Rich. I cannot under any circumstances believe that RD did not consider the current state of the squad he was buying before he decided to go ahead, and indeed before agreeing the price he paid. The question is, what football expertise did he use to make that assessment, if any. There is the possibility that Slater span him a yarn, and he bought it.
Agreed, and it would be equally hard to imagine he overlooked the comparative cost of the current squad and their league position as part of that analysis.
The worry for me lies in his conclusions. If he feels the squad is OK but the manager is poor then we might be in for a ride - but then surely a decision would have been taken earlier in the window.
I was told - but obviously not by RD or KM, that the test RD set for for CP were the four games from Bolton onwards, and if he did ok then, he'd be backed. Well I think he did, we ere unbeaten, and included what most people agree was one of our best performances of the season. So where's the backing?
That'll need more explanation. What is a profit centre?
Thanks Prague Addick for your contribution. If you consider Roland as a successful business man, with a talent for making money and accumulating assets, plus probably an interest/love for football, I believe he is simply looking to gather together a number of Businesses (Clubs) into a Group or basically multi national Business. He will appoint Directors and a management team to run his Group, and run it along normal business practice in the same way that my company is owned out of the USA, and has companies in many countries. It could be a very clever concept when you look at all the wealthy people throwing money at Clubs right now. Time will tell. If you imagine he gets it right, with 5 Clubs already he could have a massive asset.
CP could have said to RD etc : i we need player x from Leicester---player Y from Spurs and player z from Palarse or if we cant get these in our budget we need player A from BHA, player B from Smallwall and player C from FC Hamburg
maybe RD (knowing so much about the Championship) said "well inmy porfolio i already have a player you can have in each of those positions ,Also this is what im offering you all re recent contract issues"
Its "backing" and in two weeks time i guess we will know if thats what has been said/done and if it it was the "backing" CP thought he would get or needed.
Rich. I cannot under any circumstances believe that RD did not consider the current state of the squad he was buying before he decided to go ahead, and indeed before agreeing the price he paid. The question is, what football expertise did he use to make that assessment, if any. There is the possibility that Slater span him a yarn, and he bought it.
Agreed, and it would be equally hard to imagine he overlooked the comparative cost of the current squad and their league position as part of that analysis.
The worry for me lies in his conclusions. If he feels the squad is OK but the manager is poor then we might be in for a ride - but then surely a decision would have been taken earlier in the window.
I was told - but obviously not by RD or KM, that the test RD set for for CP were the four games from Bolton onwards, and if he did ok then, he'd be backed. Well I think he did, we ere unbeaten, and included what most people agree was one of our best performances of the season. So where's the backing?
Can't answer that before the window closes. I'm not an apologist for RD, Prague, but you know me well enough to know I'm an optimist by nature and would rather look upon this positively at this early stage.
It strikes me that people draw the most ludicrous conclusions just because they have no idea what's going on. I'm in the wait and see camp.
You can read even your test in several ways. Was it a pure results thing, or broader, or a review after 4 games so we can see how the whole thing is working, whether the players and manager are a team etc?
I'm not expecting RD to spend £10m this window, but If as it appears he's putting together a portfolio of clubs to effectively manage as a single financial entity, what sense would it make to do nothing right now?
Thinking about this further, the cost saving side. BTW. The next Trust News carries a fascinating and in depth article from a Belgian journo, who knows him well outside footie and is a Standard fan. I've already read it, and so my thoughts are partly based on this.
We might assume that any costs savings in the network would be "back office", say common ticketing IT. now these are a relatively small part of a football clubs cost, most of it is player wages. So above, I was scoffing at the idea that he can save on the player side, because he can' t share Yann as a resource across clubs. However, he may still think he can share playing costs across the network. He seems to think that if you plug gaps in one team with superfluous players from another, you save on all those transfer costs, and associated agency fees. Also you don't have to lose players either, they can simply go to another club within in his network.
I am starting to think that he seriously believes this can work. The trouble is that he may believe this because he is a technician and a statistician, and has built his fortune in manufacturing industry. It may all make sense to him, because it works in that kind of business, and in that kind of scientific mindset. But he has never before operated a business where the key asset is the human resource of a small number of employees, whose output cannot be guaranteed from one week to the next.
I hope he is not as naive as I am starting to think.
Player costs in transfers and agent fees could be ruled out entirely if they were within his network, they also state the belief (long term) that FFP will affect wages downward.
As player related costs are by far the biggest thing a club has to pay, wouldn't any dent in these be welcome balance sheet wise?
This may help mediumlonger term, but short term CAFC need an injection of players that can surely only come from splashing his dosh. Trouble is in doing that you perpetuate the high wage/purchase costs.
Player costs in transfers and agent fees could be ruled out entirely if they were within his network, they also state the belief (long term) that FFP will affect wages downward.
As player related costs are by far the biggest thing a club has to pay, wouldn't any dent in these be welcome balance sheet wise?
This may help mediumlonger term, but short term CAFC need an injection of players that can surely only come from splashing his dosh. Trouble is in doing that you perpetuate the high wage/purchase costs.
Given the system is that players are registered to individual clubs, I'd question how far you could eliminate the costs of players moving between clubs. Players still have negotiation rights and agents will still want a cut.
They are not going to be moved around like chess pieces on a whim.
Also, no matter how many clubs you own or player registrations they hold, you will be fettering the manager's ability to manage if you restrict his choice in this way.
Rich. I cannot under any circumstances believe that RD did not consider the current state of the squad he was buying before he decided to go ahead, and indeed before agreeing the price he paid. The question is, what football expertise did he use to make that assessment, if any. There is the possibility that Slater span him a yarn, and he bought it.
I already made the point in a different thread that slater is alleged to have said that he is confident that we will finish midtable & I'm sure that he probably did spin RD a yarn about the playing strength etc. Is it really possible that a succesful business man (& I appreciate that in football all reason goes out of the window) would take it as read that the person(s) selling him something should be believed?
On what i have been told that RD has only paid a part payment on the money to buy the club, the final payment is dependent on what division we are after this season.
I don't believe RD's is going to provide a significant cash injection for new players. Nor do I see us as becoming a feeder club for Standard Liege. From what little we know he appears to see the professional game in Europe changing significantly over the next few years. His answer is to have a "stable" of "home developed" players who can be moved a round his football "empire" to meet the needs of each team at their level. We have no basis of comparisons on which to judge whether this vision will prove successful outside of Belgium but it doesn't appear likely that, in our case, he will make much cash available, if any, for new players. Lifers will find plenty to disagree with in this approach. I believe, that with his purchase of the club things can be expected to change significantly both in the running of the club and in the delopment of the squad. But it will be at his pace; not at a pace demanded by the fans. Plenty of frustration but hopefully a road to success!
Thinking about this further, the cost saving side. BTW. The next Trust News carries a fascinating and in depth article from a Belgian journo, who knows him well outside footie and is a Standard fan. I've already read it, and so my thoughts are partly based on this.
We might assume that any costs savings in the network would be "back office", say common ticketing IT. now these are a relatively small part of a football clubs cost, most of it is player wages. So above, I was scoffing at the idea that he can save on the player side, because he can' t share Yann as a resource across clubs. However, he may still think he can share playing costs across the network. He seems to think that if you plug gaps in one team with superfluous players from another, you save on all those transfer costs, and associated agency fees. Also you don't have to lose players either, they can simply go to another club within in his network.
I am starting to think that he seriously believes this can work. The trouble is that he may believe this because he is a technician and a statistician, and has built his fortune in manufacturing industry. It may all make sense to him, because it works in that kind of business, and in that kind of scientific mindset. But he has never before operated a business where the key asset is the human resource of a small number of employees, whose output cannot be guaranteed from one week to the next.
I hope he is not as naive as I am starting to think.
His political ideas were very very naive. You cannot found a new political party on one idea and this was precisely what he tried to do. You know my worries on all of this, the mathematical brain is a very 'clever' one but not multi dimensional.
Thinking about this further, the cost saving side. BTW. The next Trust News carries a fascinating and in depth article from a Belgian journo, who knows him well outside footie and is a Standard fan. I've already read it, and so my thoughts are partly based on this.
We might assume that any costs savings in the network would be "back office", say common ticketing IT. now these are a relatively small part of a football clubs cost, most of it is player wages. So above, I was scoffing at the idea that he can save on the player side, because he can' t share Yann as a resource across clubs. However, he may still think he can share playing costs across the network. He seems to think that if you plug gaps in one team with superfluous players from another, you save on all those transfer costs, and associated agency fees. Also you don't have to lose players either, they can simply go to another club within in his network.
I am starting to think that he seriously believes this can work. The trouble is that he may believe this because he is a technician and a statistician, and has built his fortune in manufacturing industry. It may all make sense to him, because it works in that kind of business, and in that kind of scientific mindset. But he has never before operated a business where the key asset is the human resource of a small number of employees, whose output cannot be guaranteed from one week to the next.
I hope he is not as naive as I am starting to think.
Looking at what he's done at SL, I think the model would be a hybrid of both.
That is, if a third division Hungarian team is missing a player there is a big squad at SL that might be able to improve them without it costing RD a penny. Longer term this is going to need some footballing integration, someone like a Jeff Vetere would fit into a Group Director of Football quite well I'd suggest (Avram Grant less so) so that you can be confident you really are improving your squads.
But, in the last 2 years at least, he has also reinvested the money he's received from player sales straight into the SL squad and spent relatively big money on players (like Thuram).
At Charlton, the January transfer window - and three days left of it - won't afford a sell-to-buy approach, and it's questionable if we have those player assets anyway, especially given Richard Murray's comments regarding holding on to the young players. To keep us in the Championship the squad needs investment, and I'd be amazed if RM and SCP weren't consistent in their messages on this score. This club might need investment to reap the bigger rewards in the mid term.
Personally I think if this is what RD is aiming for it's a bold and creative experiment. If it works it could be fantastic for all the clubs concerned. I think the Premiership might be its undoing though.
Thinking about this further, the cost saving side. BTW. The next Trust News carries a fascinating and in depth article from a Belgian journo, who knows him well outside footie and is a Standard fan. I've already read it, and so my thoughts are partly based on this.
We might assume that any costs savings in the network would be "back office", say common ticketing IT. now these are a relatively small part of a football clubs cost, most of it is player wages. So above, I was scoffing at the idea that he can save on the player side, because he can' t share Yann as a resource across clubs. However, he may still think he can share playing costs across the network. He seems to think that if you plug gaps in one team with superfluous players from another, you save on all those transfer costs, and associated agency fees. Also you don't have to lose players either, they can simply go to another club within in his network.
I am starting to think that he seriously believes this can work. The trouble is that he may believe this because he is a technician and a statistician, and has built his fortune in manufacturing industry. It may all make sense to him, because it works in that kind of business, and in that kind of scientific mindset. But he has never before operated a business where the key asset is the human resource of a small number of employees, whose output cannot be guaranteed from one week to the next.
I hope he is not as naive as I am starting to think.
Looking at what he's done at SL, I think the model would be a hybrid of both.
That is, if a third division Hungarian team is missing a player there is a big squad at SL that might be able to improve them without it costing RD a penny. Longer term this is going to need some footballing integration, someone like a Jeff Vetere would fit into a Group Director of Football quite well I'd suggest (Avram Grant less so) so that you can be confident you really are improving your squads.
But, in the last 2 years at least, he has also reinvested the money he's received from player sales straight into the SL squad and spent relatively big money on players (like Thuram).
At Charlton, the January transfer window - and three days left of it - won't afford a sell-to-buy approach, and it's questionable if we have those player assets anyway, especially given Richard Murray's comments regarding holding on to the young players. To keep us in the Championship the squad needs investment, and I'd be amazed if RM and SCP weren't consistent in their messages on this score. This club might need investment to reap the bigger rewards in the mid term.
Personally I think if this is what RD is aiming for it's a bold and creative experiment. If it works it could be fantastic for all the clubs concerned. I think the Premiership might be its undoing though.
Mind you, if Kermorgant is sold with no decent replacement you can scrap all that and I'm over to picking up the half empty glass.
On what i have been told that RD has only paid a part payment on the money to buy the club, the final payment is dependent on what division we are after this season.
Yes, but it isn't enough to offset the damage that will be done by even one season in League One, especially if the fans perceive he could have kept the club up but didn't.
I don't believe RD's is going to provide a significant cash injection for new players. Nor do I see us as becoming a feeder club for Standard Liege. From what little we know he appears to see the professional game in Europe changing significantly over the next few years. His answer is to have a "stable" of "home developed" players who can be moved a round his football "empire" to meet the needs of each team at their level. We have no basis of comparisons on which to judge whether this vision will prove successful outside of Belgium but it doesn't appear likely that, in our case, he will make much cash available, if any, for new players. Lifers will find plenty to disagree with in this approach. I believe, that with his purchase of the club things can be expected to change significantly both in the running of the club and in the delopment of the squad. But it will be at his pace; not at a pace demanded by the fans. Plenty of frustration but hopefully a road to success!
Excellent post - I think this is the point: he has a long term plan, which he set out in the interview, that we will be developing our own (whether that means CAFC or the wider Network) players and building on these. No doubt he will be happy enough to spend, but with our league position and the state of the pitch, then we would probably have to overpay, which is something he would be very unwilling to do.
From his perspective, I suspect, it is certainly a disappointment if we are relegated, but not the end of the world, because he is thinking long term.
All the messages he has been putting out are about long-term development (young players coming to us to develop, emphasis on signing and keeping our own young players, the pitch being relayed, emphasis on improving the matchday experience etc) and I suspect that the message he is trying to get across with that is that the fans need to bear with him and the club will not go tits up if we have to take a step back to take a step forward.
He is clearly putting a lot of faith in the Financial Fair Play rules, which should dictate that a club the size of Charlton should be able to spend as much as any club in the Championship other than a couple - or rather, that most clubs should only be able to spend less and will learn that to their cost when the rules properly kick in.
In that sense I suspect that he feels that he is preparing for the reality, whereas most clubs still have their heads in the sand.
From his perspective, I suspect, any panic money spent now on expensive contracts will only come back to bite in the future. That does bode badly for the immediate future of short-term signings and you do wonder whether he will feel that a large panicky contract for a 32-year-old striker is good value (as well as long-term expensive contracts for other players that have us in a relegation scrap), but if he is right it promises much for the future.
Continuing down this path is a sure fire way to lose our identity. I don't think Powell will be here much longer, and what team spirit there is left will be destroyed. It's very hard to comprehend what is going on.
I don't know anything about Belgian tax laws, but seeing as we're now owned, in effect, by a Belgian company, could he offset our losses (say £7m) against the profits of his main business to avoid paying corporation tax?
Someone seems to be getting close to the truth. Duchatelet is only interested in shifting money around for tax evasion. This is why he bought the Hungarian club and put it into his son's name.
The 'profit centre' is spot on too:
Don't be surprised if Duchatelet has already pencilled in relegation. He will cash in on our best players and change the manager to some foreign guy we've never heard of. We will then get by on loads of loan signings and youth players. Whatever club in any given season is doing well will then receive loans and money from his other clubs that are having a bad season. If this means a failure sacrificed to gain a success elsewhere then so be it. Some years it will go against us, other years for us. But for Duchatelet the aim will be an overall profit between his set of clubs.
Be warned: you are no longer supporting a real football club, but a cog in a set.
I think seeing as he bought a house in Greenwich this week he sells Kerm,then sells Stephens to Brighton,buys a boat,wonder who else he wants to sell and what new toy will he buy
Does he realise how difficult it will be to get back up if we get relegated? This ain't the Belgian League. It took us three seasons last time. It ain't easy. I hope he realises that turnstile income will drop right off if we have a similar struggle again.
The problem is that we develop our own and lose them before they reach their full value - which is always much less in league one. You need to have a better shop window to make it really work.
He must have a plan - but it is quite feasibly totally bollocks! He isn't related to Baldrick by any chance is he?
I don't know anything about Belgian tax laws, but seeing as we're now owned, in effect, by a Belgian company, could he offset our losses (say £7m) against the profits of his main business to avoid paying corporation tax?
Someone seems to be getting close to the truth. Duchatelet is only interested in shifting money around for tax evasion. This is why he bought the Hungarian club and put it into his son's name.
The 'profit centre' is spot on too:
Don't be surprised if Duchatelet has already pencilled in relegation. He will cash in on our best players and change the manager to some foreign guy we've never heard of. We will then get by on loads of loan signings and youth players. Whatever club in any given season is doing well will then receive loans and money from his other clubs that are having a bad season. If this means a failure sacrificed to gain a success elsewhere then so be it. Some years it will go against us, other years for us. But for Duchatelet the aim will be an overall profit between his set of clubs.
Be warned: you are no longer supporting a real football club, but a cog in a set.
Sorry but this makes no sense whatsoever. There is no conceivable scenario is which you could 'avoid' enough tax on the value of any players that CAFC might sell to recoup the £20m that he paid for the club.
The prosaic reality that RD - like the owners before him - is pumping millions into the club just to keep it going, although he may not be pumping in as many millions of pounds as you or I might wish.
It is horrible and I said it on other threads from the day he bought us. I couldn't believe that anyone could feel anything other than sick about this takeover.
However SteveiK has made some great points above and in some aspects there may be a positive side. But even if we do eventually have some success, it will still be as part of some soul-less, uncaring (with regards to fans) depressing money making and tax evasion empire.
I so wish that Josh Harris had taken over. That guy has a real pride in making a club part of a community.
Rich. I cannot under any circumstances believe that RD did not consider the current state of the squad he was buying before he decided to go ahead, and indeed before agreeing the price he paid. The question is, what football expertise did he use to make that assessment, if any. There is the possibility that Slater span him a yarn, and he bought it.
Agreed, and it would be equally hard to imagine he overlooked the comparative cost of the current squad and their league position as part of that analysis.
The worry for me lies in his conclusions. If he feels the squad is OK but the manager is poor then we might be in for a ride - but then surely a decision would have been taken earlier in the window.
I was told - but obviously not by RD or KM, that the test RD set for for CP were the four games from Bolton onwards, and if he did ok then, he'd be backed. Well I think he did, we ere unbeaten, and included what most people agree was one of our best performances of the season. So where's the backing?
Maybe "backing" has a different meaning in Belgium !
I don't think I am. It doesn't take much guesswork if you look at what's been going on at Standard Liege.
You might just be right but it is still a guess and an assumption like nearly every other post on this thread and others.
Until RD tells us we won't know, good or bad, what he is doing.
We can't just assume his plans are logical or smart just because he is a "businessman" or that what is good for him is good for Charlton Athletic or its fans.
It may all turn out OK, and I hope it does, but don't count on it.
Does he realise how difficult it will be to get back up if we get relegated? This ain't the Belgian League. It took us three seasons last time. It ain't easy. I hope he realises that turnstile income will drop right off if we have a similar struggle again.
This is my concern. I don't think there is anyone in authority at the club now who will understand this. They will think it will be like 2009/10. It will be much worse, IMO.
Does he realise how difficult it will be to get back up if we get relegated? This ain't the Belgian League. It took us three seasons last time. It ain't easy. I hope he realises that turnstile income will drop right off if we have a similar struggle again.
This is my concern. I don't think there is anyone in authority at the club now who will understand this. They will think it will be like 2009/10. It will be much worse, IMO.
But surely they can't be that stupid - ok it looks like they might be, but can they? Can they really?
Comments
That'll need more explanation. What is a profit centre?
Thanks Prague Addick for your contribution. If you consider Roland as a successful business man, with a talent for making money and accumulating assets, plus probably an interest/love for football, I believe he is simply looking to gather together a number of Businesses (Clubs) into a Group or basically multi national Business. He will appoint Directors and a management team to run his Group, and run it along normal business practice in the same way that my company is owned out of the USA, and has companies in many countries. It could be a very clever concept when you look at all the wealthy people throwing money at Clubs right now. Time will tell. If you imagine he gets it right, with 5 Clubs already he could have a massive asset.
CP could have said to RD etc :
i we need player x from Leicester---player Y from Spurs and player z from Palarse
or if we cant get these in our budget we need player A from BHA, player B from Smallwall and player C from FC Hamburg
maybe RD (knowing so much about the Championship) said "well inmy porfolio i already have a player you can have in each of those positions ,Also this is what im offering you all re recent contract issues"
Its "backing" and in two weeks time i guess we will know if thats what has been said/done and if it it was the "backing" CP thought he would get or needed.
It strikes me that people draw the most ludicrous conclusions just because they have no idea what's going on. I'm in the wait and see camp.
You can read even your test in several ways. Was it a pure results thing, or broader, or a review after 4 games so we can see how the whole thing is working, whether the players and manager are a team etc?
I'm not expecting RD to spend £10m this window, but If as it appears he's putting together a portfolio of clubs to effectively manage as a single financial entity, what sense would it make to do nothing right now?
We might assume that any costs savings in the network would be "back office", say common ticketing IT. now these are a relatively small part of a football clubs cost, most of it is player wages. So above, I was scoffing at the idea that he can save on the player side, because he can' t share Yann as a resource across clubs. However, he may still think he can share playing costs across the network. He seems to think that if you plug gaps in one team with superfluous players from another, you save on all those transfer costs, and associated agency fees. Also you don't have to lose players either, they can simply go to another club within in his network.
I am starting to think that he seriously believes this can work. The trouble is that he may believe this because he is a technician and a statistician, and has built his fortune in manufacturing industry. It may all make sense to him, because it works in that kind of business, and in that kind of scientific mindset. But he has never before operated a business where the key asset is the human resource of a small number of employees, whose output cannot be guaranteed from one week to the next.
I hope he is not as naive as I am starting to think.
As player related costs are by far the biggest thing a club has to pay, wouldn't any dent in these be welcome balance sheet wise?
This may help mediumlonger term, but short term CAFC need an injection of players that can surely only come from splashing his dosh. Trouble is in doing that you perpetuate the high wage/purchase costs.
They are not going to be moved around like chess pieces on a whim.
Also, no matter how many clubs you own or player registrations they hold, you will be fettering the manager's ability to manage if you restrict his choice in this way.
From what little we know he appears to see the professional game in Europe changing significantly over the next few years. His answer is to have a "stable" of "home developed" players who can be moved a round his football "empire" to meet the needs of each team at their level.
We have no basis of comparisons on which to judge whether this vision will prove successful outside of Belgium but it doesn't appear likely that, in our case, he will make much cash available, if any, for new players.
Lifers will find plenty to disagree with in this approach. I believe, that with his purchase of the club things can be expected to change significantly both in the running of the club and in the delopment of the squad. But it will be at his pace; not at a pace demanded by the fans. Plenty of frustration but hopefully a road to success!
His political ideas were very very naive. You cannot found a new political party on one idea and this was precisely what he tried to do. You know my worries on all of this, the mathematical brain is a very 'clever' one but not multi dimensional.
That is, if a third division Hungarian team is missing a player there is a big squad at SL that might be able to improve them without it costing RD a penny. Longer term this is going to need some footballing integration, someone like a Jeff Vetere would fit into a Group Director of Football quite well I'd suggest (Avram Grant less so) so that you can be confident you really are improving your squads.
But, in the last 2 years at least, he has also reinvested the money he's received from player sales straight into the SL squad and spent relatively big money on players (like Thuram).
At Charlton, the January transfer window - and three days left of it - won't afford a sell-to-buy approach, and it's questionable if we have those player assets anyway, especially given Richard Murray's comments regarding holding on to the young players. To keep us in the Championship the squad needs investment, and I'd be amazed if RM and SCP weren't consistent in their messages on this score. This club might need investment to reap the bigger rewards in the mid term.
Personally I think if this is what RD is aiming for it's a bold and creative experiment. If it works it could be fantastic for all the clubs concerned. I think the Premiership might be its undoing though.
From his perspective, I suspect, it is certainly a disappointment if we are relegated, but not the end of the world, because he is thinking long term.
All the messages he has been putting out are about long-term development (young players coming to us to develop, emphasis on signing and keeping our own young players, the pitch being relayed, emphasis on improving the matchday experience etc) and I suspect that the message he is trying to get across with that is that the fans need to bear with him and the club will not go tits up if we have to take a step back to take a step forward.
He is clearly putting a lot of faith in the Financial Fair Play rules, which should dictate that a club the size of Charlton should be able to spend as much as any club in the Championship other than a couple - or rather, that most clubs should only be able to spend less and will learn that to their cost when the rules properly kick in.
In that sense I suspect that he feels that he is preparing for the reality, whereas most clubs still have their heads in the sand.
From his perspective, I suspect, any panic money spent now on expensive contracts will only come back to bite in the future. That does bode badly for the immediate future of short-term signings and you do wonder whether he will feel that a large panicky contract for a 32-year-old striker is good value (as well as long-term expensive contracts for other players that have us in a relegation scrap), but if he is right it promises much for the future.
The 'profit centre' is spot on too:
Don't be surprised if Duchatelet has already pencilled in relegation. He will cash in on our best players and change the manager to some foreign guy we've never heard of. We will then get by on loads of loan signings and youth players. Whatever club in any given season is doing well will then receive loans and money from his other clubs that are having a bad season. If this means a failure sacrificed to gain a success elsewhere then so be it. Some years it will go against us, other years for us. But for Duchatelet the aim will be an overall profit between his set of clubs.
Be warned: you are no longer supporting a real football club, but a cog in a set.
He must have a plan - but it is quite feasibly totally bollocks! He isn't related to Baldrick by any chance is he?
The prosaic reality that RD - like the owners before him - is pumping millions into the club just to keep it going, although he may not be pumping in as many millions of pounds as you or I might wish.
However SteveiK has made some great points above and in some aspects there may be a positive side. But even if we do eventually have some success, it will still be as part of some soul-less, uncaring (with regards to fans) depressing money making and tax evasion empire.
I so wish that Josh Harris had taken over. That guy has a real pride in making a club part of a community.
Until RD tells us we won't know, good or bad, what he is doing.
We can't just assume his plans are logical or smart just because he is a "businessman" or that what is good for him is good for Charlton Athletic or its fans.
It may all turn out OK, and I hope it does, but don't count on it.