The pre Roland ownership made errors but when he took over the club was still in a reasonably / potentially healthy state. Loss making clearly but so is every club outside of the premier league - ultimately we had a reasonable supporter base, decent ground and training ground and incidentally an excellent manager and some good players in place. The failings of the previous 8 years were perfectly retrievable with somebody willing to swallow a bit of loss/ investment, and by no means terminal at that stage.
what Duchatalet did from then on rapidly eroded all of this, culminating in him separating stadium and club in a bid to cover the awful losses and mismanagement he had overseen. For this reason he is responsible for the trail of ill-educated, braindead criminals and shysters that have followed and what he has done is therefore very likely terminal. I fear it will take a miracle to recover us from the state we’re in now. Miracles do happen though.
I wouldn’t underestimate the damage they did behind the scenes. About a dozen senior people were either forced out or walked on the business side; the club was hollowed out.
They enabled a culture of bullying internally, they threatened people’s families and they lied to fans. “Made errors” doesn’t cut it. And that’s before we get to allegations of criminality.
I get that. But at that stage, to a lay person anyway, the situation was fairly quickly and reasonably easily rectifiable. It certainly isn’t now.
Another way to look at it, is the package on sale in 2014 to RD , would be a pretty attractive purchase proposition to many in today’s market. I struggle to conceive of a way in which the club today can be made into anything resembling a palatable purchase for anyone with half a brain, let alone an attractive one. Hence we’re now destined for abyss, barring a miracle which is essentially a cryptocurrency billionaire from Sidcup.
Agree with that. Yet people have paid £12m for it, it seems.
The pre Roland ownership made errors but when he took over the club was still in a reasonably / potentially healthy state. Loss making clearly but so is every club outside of the premier league - ultimately we had a reasonable supporter base, decent ground and training ground and incidentally an excellent manager and some good players in place. The failings of the previous 8 years were perfectly retrievable with somebody willing to swallow a bit of loss/ investment, and by no means terminal at that stage.
what Duchatalet did from then on rapidly eroded all of this, culminating in him separating stadium and club in a bid to cover the awful losses and mismanagement he had overseen. For this reason he is responsible for the trail of ill-educated, braindead criminals and shysters that have followed and what he has done is therefore very likely terminal. I fear it will take a miracle to recover us from the state we’re in now. Miracles do happen though.
I wouldn’t underestimate the damage they did behind the scenes. About a dozen senior people were either forced out or walked on the business side; the club was hollowed out.
They enabled a culture of bullying internally, they threatened people’s families and they lied to fans. “Made errors” doesn’t cut it. And that’s before we get to allegations of criminality.
I get that. But at that stage, to a lay person anyway, the situation was fairly quickly and reasonably easily rectifiable. It certainly isn’t now.
Another way to look at it, is the package on sale in 2014 to RD , would be a pretty attractive purchase proposition to many in today’s market. I struggle to conceive of a way in which the club today can be made into anything resembling a palatable purchase for anyone with half a brain, let alone an attractive one. Hence we’re now destined for abyss, barring a miracle which is essentially a cryptocurrency billionaire from Sidcup.
Agree with that. Yet people have paid £12m for it, it seems.
People plural being the operative word I suspect. No individual would.
I feel that a London club with a decent stadium and only a couple of great seasons away from the premier league would always be an attractive proposition to someone, despite the reality we know. I suspect it's more likely to be an American these days with the interest a lot of them seem to have in the lower leagues now. Id be happy to entertain that for Charlton if the buyer was closer to a Ryan Reynolds/Rob Mcelhenney type than a Sandgaard.
As Airman just alluded to, even at our lowest ebb someone was still willing to buy us. Unfortunately with our current owners the odds point to them being no better than Roland or TS. But, the next lot (or individual) could be more positive, and I think there will always be interest as long as there's a Charlton Athletic.
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As Airman just alluded to, even at our lowest ebb someone was still willing to buy us. Unfortunately with our current owners the odds point to them being no better than Roland or TS. But, the next lot (or individual) could be more positive, and I think there will always be interest as long as there's a Charlton Athletic.