Who on earth is actually in charge at Charlton at the moment ? – and most importantly who has control of the cheque book and whatever dwindling amount of cash is left in the club’s bank accounts.
Is the owner, Mr Nimer, actually capable and willing to put the club in funds to continue the season and fund next season to be competitive ?
Is there anyone who can answer these basic questions ?? . Maybe someone at the EFL can clarify. Surely somebody needs to tell the fans what is going on !!!
I felt profoundly sad yesterday when I absorbed the news of Seb’s passing. Seb was one of those few people who touch your life even when you don’t really know them and when you lose them the sadness seems disproportionate.
Aside from the occasional nod and a shared breakfast table after the away win at Shrewsbury two seasons ago. I never had a conversation with Seb and I wish now that I had.
Perhaps one of the better things that will emerge from this terrible virus will be that we all take a bit more time to cherish all our relationships
It would be lovely to think that we all engage more with those who live on the edges of our own lives but who contribute lots of the indefinable glue that binds our societies including our football club together.
Seb was one of those, he is simply irreplaceable, he will be terribly missed by all of us, Seb’s memory will live long.
The deal that saw Matt Southall and Tahnoon Nimer arrive at The Valley is entirely analogous with the deal that Sir Philip Green did when he sold BHS to Dominic Chappell.
You have a business Charlton (BHS) that is racking up medium and longer term liabilities with no prospect of it ever making a trading profit – you sell it to Dominic Chappell ( Matt Southall) for £1 and inject some funds to tide it over . You then walk away whilst the new owner plunders the bank account which is entirely predictable. In Chappell’s case it was £1.8m in the first 3 months of acquiring control. You’ve all seen Matt Southall’s ‘fees’ for the same period.
When the money runs out ( 13 months in BHS ) and probably sooner at Charlton, you wipe your hands and claim that when you left it, there were adequate funds. The job losses at BHS were 11,000. The fall out at Charlton would be c 100 jobs with 50,000- 100,000 or so devastated and heartbroken fans
If you look at Chappell’s background, he had been made bankrupt 3 times and involved in numerous failed businesses. You can check Matt Southall’s business background for yourself but I don’t think one would consider it to be successful. Frankly who knows about Tahnoon Nimer who could be anyone or anything.
So we come to Roland (Sir Philip Green) . Any diligence by him on the buyer would have resulted in him rejecting them as suitable custodians of our club which is a precious Community Asset. He has yet again stiffed us all by keeping The Valley and training ground by overvaluing them as property assets and compounded that by giving the football club away to completely the wrong people to avoid his responsibilities.
Philip Green had to make it right by injecting £363m into the BHS Pension scheme. We should expect Roland to make this right by retaking control and finding proper owners for the club.
In the conveyor belt of useless, incompetent and unqualified Directors, Charlton really take the biscuit. Hot on the heels of impressive entrepreneur Matt Southall, we now have a couple of Romanians ( from the hotbed of European football) to complement our mysterious and probably potless owner Mr Nimer. Do your own research on Romanian football, the decline, the relentless corruption, inappropriate owners etc and it will tell you all you need to know.
Fortunately one of them, Marian Mihail specializes in Aviation law which will come in handy when we are in the 3rd division again where the ball spends most of the time in the air.
Why on earth can’t we have a couple of honest, experienced, trustworthy sensible Brits to serve as Directors
What did we ever do as Charlton fans to deserve this procession of awful owners ?
I guess the 2 questions that Charlton fans want to know from Mr Nimer are
1) Does he actually have any money and 2) if he does is he actually going to spend it on Charlton ?
It’s certainly been a very poor start to his ownership. He managed to buy the football club for a pound because Roland gets to keep all the property assets and then Mr Nimer allows his appointees to rack up ridiculous consultancy fees on ongoing liabilities on property and cars. No additional funds were made available in January to acquire new players despite the fact that the team desperately needed help.
As far as we know he has so far provided no funding at all.
It’s all very well blaming Southall now but it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that he was a chancer with a string of business failures behind him. Why would any serious business person trust Southall with running a chip shop let alone a football club. Now Nimer has appointed a ‘sports lawyer’ to assist him – a bloke that appears to operate out of a tiny office in Altrincham. If I was that wealthy I would appoint Freshfields or Linklaters or Slaughter & May, Mishcon De Reya- proper serious international London law firms.
I’m sorry to say that middle eastern businessmen generally don’t have a good reputation for consummating transactions with funding.
Let us hope that Mr Nimer is different – but if he is not, he needs to sell his 65p stake for 65p and let somebody serious have a go.
The Chairman needs to have a quick look at himself and resign immediately. There is no way back. The fans will never accept his presence at The Valley again and ultimately it is the fans who own the club.
Albury Addick 