The Takeover Thread - Duchatelet Finally Sells (Jan 2020)

Have we signed Delort yet? 

Seems slightly less lazy than the Sky / BT Sport reports. Obviously tilted more toward the Aussies but has at least got details in there, so maybe more informed by someone in the bid? 

Blucher said:

As others have said, it seems very unlikely that we're anywhere close to a sale and I think that, by now, we all take LDT's usual words of sophistry with a pinch of salt.

The idea of three different prices having been agreed - with the 'International party' yet to even complete due diligence - is odd and also apparently inconsistent with the club's website, which records that "LDT said RD doesn’t want to lower the price." The latter point is really the nub of the matter, although how long can this idiot go on absorbing £10 million annual losses ? The monthly operating losses may have come down but the failure to secure our best players on extended contracts - a consequence of 18 months in limbo - means that Duchatelet has, Taylor aside, more or less run out of saleable assets.

I'm very grateful to our supporters on the Fans Forum and particularly to those like @Henry Irving, @razil and others who took the opportunity to subject LDT to (as one judge put it) "the purifying ordeal of cross-examination".

The monthly losses - which is a misrepresentation of the cash flow anyway - may have “come down” but they will still be off the scale ridiculous for a club in League One.

How do we know this? Because in 2017/18 the operating loss was £13.3m - down from £14.3m a year earlier. Anyone who thinks that figure is now, say, £6m, would have to explain how LDT has overseen a cut of a third of all costs since last summer, given that revenue is basically flat. It is fanciful.

Apart from 2015/16, when operating costs ballooned to £25m, Charlton’s expenses have been pretty static since 2014. League One costs have been marginally higher than previously in the Championship at around £21m - before RD’s interest charges are taken into account.

Some of this “spending” is not real money spent in year - Naby Sarr’s transfer fee, for example, which is amortised over the five-year length of his contract rather than all being in 2015/16. Ditto Igor from 2014/15 onwards.

Even so, the idea that LDT’s cost-cutting has had a significant impact on the finances is about as likely as the claim on the side of Boris’s bus.

it is very unlikely you can make much impression in League One without dramatically slashing wages - which means player wages. Hence unless we are promoted it seems inevitable the contract round will be used to drastically prune the squad.

There are plenty of players of whom fans may say that’s not disastrous, while others will be a significant loss, but overall the likely consequence of a meaningful cut in staff costs is bound to be a fall in quality.

bazjonster said:

Do people genuinely and seriously buy into this fiction that this LDV Vans fella regurgitates on a monthly basis?
The reason why he keeps peddling this utter tripe is because he reads this forum and knows that people get really excited about the fairly tales and yarns he spins! It’s the same rubbish that we’ve been hearing time and time and time again, and yet people pitch up to these masquerades of a meeting and treat LDV Vans  like he’s the love child of the despicable Jim White! 
It’s beyond any sense of normality and comprehension that he’s even given the time of day! We’ve had this bull for over 12 months now; starting with the complete farce that was the Australian ‘bid’, through to fictitious British bidders, bankers, and now another overseas interested party! Laugh, I nearly went to Ethiopia!
You’ll forgive me for being aghast at this latest tripe, but experience has proven that LDV Vans is taking us all for a ride under the behest of our tyrant of an owner!
Always been a game, always will be a game to these clowns. 
I’ve said it time and time again, it’s Duchatelet ‘payback’, and the last year or so has proved that!!!

Nail on head.

grumpyaddick said:

irudd123 said:

https://www.foxsports.com.au/football/aussie-consortium-right-back-in-running-to-take-over-english-league-one-side-charlton-athletic/news-story/c0876580cc2e55a46bd2fd9c1acef152

Maybe I'm just a cynical hack but the Fox and Sky reports both look to be lifted from the same press release which has Tom Rubinstein's finger prints all over it.

Why is the club so keen for the world to think a take over is imminent when clearly,  it is not?

It’s season ticket renewal time!

Concerning my "sympathy" for the Owner - at the meeting I prefaced my remark with a tongue-in-cheek reference to Stockholm Syndrome. RD is a man of 72 in apparently robust health who has €1.5 billion to his name. I really don't think he needs my sympathy, genuine or otherwise.

We all know that only one man can fix CAFC's dire and wholly avoidable situation. Reduce the cost of the club to a realistic level and it can be sold in a minute. Such interested parties as there may or may not be have doubtless incurred considerable expenses so far without any benefit and that is at least in part what keeps them at the Owner's table. As for the rest of us, we know the S.P. only too well. This is one man's problem to be solved, and that man can save himself £10 million a year at the stroke of a pen.

When it happens, it happens. 

Just hope its sooner rather than later.

Wheresmeticket? said:

happyvalley said:

1612, 10 witches from Pendle Lancashire are hanged after being found guilty of witchcraft.

Alice Nutter was an ancestor of mine.






Just saying.

" For whene the Brekksitters resolve to move heaven and bringe this land to a new worlde and the frakkers shall undermine all goode things only then shall the darke one arise from Europe's cockpit and put an ende to thy suffering and turmoil. Only then will the heartache endeth for the downtrodden folk in the Valley of the Blessed and great shall be the rejoicing."

Another "Nice and Accurate Prophecy" from the old girl!






Oh sorry, this was Agnes Nutter, not your esteemed ancestor #Wheresmeticket.




Apologies and acknowledgements to Messrs Pratchett and Gaiman     

grumpyaddick said:

irudd123 said:

https://www.foxsports.com.au/football/aussie-consortium-right-back-in-running-to-take-over-english-league-one-side-charlton-athletic/news-story/c0876580cc2e55a46bd2fd9c1acef152

Maybe I'm just a cynical hack but the Fox and Sky reports both look to be lifted from the same press release which has Tom Rubinstein's finger prints all over it.

Why is the club so keen for the world to think a take over is imminent when clearly,  it is not?

Season ticket time!!

happyvalley said:

1615, The Grolsch Brewery is founded in The Netherlands.

2230, Everybody’s absolutely plastered