Roland had a good window ?

I’m conscious that I won’t be popular for this, but anyone who reads my blog will know how consistently critical I have been of Roland. Our relegation and subsequent decline were a direct result of his bad management. Our resurgence has been achieved by Lee Bowyer, JJ and Steve Gallen.

However, I think he had a good transfer window – we signed some excellent players, admittedly mostly on loan and we sold Dijksteel which was disappointing , but apparently sanctioned by the management team, we actually tried to spend the £2m fee on Ivan Toney and the owner rejected a bid of £4.5m for Lyle Taylor.

Give the bloke some credit for these actions – he continues to pay the bills and provided the financial support to be competitive in the league.

We all know his asking price for the club is too high, but if he consistently acted more sensibly as he did in this window and supports Lee in the January window, I for one would give him a bit of a break……………………….. for now !!!

Charlton valuation just too high

Another Talksport interview with Roland – another load of contradictory jibberish from Roland Duchatelet and so it goes on and on and on …………..

A lot of what he says about the EFL is correct and allowing significant annual losses without implementing more sensible Financial Fair Play rules is as he correctly points out a stupid way to run the sport. 

Any ‘asset’ is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. In Roland’s deluded mind, the price of buying the club is a separate issue from the annual running costs. This premise is obviously utter nonsense and would be nonsense in any walk of life or business scenario.

Based on a ridiculous valuation of the physical assets at The Valley and Sparrow Lane, Roland has set a price of £40m, which no sane buyer is prepared to pay because they know that the underlying value of a football club is basically zero since property development is impossible.

If Roland reduces his asking price to nil or even £10m, he would be able to sell the club tomorrow so his argument that he can’t sell the club because of the annual Operating Losses is just wrong, disingenuous and an outright lie.

The problem is and has been for the last 2 years or more is that the price he is asking for the club is far too much.

You won’t beat Solly

Over the last 10 years , I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve shouted that as a term of friendly abuse to opposing wingers.

I remember a Championship away game at Reading where we won 1-0 after a rare headed goal from Vetokele from a superb Solly cross ( think the same shape as the cross against Plymouth away last year). Heaven knows who the Reading winger was that day, but he might as well have not bothered coming out after the warm up such was the imperious and dominant nature of Chris Solly’s defending.

He has been a great servant to the club and an absolute joy to watch. I can’t go today but I bought 2 tickets anyway just to support Chris because it seemed like the right thing to do.

As an aside, I understand that Chris is a big ‘Only Fools and Horses’ fan . We went to see the stage show at the Haymarket last night. If you come from South East London – it just has to be seen. If I’m honest I went with relatively low expectations because transferring a classic TV show to the Stage or Film is notoriously difficult.

However, it really is very good, Paul Whitehouse is an absolute genius ( anyone who has seen his fishing programme with Vic Reeves will agree)

The audience absolutely loved it and so did I – standing ovations all around.

I hope Chris Solly gets his standing ovation today because he thoroughly deserves it.

Thank you Chris.

Billionaire Roland Duchatelet

If I’m honest I don’t know many billionaires, but I knew one a little and I feel like I know Roland a lot. The thing is they are both mean and are going to die enormously rich. It is really difficult to understand why you would choose to leave all your money to your wastrel grandkids who will become lazy and alcohol or drug addicted Now I might be wrong and our aged owner might have pledged his wealth to the Belgian Red Cross upon his demise but I suspect he hasn’t.

Bearing in mind that none of our prospective owners are anywhere near as rich as our existing owner you do wonder why he doesn’t waste £10- £15m of his money every year on Charlton rather than £5-7m – it’s always been rather a mystery to me because he’s so rich the bigger number won’t make a dent either.

If I was a billionaire, I would be thinking about the unbridled joy, pleasure and passion that I gave to the 38,000 individuals at Wembley and I could so easily give to them again rather than comprehensively wrecking the lives of my future generations

Strange isn’t it.

Malicious Charlton owner out to destroy the club.

The CAFC bulletin written today (badly as usual)  by the geriatric owner Roland Duchatelet confirms that he has sacked Lee Bowyer.

In the bulletin on the official website, against all sensible HR policy, it reveals specific confidential and personal details about the failed negotiation with Lee.

He, once again, blames all the other owners of football clubs who are prepared to fund annual losses when he is not.

The resurgence of the club last year was led by and driven by Lee Bowyer and his team and the anger created by this is unlikely to be limited to action in the UK against Duchatelet. It is highly likely that our remaining best players, i.e Lyle Taylor will seek a transfer.

Many of those who had purchased season tickets will be seeking refunds and I strongly suspect that Duchatelet can look forward to some further direct action in Belgium.

He should be planning for and praying for a swift sale of the club.

Fruitcake Roland blames everyone else

The latest statement from Roland is full of blaming plus a fair degree of complete nonsense and the occasional half sensible observation.

His principal targets for blame tonight are the unthanked previous directors, Derek Chappell, Bob Whitehand and David Sumners – the inference being that they are apparently not prepared to write down or write off their loans to the Club which are secured on the property assets of the football club. The other directors are thanked even though David White, one of those thanked has tonight tweeted tonight to say that although he has agreed to discuss his loan nobody has actually discussed it further with him.

The Aussie buyers have apparently agreed a ridiculously high price with Roland but not surprisingly for that money they want clean title to the assets without the legacy charges and that’s where it’s sat for ages now.

Roland goes on to blame Lee Bowyer for not agreeing his own contract extension to allow him to offer him a better contract ( you couldn’t make up this stuff could you )

He then blames the whole football system and other championship clubs for losing  too much money like a poker player who joins the $100 a hand table but only thought it was $5 a hand. He’s right of course that the huge losses are nonsense but then that’s the game he decided to play in.

For good measure he blames Peter Varney and Rick Everitt for introducing a potentially unsuitable buyer for Charlton in the shape of the Ebbsfleet owner and tonight Rick Everitt has tweeted to say that the person they were going to introduce was both unknown to Roland because he never signed the NDA and not from the Middle East unlike the Ebbsfleet owner – so that was evidently nonsense too.

He then tells us fans that we can expect to lose more games this year and have a low budget ( to make us uncompetitive)

How fantastic , let’s get down and buy a season ticket quickly before the hordes of other enthusiastic losers get there first.

You really couldn’t write the stuff he sends out , but the trouble is -this geriatric idiot actually does.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie

I’m sure we could do that instead of Allez, allez, allez.  Andrew Muir and Gerard Murphy were at the game on Sunday and by all accounts, the Aussies remain in pole position to buy Charlton. Apparently, the price has been agreed for a long time and is not affected by promotion and the Aussies have the money to do the deal.

They must have been impressed by the turn out for Doncaster and at Wembley, they can surely see and understand the potential. A mid table performance next year would have us with regular crowds of 15,000-18,000 with boycotters returning and enthusiasm high after Wembley.

It is really difficult for us mere mortals – Jim White included- to understand why the deal hasn’t been done. They’ve been at it for more than 12 months and must have enough due diligence information by now to fill a small country. Their perseverance is welcome and admirable but the takeover needs to happen NOW to capitalize on the momentum Lee and his team have created.

For heavens sake – get it done – bang the deal into the back of the net like Patrick Bauer did and we will all welcome you with open arms.