Does anyone know what is going on at Charlton ?

What is it about football clubs and particularly Charlton that the people who actually matter, for whom the club exists and was originally formed for. ie the paying customers or fans as they are traditionally known , have absolutely no sensible information about their football club’s ownership or future.

It is scandalous and wrong.

Is Thomas Sandgaard selling the club or not ? Charlie Methven, who has a reputation in business and football clubs as an aggressive bully says he isn’t buying the club and hasn’t got any money but has appeared at every game for the last 2 months.Who on earth is he representing ? Have they got any money,- why buy Charlton when it’s a money pit – maybe it’s a property play, but Roland owns all the property so that would be very long term and probably impossible.

The club is selling or giving away a lot of the senior players, JFC, Gilbey, Stockley, Kirk, Macgillivray and replacing them with a few short term loans. Andy Scott was supposedly on a 6 week contract to get us players, presumably his main job was to get rid rather than acquire, is he even still in the building ? As an aside Fleetwood have now acquired a decent strike pairing for this division with Stockley and Marriott- how can they afford that on crowds of 3,000. Its a mystery.

Why is the whole situation so opaque. Thomas and whoever, you might own the football club’s shares but all of you are just temporary, we are the real owners- the fans and we want to know what is going on NOW !!!!

Being a Charlton fan

Wasn’t last night just fantastic ? Its really special when we get a gathering like that together. It makes you proud and its tribal and awe inspiring.

Our end was a wall of noise from start to finish. How many rounds of Valley Floyd Road is it possible to sing in 90 minutes- plenty is the answer. I absolutely loved it and if you were there, I’m sure you did too. What we need is more nights like that. Who knows what is going on with the ownership and potential transfers but the support is there if we can improve the performances on the pitch.

I thought we played really well particularly in the 2nd half and had enough chances to get an equaliser before the 90th minute.

Dean Holden has steadied the ship and he is playing the right formation with the players he has available. Getting the ball forward quicker makes a big difference.

We need to protect The Valley

No one seems to know what exactly is going on with the ‘takeover’ bid at Charlton. However we do know that Charlie Methven and his team have signed an exclusivity clause with Sandgaard to get a deal done. This doesnt mean they will get a deal done but probably gives them until the end of Jan to complete the transaction. We know that Duchatelet wont accept anything less than £50m for The Valley and Sparrows Lane so you can be pretty sure that Methven & Co are not going to buy those.

Most of the potential buyers of Charlton including Southall before and probably Methven & Co now see it as a property play in some way to make money. Maybe they think we could ground share or build a smaller ground somewhere else. Maybe they want to plough lots of money in to get us into the Premier League – BUT I THINK THAT OPTION IS VERY UNLIKELY.

Even if a richer ‘white knight’ like Andrew Barclay arrives and acquires the Valley, when he gets fed up, he would pull the same property card as Glikstein and Duchatelet have before him.

The news this week that Rishi Sunak has signed off on the new Football Regulator role, one of whose principal jobs is to safeguard the stadia for clubs presents a fantastic new opportunity for us to lobby to render The Valley in particular of no value for development for 100 years or in perpetuity if you prefer. How this is done whether through strengthening of existing Community Value Asset rules or new legislation doesn’t matter, but until we resolve this ground separated from club issue, the future of our club will always be under threat.

We aren’t the only club where this presents a problem and it will be a populist policy to safeguard stadia in our national sport. It has the added advantage of buggering up Duchatelet and other potential scavengers and would be property developers all around the UK

This should become a Lobbying issue for CAST and all of us. Now is the time.