that for not just one year but for seasons and seasons, some of which will not bring glory but will mean the owners putting another £8m plus into the club every 12 months?
Slater and Jimenez achieved a lot with Varney, Kavanagh and Powell and we were all set for a bright future.
Only they had sold a lie to the money man, Kevin Cash, and when they went back to him asking for more cash (pun intended) he said "no" and Powell's plan's for the 2012/13 season collapsed. We still nearly made the play-offs but it couldn't last.
I fear that Methvan, like the PR man he is, has oversold the club and just how difficult and expensive it is to get sustained success in English football.
The new owners are all experienced business people you say, they wouldn't fall for that.
Well, Kevin Cash did and both Duchatelet and Sandgaard thought that football was easy and that their business genius would be enough. And they are all three successful business men.
I might very well be wrong, maybe everything is open and clear and the new guys realise that it won't be easy or cheap to run Charlton, I really hope that is the case.
I bought my season ticket months ago, I'll be there regardless and I really think in Holden we have a good manager who just needs backing. And I believe that the support is there. Give us a team to cheer and gates will increase. Not enough to fill the Valley as Thomas thought but enough for league 1 football.
But please give us a long term plan and long term hope not more fantasies about break even or finding a new way to run a club that no one else has tried.
And please under promise and over deliver for a change.
The delay is clearly because the media team are filming all the members of the board in the changing rooms with a smoke machine and red strip light across their faces, going in and out of focus - new signing style. Then 48 versions of ‘I’m (insert board member name). Come on you Addicks!’
Until these are filmed and edited, we won’t have an announcement.
The Pope is Catholic so every CL member wants Cafc to be able to get out of the mediocre League 1 and establish the club in the Championship. Hopefully this season but definitely by 24/25 when we need to go up in 1st or 2nd place. Sod it, let's go up this season because non of us are getting any younger👵🏼👴🏻🤡
When Sandgaard said we would be playing in Europe in 5 years time, I said it could well take 5 years to get back to the championship ! We are entering our 4th year so that was quite prophetic !
Can the new owners treat the staff with dignity and respect as that has been sadly lacking under Sandgaard, Southall, and Cafc Landlord Roland Duchatelet and his muse, Katrien Meire.
You build a club on and off the field so staff feel appreciated to go the extra mile.
The delay is clearly because the media team are filming all the members of the board in the changing rooms with a smoke machine and red strip light across their faces, going in and out of focus - new signing style. Then 48 versions of ‘I’m (insert board member name). Come on you Haddocks Addicks!’
Until these are filmed and edited, we won’t have an announcement.
Comments
Also don't know what there is so much backbiting & animosity on here. Must be because I havent ben posting much of late so people have had to turn their attention to other posters.
It's BRENER, not Berber!
EDIT ... and Global Football PARTNERS, not Holdings, which is an entirely different company.
Need more quality signings , that are not going to end up on the physios table constantly.
Better coaches with knowledge in specific areas (e.g. Conditioning) will surely help, if we dont already have them
However if those are facts, why are they not stated as such on the official CAFC website or the SE7 Partners listing at Companies House which shows two officers (Methven and Warwick) for a company founded in December last year.
Incidentally, that was the same month that Global Football Holdings Ltd was founded in Mansfield by a salesman called Ian Kenneth Taylor.
Once the facts are confirmed I will take an informed view.
He now said (its in the interview) that “for EFL and legal” reasons, GFP is all of them together. So for that reason, Ronnie/Colin’s post is incorrect. Methven made a point of wanting it corrected so you have to assume it’s correct.
But let's face it, it's not rocket science* and HAS to be the default position. On the basis that success = promotion, the odds are stacked against any one team. In League 1 only 12.5% of clubs will be successful. (Of the remainder, 16.67% will suffer disaster and 70.83% will retain the dismal status quo.)
Now, of course those odds can be tweaked a bit; spending on quality players and a decent backroom team can increase the odds of promotion. But I would say not by much. Lob everything good into the pot add a little soupçon of fortune with injuries and referees (ha ha!) and you are in with a shout. What? Maybe 25% chance of success? Those are still crappy odds and are likely to lead to a lot of Charlton supporters being miserable come May 2024.
Even worse odds can probably be attributed to the chances of ANY owners of ANY club in the EFL being deemed as being successful over time. So the churn on football club ownership will continue unabated and at only a little less pace than the churn on football managers. 'Twas ever thus. (Frankly, Steve Gibson's spell at Middlesbrough is nothing short of heroic.)
So, in a nutshell, Airman is doing nothing other than stating the bleeding obvious and should not be castigated for it.
*Actually rocket science is overrated. It's pretty simple really and relies on stuff known since the days of Newton. Now rocket engineering, that's a whole different ball game!
Post match it would be ‘Days’.
Half time would be ‘Don’t Stop the Carnival’.
There was talk of other including PV, but that never materialised for whatever reasons.
My optimism is based on the fact that we’ll see an improvement on the last couple of seasons.
May and Camara are a step up.
https://www.castrust.org/2023/06/who-is-going-to-own-our-club/
This was the Trust view on 6 June and they seem to be in the dark,
And while the Methven interview is illuminating his word can hardly be regarded as 100% gospel or not subject to change at any moment.
How can anyone be optimistic when we simply don't know who the new owners are and there is so little transparency?
As far as I can see – and I’ve done my own modest research into each new shareholder name as it has surfaced via the rumour mill – there are no wrong’uns in the Southall mould amongst them. Their intention to employ industry specialists rather that winging it themselves is welcome, but should we wish for anything less? That is all good but, in my opinion, not sufficient to instantly hang all the flags out.
I want to see what the First Team looks like when the window closes and how their first half dozen matches go, what happens with the Academy and the Women’s Team, and how the existing staff are treated (including whether Burger Boy gets his P45). Let’s see how open they really are about who owns us and what their plans are, or whether they hide behind the privacy afforded by Cayman Islands-registered Global Football Partners.
If the new owners appear in the centre circle to take a bow when I’m in the stands, they will receive polite welcoming applause from me, but nothing more until they show they have earned it. There are still too many unknowns.
With a nod to Methven’s interests, are they, like Sandgaard, sprinters? Good for one season but thereafter rapidly losing first enthusiasm & then interest, and swiftly entering Charlton in a selling plate?
Are they, like Duchatelet, plodding stayers? Hang around for years, unwilling to fund a push for success (however that is defined in a given season) but holding out for a payday which at least refunds their outlay.
Or will they demonstrate potential to be Classics or Grand National winners? Do that, and I will add cheers to my applause when they appear to celebrate our League or Cup success.
Then 48 versions of ‘I’m (insert board member name). Come on you Addicks!’
Until these are filmed and edited, we won’t have an announcement.
When Sandgaard said we would be playing in Europe in 5 years time, I said it could well take 5 years to get back to the championship ! We are entering our 4th year so that was quite prophetic !
Can the new owners treat the staff with dignity and respect as that has been sadly lacking under Sandgaard, Southall, and Cafc Landlord Roland Duchatelet and his muse, Katrien Meire.
You build a club on and off the field so staff feel appreciated to go the extra mile.