All of you saying it was a "reasonable" statement yesterday?
Seen it for the pack of lies and spin it is yet?
Must admit reading his statement back, having a dig at the 2015 takeover attempt needlessly reopens old wounds and is begging for a response.
He should have kept it brief and unconfrontational - actively looking to sell, budget will be low, looking to extend Bowyer's deal, good luck to the team.
But he’s incapable of doing that.
It’s more important for his ego that everyone gets publicly blamed except himself.
All sales in the real World are negotiations,so IF the Rats statement that the price is agreed and IF his statement that 3/4 ex directors have agreed the price to sell the loans then the Rat could pay the other director loans himself (reported as £2.5 million-ish) a fraction of what the few owners would be paying him.
Thats if anything in his statement is actually true---- his Ego lets him negotiate----he visits planet Earth anytime soon.
Said after Wembley those moments / games only come along every decade or so with CAFC and boy do we have to put up with some shit in between those years
“By that she meant to Ebbsfleet’s Stonebridge Road, a non-league stadium which could not even accommodate Charlton’s League One season-ticket holders.”
It's worth reading fully, Exposes Duhatelet's lies and the state of just how mislead he was by Katrien Meire who I fear did far more damage than we realised at the time.
More lies by Roland as Bowyer deal put in doubt
It’s difficult to know what goes on in Addicks owner Roland Duchatelet’s head at the best of times, but even more bizarre than usual to find him referencing this writer, former Charlton chief executive Peter Varney and ex-chairman Derek Chappell over a 2015 takeover approach in an official website message headed “updates on takeover and 2919/20”. It’s useful, nonetheless, because it provides a timely reminder not to believe a word that Duchatelet says.
“It is debatable whether the first candidate for buying the club, who was pushed, with the very best intentions, by ex-CEO Peter Varney, ex-director Derek Chappell and Rick Everitt (VOV from 29 12 15), the current owner of Ebbsfleet football club, would have been the right fit for Charlton,” Duchatelet writes.
That has nothing to do with 2019, it's simply inserted in an attempt to link Varney, Chappell and me to the current troubles at Ebbsfleet, but the important thing is that it never happened. It’s a lie - and not just the clumsy implication that I am the owner of Ebbsfleet.
It's a more explicit variation of the same lie that his puppet chief executive Katrien Meire told at the press conference to welcome Russell Slade as manager in the summer of 2016, when she gratuitously inserted the claim that as part of Varney’s 2015 approach he planned to move the club out of The Valley.
By that she meant to Ebbsfleet’s Stonebridge Road, a non-league stadium which could not even accommodate Charlton’s League One season-ticket holders.
Duchatelet never found out who that approach was from because Meire first obstructed the discussions, as shown in the email chain published in VOTV124, and when that was publicised her patron refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement to enable a face-to-face meeting with the potential buyer to take place.
What hasn’t previously been revealed is that on his own initiative Chappell subsequently travelled to Brussels to meet Duchatelet in an effort to persuade the Belgian that he was being seriously misled about Varney and what had happened previously at Charlton by then chairman Richard Murray, a situation which he and others believed was damaging the club.
Where Duchatelet got the idea that the purchaser being lined up was Ebsfleet owner Abdulla Al-Humaidi and whether that came from Murray is unknown, but neither Chappell nor I were ever aware of the interested party’s identity, so we could never have been involved in pushing for a takeover by Al-Humaidi. And Varney has always been adamant that it had nothing to do with Ebbsfleet, where he was executive vice-chairman at the time.
“The person involved wasn’t even Middle Eastern,” he told me this afternoon. “That it wasn't the Ebbsfleet owner could be proven in court, if necessary, but I didn't even tell my wife who it was."
In 2016 Varney threatened to take legal action against Meire over her claims, but was advised by his lawyer that she could not have damaged his reputation because Charlton fans did not take her seriously.
Chappell is also targeted in the latest statement as one of three loan holders blamed by omission for delaying a takeover of the club following Charlton’s victory at Wembley. The others are his fellow former directors Bob Whitehand and David Sumners. By contrast, Murray, Sir Maurice Hatter, David Hughes and David White are thanked "for their coperation in this process".
This claim was quickly undermined by White, who tweeted: “I don’t understand it. I have had one conversation recently asking if I would be happy to discuss my loan and I said yes. That is all. I haven’t discussed anything else, been offered anything or agreed anything.”
It should also be noted that the trio not named are between them are only owed a total of £2.65m, which does not carry interest and is not repayable outside the Premier League.
By contrast Voice of The Valley has learned that Duchatelet rejected an approach last season to buy the club for £45m, which would have included settling the £7m total loans at whatever figure was negotiable. It did not involve renting The Valley or the training ground, another claim now being made by the Belgian against unnamed interested parties. Indeed, Duchatelet himself proposed this a few months ago when he demanded the EFL buy the club.
Via his point man Lieven De Turck Duchatelet subsequently named the asking price as £72m. That compares with the £18.6m Duchatelet paid in 2014, based on figures published in the annual accounts, a sum still sits on the books as debt rolling up interest to the Belgian and consequently adding to the amount he is trying to recoup. It’s hard to see how the relatively minor amount owed to Chappell, Whitehand and Sumners can be a significant obstacle alongside that scale of foolishness.
Duchatelet justifies his exorbitant asking price on the basis that “the value of land and buildings is high because the stadium and the training ground are located in London”, although it seems to escape him that the previous owners were property speculators who would presumably have reflected such an inflated value in their own sale price or secured the backing to develop the land themselves.
With no planning consent for full residential development granted or likely, the practical limitations of the site being squeezed between a cliff and a railway line, as as well as the awkward alignment of Floyd Road itself, and the cost of removing the stadium, a more realistic total valuation of both sites is around £20m.
As with the Belgian's assertion that using the increased Championship revenue to reduce the operating loss instead of funding the playing squad at a higher level won't mean the club has “no chance” of winning promotion to the Premier League, he is simply engaged in more wishful thinking - at best. Clubs that spend around the current Charlton figure of £10m on salary costs in the Championship are highly likely to be relegated, as recent history shows.
Fans are more likely to be interested in his apparently contradictory explanation about manager Lee Bowyer’s immediate future: “There is a trigger in his contract for a contract extension, which we exercised in May, and he needs to agree to this for his contract to be extended as per the current agreement.”
With Bowyer having rejected out of hand an initial offer which was based on a complicated metric involving the number of youth players in the first team, attendances and league position, the Belgian now seems to want him to continue in post on League One wages with a League One budget.
While Duchatelet does go on to talk about "improving Lee's contract" in further talks next week, the Charlton boss is rumoured to be on around £100,000 a year, compared to a Championship expectation of three times that.
Few fans would blame Bowyer for taking issue with Duchatelet over finances. Indeed, it’s not in their interest that he settles for such a disrespectful approach to both himself and the club.
Neither is it true, as Duchatelet claims, that he has personally "continued to pay everything at the club", because a signfiicant proportion of revenue comes from supporters via tickets, EFL central payments and other commercial deals, as well as player sales. In 2016/17 sales were so substantial that Charlton reported a profit. Staff denied the bonuses they expected in 2018 - and which the EFL said it would support them over - will note that the owner's generosity didn't extend to them.
This Duchatalet statement may have been polished up for him so as to be couched in more reasonable terms than usual, but the lie about 2015 gives it away.
It is about blaming other people, and no doubt if Bowyer does leave there be another one to follow which will explain why that isn’t the Belgian’s fault either. Nothing ever is.
There is no takeover. The fault lies with the ex-directors, not me. I might not hire Bowyer again I’m not putting extra money in or lowering the sale price. We might go down. Stop protesting.
The saddest part of all this is if night follows day in the wacky world of Roland then the opportunity to ride the momentum will be lost and the outcome will be a return to the bleak days of the early 70's under the apathetic Michael Gliksten with no fan base because they had deserted in their droves as the good late 60's team was sold and not invested in.
Bizarrely in Duchatelet's statement he mentioned the Premier being the goal ! That's a first, At the strange open day over 4 years ago now, I said to Meire, will we have a Premier team to go with the newly laid pitch and her eyes glazed over.
His goal has always been to turn us into Cafc, better known as Crewe Alexandra where Dario Gradi got a bonus as Ashton, Murphy etc were sold from the successful academy teams. So no surprise that Bowyer's draft contract had the playing of academy lads included as a financial incentive.The devil's always in the detail with Duchatelet.
The statement refers to talking to LB next week but the rumours are that LB met RD's people this week. Is it possible that the statement was prepared last week and held back for some reason ?
One bit of knowledge to be gleaned from the nonsense of the statement is that he notices and is aware of the range of protest activities.
Good for Roland that he validates such activities.
The high we feel now is diminishing, and come August when we kick off without Bow and Co, and most of the current squad have gone with those left either disinterested or too young to see the bigger picture, and we suffer a few 0-4 home defeats, and 0-6 away defeats then protests will resume. Playing in the higher division with more media and live matches and high profile opposition will be the ideal scenario to re-start protests, maybe leading to a few matches abandoned, club fines and playing behind closed doors. Oh, and Belgium visits too.
It needs to ramp up and affect his home life daily his families home life daily and to a greater degree his business life in Belgium daily
As you (should) know, there are groups of fans with extensive experience of harassing him in Belgium, although harassing his family has been a PR gift to him in the past. If you have concrete ideas I will be happy to introduce you to them. It's most effective if such activity is co-ordinated.
One problem I have come up against in recent days is that the Belgian press, at least the sport-related element, feel he is no longer of interest to their readers (even though journos remain sympathetic to our plight) now that he has sold Standard and the club element of STVV. Action we take will be most effective if the Belgian press provide sympathetic coverage, so we need to think carefully about "newsworthy" action. People are looking at this constantly, that much I can assure you.
I agree we should stay away from anyone that Peter Varney introduces
Curious to hear more on that. It seems most here really like PV.
@I-SAW-POUSO-PLAY can answer for himself but I suspect the point he is making is that Varney allegedly introduced the Spivs to Charlton and the good Doctor to Ebbsfleet both of which ended or are ending badly.
The purpose of Roland's statement is, as ever, to deflect blame and to suggest that nothing is his fault - whether it be the delay in Lee Bowyer signing a new contract, our minuscule Championship budget or prospective purchasers refusing to cover his largely self-inflicted losses with an exorbitant purchase price. The reference to the former directors' loans is surely another smokescreen in circumstances where the sums in issue are, relatively speaking, peanuts in the context of Premier League Sky money.
Roland's pronouncements are, as ever, inconsistent and contradictory. For example, whilst he says that "there have been some brilliant players to come through our academy this season and we will continue to bring players through next year", he has lamentably failed to contractually tie down players like Grant and Aribo, whilst Anfernee Dijksteel will doubtless be the next Academy player to leave for a knock down price in January or for nothing next summer.
On the subject of small budgets, how much does he think it will cost to replace the BFG, not to mention Aribo, or to find another striker of Lyle Taylor's calibre ?
One of Duchatelet's major problems is that he only ever seems to be capable of focusing on the expenses of running a football club. He seems incapable of considering, targeting and promoting an increase in turnover.
Finally, I can only interpret his statement that the "owner and fans are stuck together" as some kind of wind up, Perhaps Duchatelet gets off on this and that is enough for him
I agree with Blucher as always. I was initially thinking that for RD (compared to previous ridiculous rants) it was a reasonable statement. But having giving more thought & having re-read it numerous times, I feel that nothing has changed and we are no nearer a take over.
If RD can run us losing only say £2M this year, he will recover much of this by the interest he is charging on the debt. He will have increased revenue of more than £5M this season due to more TV & gate money. So if he can keep the costs the same this may be possible.
Then he will continue to wait in the hope that there will be someone somewhere that will eventually pay a price close to what he wants.
If Bowyer, Jacko and Gallen stay I think they may be able to sign enough frees and out of contract players to keep us up. But it looks like we may well be in a relegation fight with another 5 or 6 clubs.
If Bowyer leaves then I think RD will feel a massive backlash as big or maybe greater than he has already experienced. So RD give Bowyer a decent contract or you may well regret it.
Contractually obligating the manager to play youth players in the first team smacks of the owner telling the manager who to pick, and is no doubt why Wilder decided “No thanks.”
I agree we should stay away from anyone that Peter Varney introduces
Curious to hear more on that. It seems most here really like PV.
@I-SAW-POUSO-PLAY can answer for himself but I suspect the point he is making is that Varney allegedly introduced the Spivs to Charlton and the good Doctor to Ebbsfleet both of which ended or are ending badly.
If it was Varney who introduced Jimenez, Slater and the "third man" Cash then surely that was successful on the field when we ended with 100+ points when Powell and Dyer were allowed to bring in their own players in part with the selling of Jenkinson. Only when the aptly named Cash, started to have cash flow problems because of getting involved with nefarious eastern European folk was the plug pulled on Cafc ambitions as we reached the Championship.
As for the owner at Ebbsfleet, his ambition was to build a Disneyland around that area so he appeared to be well healed. Plus I thought Peter said it wasn't him ? I assumed it might be an associate of the Ebbsfleet owner.
Varney was CEO when we reached 4th in the premier, numerous staff from that time have told me he was a great boss.
As with all of the comments he makes on us it’s form of deflection.
So the takeover is held up by the previous directors, not him *
We are using a small budget because other clubs are operating with non-sustainable model * not his fault
Ebbsfleet are in some trouble due to the owner who was recommended by people who CARD respect/involved with - ** I know best
Bowyer needs to agree to the extension of his contract before we can discuss increasing his terms ** not him.
All Charlton really represent to him at the moment is a source of personal embarrassment (Thanks largely to CARD) and everything he says is designed to either deflect blame on to others or highlight largely incorrectly that he was right all along
i can’t wait till he is gone
Totally agree. On the surface, the statement is (almost) cleverly written to sound reasonable. BUT we know better (as Bubble has said).
Plus his asking price is far more than the club is worth or anyone else will pay. Until he accepts that there is an impasse. One of the main issues is he is a stubbon old b****r who thinks he knows best.
The purpose of Roland's statement is, as ever, to deflect blame and to suggest that nothing is his fault - whether it be the delay in Lee Bowyer signing a new contract, our minuscule Championship budget or prospective purchasers refusing to cover his largely self-inflicted losses with an exorbitant purchase price. The reference to the former directors' loans is surely another smokescreen in circumstances where the sums in issue are, relatively speaking, peanuts in the context of Premier League Sky money.
Roland's pronouncements are, as ever, inconsistent and contradictory. For example, whilst he says that "there have been some brilliant players to come through our academy this season and we will continue to bring players through next year", he has lamentably failed to contractually tie down players like Grant and Aribo, whilst Anfernee Dijksteel will doubtless be the next Academy player to leave for a knock down price in January or for nothing next summer.
On the subject of small budgets, how much does he think it will cost to replace the BFG, not to mention Aribo, or to find another striker of Lyle Taylor's calibre ?
One of Duchatelet's major problems is that he only ever seems to be capable of focusing on the expenses of running a football club. He seems incapable of considering, targeting and promoting an increase in turnover.
Finally, I can only interpret his statement that the "owner and fans are stuck together" as some kind of wind up, Perhaps Duchatelet gets off on this and that is enough for him
I agree with Blucher as always. I was initially thinking that for RD (compared to previous ridiculous rants) it was a reasonable statement. But having giving more thought & having re-read it numerous times, I feel that nothing has changed and we are no nearer a take over.
If RD can run us losing only say £2M this year, he will recover much of this by the interest he is charging on the debt. He will have increased revenue of more than £5M this season due to more TV & gate money. So if he can keep the costs the same this may be possible.
Then he will continue to wait in the hope that there will be someone somewhere that will eventually pay a price close to what he wants.
If Bowyer, Jacko and Gallen stay I think they may be able to sign enough frees and out of contract players to keep us up. But it looks like we may well be in a relegation fight with another 5 or 6 clubs.
If Bowyer leaves then I think RD will feel a massive backlash as big or maybe greater than he has already experienced. So RD give Bowyer a decent contract or you may well regret it.
Lol and his comms team are supporting him with orchestrated support on Twitter.
So two things clear:
1 He wants to make his profit through the land value and, 2 attendances matter (eg the incentive rumoured in Bowyer’s contract offer) and therefore boycotting does hurt him.
Well it may well do, but if his income reduces he will reduce the expenses by having a weaker squad. So neither he nor the fans win and he can afford to sit it out for life.
I agree we should stay away from anyone that Peter Varney introduces
Curious to hear more on that. It seems most here really like PV.
@I-SAW-POUSO-PLAY can answer for himself but I suspect the point he is making is that Varney allegedly introduced the Spivs to Charlton and the good Doctor to Ebbsfleet both of which ended or are ending badly.
If it was Varney who introduced Jimenez, Slater and the "third man" Cash then surely that was successful on the field when we ended with 100+ points when Powell and Dyer were allowed to bring in their own players in part with the selling of Jenkinson. Only when the aptly named Cash, started to have cash flow problems because of getting involved with nefarious eastern European folk was the plug pulled on Cafc ambitions as we reached the Championship.
As for the owner at Ebbsfleet, his ambition was to build a Disneyland around that area so he appeared to be well healed. Plus I thought Peter said it wasn't him ? I assumed it might be an associate of the Ebbsfleet owner.
Varney was CEO when we reached 4th in the premier, numerous staff from that time have told me he was a great boss.
The purpose of Roland's statement is, as ever, to deflect blame and to suggest that nothing is his fault - whether it be the delay in Lee Bowyer signing a new contract, our minuscule Championship budget or prospective purchasers refusing to cover his largely self-inflicted losses with an exorbitant purchase price. The reference to the former directors' loans is surely another smokescreen in circumstances where the sums in issue are, relatively speaking, peanuts in the context of Premier League Sky money.
Roland's pronouncements are, as ever, inconsistent and contradictory. For example, whilst he says that "there have been some brilliant players to come through our academy this season and we will continue to bring players through next year", he has lamentably failed to contractually tie down players like Grant and Aribo, whilst Anfernee Dijksteel will doubtless be the next Academy player to leave for a knock down price in January or for nothing next summer.
On the subject of small budgets, how much does he think it will cost to replace the BFG, not to mention Aribo, or to find another striker of Lyle Taylor's calibre ?
One of Duchatelet's major problems is that he only ever seems to be capable of focusing on the expenses of running a football club. He seems incapable of considering, targeting and promoting an increase in turnover.
Finally, I can only interpret his statement that the "owner and fans are stuck together" as some kind of wind up, Perhaps Duchatelet gets off on this and that is enough for him
I agree with Blucher as always. I was initially thinking that for RD (compared to previous ridiculous rants) it was a reasonable statement. But having giving more thought & having re-read it numerous times, I feel that nothing has changed and we are no nearer a take over.
If RD can run us losing only say £2M this year, he will recover much of this by the interest he is charging on the debt. He will have increased revenue of more than £5M this season due to more TV & gate money. So if he can keep the costs the same this may be possible.
Then he will continue to wait in the hope that there will be someone somewhere that will eventually pay a price close to what he wants.
If Bowyer, Jacko and Gallen stay I think they may be able to sign enough frees and out of contract players to keep us up. But it looks like we may well be in a relegation fight with another 5 or 6 clubs.
If Bowyer leaves then I think RD will feel a massive backlash as big or maybe greater than he has already experienced. So RD give Bowyer a decent contract or you may well regret it.
All sales in the real World are negotiations,so IF the Rats statement that the price is agreed and IF his statement that 3/4 ex directors have agreed the price to sell the loans then the Rat could pay the other director loans himself (reported as £2.5 million-ish) a fraction of what the few owners would be paying him.
Thats if anything in his statement is actually true---- his Ego lets him negotiate----he visits planet Earth anytime soon.
Said after Wembley those moments / games only come along every decade or so with CAFC and boy do we have to put up with some shit in between those years
The ex directors haven't agreed a price for their loans. David White said he had been contacted recently and he had agreed to discuss his outstanding loan.
RD's weasel words inferred what you are saying and it was deliberately misleading. I hold my hands up and admit that he took me in, before David White's clarification.
Comments
It’s more important for his ego that everyone gets publicly blamed except himself.
If we had followed others wisdom (Ebbsfleet Owners) we would be bankrupt now ("I am the saviour").
If that's his price then we're stuck with RD until he dies.
Thats if anything in his statement is actually true---- his Ego lets him negotiate----he visits planet Earth anytime soon.
Said after Wembley those moments / games only come along every decade or so with CAFC and boy do we have to put up with some shit in between those years
Roland, hold my beer.
More lies by Roland as Bowyer deal put in doubt
It’s difficult to know what goes on in Addicks owner Roland Duchatelet’s head at the best of times, but even more bizarre than usual to find him referencing this writer, former Charlton chief executive Peter Varney and ex-chairman Derek Chappell over a 2015 takeover approach in an official website message headed “updates on takeover and 2919/20”. It’s useful, nonetheless, because it provides a timely reminder not to believe a word that Duchatelet says.
“It is debatable whether the first candidate for buying the club, who was pushed, with the very best intentions, by ex-CEO Peter Varney, ex-director Derek Chappell and Rick Everitt (VOV from 29 12 15), the current owner of Ebbsfleet football club, would have been the right fit for Charlton,” Duchatelet writes.
That has nothing to do with 2019, it's simply inserted in an attempt to link Varney, Chappell and me to the current troubles at Ebbsfleet, but the important thing is that it never happened. It’s a lie - and not just the clumsy implication that I am the owner of Ebbsfleet.
It's a more explicit variation of the same lie that his puppet chief executive Katrien Meire told at the press conference to welcome Russell Slade as manager in the summer of 2016, when she gratuitously inserted the claim that as part of Varney’s 2015 approach he planned to move the club out of The Valley.
By that she meant to Ebbsfleet’s Stonebridge Road, a non-league stadium which could not even accommodate Charlton’s League One season-ticket holders.
Duchatelet never found out who that approach was from because Meire first obstructed the discussions, as shown in the email chain published in VOTV124, and when that was publicised her patron refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement to enable a face-to-face meeting with the potential buyer to take place.
What hasn’t previously been revealed is that on his own initiative Chappell subsequently travelled to Brussels to meet Duchatelet in an effort to persuade the Belgian that he was being seriously misled about Varney and what had happened previously at Charlton by then chairman Richard Murray, a situation which he and others believed was damaging the club.
Where Duchatelet got the idea that the purchaser being lined up was Ebsfleet owner Abdulla Al-Humaidi and whether that came from Murray is unknown, but neither Chappell nor I were ever aware of the interested party’s identity, so we could never have been involved in pushing for a takeover by Al-Humaidi. And Varney has always been adamant that it had nothing to do with Ebbsfleet, where he was executive vice-chairman at the time.
“The person involved wasn’t even Middle Eastern,” he told me this afternoon. “That it wasn't the Ebbsfleet owner could be proven in court, if necessary, but I didn't even tell my wife who it was."
In 2016 Varney threatened to take legal action against Meire over her claims, but was advised by his lawyer that she could not have damaged his reputation because Charlton fans did not take her seriously.
Chappell is also targeted in the latest statement as one of three loan holders blamed by omission for delaying a takeover of the club following Charlton’s victory at Wembley. The others are his fellow former directors Bob Whitehand and David Sumners. By contrast, Murray, Sir Maurice Hatter, David Hughes and David White are thanked "for their coperation in this process".
This claim was quickly undermined by White, who tweeted: “I don’t understand it. I have had one conversation recently asking if I would be happy to discuss my loan and I said yes. That is all. I haven’t discussed anything else, been offered anything or agreed anything.”
It should also be noted that the trio not named are between them are only owed a total of £2.65m, which does not carry interest and is not repayable outside the Premier League.
By contrast Voice of The Valley has learned that Duchatelet rejected an approach last season to buy the club for £45m, which would have included settling the £7m total loans at whatever figure was negotiable. It did not involve renting The Valley or the training ground, another claim now being made by the Belgian against unnamed interested parties. Indeed, Duchatelet himself proposed this a few months ago when he demanded the EFL buy the club.
Via his point man Lieven De Turck Duchatelet subsequently named the asking price as £72m. That compares with the £18.6m Duchatelet paid in 2014, based on figures published in the annual accounts, a sum still sits on the books as debt rolling up interest to the Belgian and consequently adding to the amount he is trying to recoup. It’s hard to see how the relatively minor amount owed to Chappell, Whitehand and Sumners can be a significant obstacle alongside that scale of foolishness.
Duchatelet justifies his exorbitant asking price on the basis that “the value of land and buildings is high because the stadium and the training ground are located in London”, although it seems to escape him that the previous owners were property speculators who would presumably have reflected such an inflated value in their own sale price or secured the backing to develop the land themselves.
With no planning consent for full residential development granted or likely, the practical limitations of the site being squeezed between a cliff and a railway line, as as well as the awkward alignment of Floyd Road itself, and the cost of removing the stadium, a more realistic total valuation of both sites is around £20m.
As with the Belgian's assertion that using the increased Championship revenue to reduce the operating loss instead of funding the playing squad at a higher level won't mean the club has “no chance” of winning promotion to the Premier League, he is simply engaged in more wishful thinking - at best. Clubs that spend around the current Charlton figure of £10m on salary costs in the Championship are highly likely to be relegated, as recent history shows.
Fans are more likely to be interested in his apparently contradictory explanation about manager Lee Bowyer’s immediate future: “There is a trigger in his contract for a contract extension, which we exercised in May, and he needs to agree to this for his contract to be extended as per the current agreement.”
With Bowyer having rejected out of hand an initial offer which was based on a complicated metric involving the number of youth players in the first team, attendances and league position, the Belgian now seems to want him to continue in post on League One wages with a League One budget.
While Duchatelet does go on to talk about "improving Lee's contract" in further talks next week, the Charlton boss is rumoured to be on around £100,000 a year, compared to a Championship expectation of three times that.
Few fans would blame Bowyer for taking issue with Duchatelet over finances. Indeed, it’s not in their interest that he settles for such a disrespectful approach to both himself and the club.
Neither is it true, as Duchatelet claims, that he has personally "continued to pay everything at the club", because a signfiicant proportion of revenue comes from supporters via tickets, EFL central payments and other commercial deals, as well as player sales. In 2016/17 sales were so substantial that Charlton reported a profit. Staff denied the bonuses they expected in 2018 - and which the EFL said it would support them over - will note that the owner's generosity didn't extend to them.
This Duchatalet statement may have been polished up for him so as to be couched in more reasonable terms than usual, but the lie about 2015 gives it away.
It is about blaming other people, and no doubt if Bowyer does leave there be another one to follow which will explain why that isn’t the Belgian’s fault either. Nothing ever is.
RICK EVERITT
There is no takeover.
The fault lies with the ex-directors, not me.
I might not hire Bowyer again
I’m not putting extra money in or lowering the sale price.
We might go down.
Stop protesting.
then the opportunity to ride the momentum will be lost and the outcome will be a return to the bleak days of the early 70's under the apathetic Michael Gliksten with no fan base because they had deserted in their droves as the good late 60's team was sold and not invested in.
Bizarrely in Duchatelet's statement he mentioned the Premier being the goal !
That's a first, At the strange open day over 4 years ago now, I said to Meire, will we have a Premier team to go with the newly laid pitch and her eyes glazed over.
His goal has always been to turn us into Cafc, better known as Crewe Alexandra where Dario Gradi got a bonus as Ashton, Murphy etc were sold from the successful academy teams. So no surprise that Bowyer's draft contract had the playing of academy lads included as a financial incentive.The devil's always in the detail with Duchatelet.
Good for Roland that he validates such activities.
The high we feel now is diminishing, and come August when we kick off without Bow and Co, and most of the current squad have gone with those left either disinterested or too young to see the bigger picture, and we suffer a few 0-4 home defeats, and 0-6 away defeats then protests will resume.
Playing in the higher division with more media and live matches and high profile opposition will be the ideal scenario to re-start protests, maybe leading to a few matches abandoned, club fines and playing behind closed doors.
Oh, and Belgium visits too.
One problem I have come up against in recent days is that the Belgian press, at least the sport-related element, feel he is no longer of interest to their readers (even though journos remain sympathetic to our plight) now that he has sold Standard and the club element of STVV. Action we take will be most effective if the Belgian press provide sympathetic coverage, so we need to think carefully about "newsworthy" action. People are looking at this constantly, that much I can assure you.
I was initially thinking that for RD (compared to previous ridiculous rants) it was a reasonable statement.
But having giving more thought & having re-read it numerous times, I feel that nothing has changed and we are no nearer a take over.
If RD can run us losing only say £2M this year, he will recover much of this by the interest he is charging on the debt.
He will have increased revenue of more than £5M this season due to more TV & gate money.
So if he can keep the costs the same this may be possible.
Then he will continue to wait in the hope that there will be someone somewhere that will eventually pay a price close to what he wants.
If Bowyer, Jacko and Gallen stay I think they may be able to sign enough frees and out of contract players to keep us up.
But it looks like we may well be in a relegation fight with another 5 or 6 clubs.
If Bowyer leaves then I think RD will feel a massive backlash as big or maybe greater than he has already experienced.
So RD give Bowyer a decent contract or you may well regret it.
Only when the aptly named Cash, started to have cash flow problems because of getting involved with nefarious eastern European folk was the plug pulled on Cafc ambitions as we reached the Championship.
As for the owner at Ebbsfleet, his ambition was to build a Disneyland around that area so he appeared to be well healed.
Plus I thought Peter said it wasn't him ?
I assumed it might be an associate of the Ebbsfleet owner.
Varney was CEO when we reached 4th in the premier, numerous staff from that time have told me he was a great boss.
Plus his asking price is far more than the club is worth or anyone else will pay. Until he accepts that there is an impasse. One of the main issues is he is a stubbon old b****r who thinks he knows best.
So neither he nor the fans win and he can afford to sit it out for life.
David White said he had been contacted recently and he had agreed to discuss his outstanding loan.
RD's weasel words inferred what you are saying and it was deliberately misleading.
I hold my hands up and admit that he took me in, before David White's clarification.
He's just destroyed all hope.
Making those excuses that it takes ages for other English clubs to get sold.
He could have done this ages ago.
He is rich. It is not like he NEEDS the money.
Sure, he wants to sell the club in a fair way....but rejecting 45million is what C*nts do!!
Completely absurd!
Just sounds like he is far from being finished with us.
It's just my take on it.