Sad thing is, he (won't say his name) is obviously very clever to amass his fortune that can't be denied. Football was his little mix of a business/social experiment that went very wrong for him, hence why he has sold his other cloobs, we were unfortunately part of his crazy experiment.
His eyes though are very firmly on Sarf London real estate, that's the biggest worry.
I'm sure most of us didn't need to read any article about sustainability to know that football in Britain has been heading towards skid row for years as the rich get richer the poor get poorer. Add into the mix those wide boys who gamble to get rich quick upon reaching the premier league. And when it fails to come to fruition they either wait for some mug investor to come along to try their hand failing which, sell / develop the land and or liquidate the club. I have no doubt RD would have done the latter but fortunately he failed to do his DD properly and now he's had to revert to the former.
Football is broken, RD has fluked the current resurgence of our fortunes on the pitch and is hanging around like a bad smell with his unrealistic price demands. Nothing this egotistical megalomaniac owner wanted to do with this club can be dressed up as being good.
What Roland was on to was shown when he took over Standard Liege ?
They had a top side and won the Belgium League for the first time in 25 years in 07/08 season, and in 08/09. Plus the cup in 10/11. Standard were back as the top team in Belgium, what could possibly go wrong ?
The answer to that question was Duchatelet, a weathy local businessman who became owner a month after they won the cup 23th June 2011.
He dismantled that successful team and made millions from the sale of the young stars of Standard Liege, notably Michy Batshuayi who scored 21 goals in the Belgian League so Roland sold him to Marseille for 4.5 million and then he was sold to Chelsea for 33 million in June 16 where Duchatelet personally made 10 million from both Transfers ! Similar to an agent.
That's what Roland was on to. Ways of making money But in England the rules were different and he made error after error in his understanding of Cafc and it's fan base.
Roland Duchatelet Raison d'être was to make money from the young players at Cafc and unlike when he was in Belgium he has screwed up on that. Aribo who he lost for peanuts because of messing about with an improved contract.
The Douchebag has been a nightmare and just because we are not Bury or Bolton doesn't justify his tenure.
Please look up the business man Mike Garlick at Burnley who is worth a modest 50 million on how to run a successful football club in the modern age if you don't have Middle east or dirty Russian money to put into a club.
Unlike Duchatelet, Garlick doesn't leave a bad taste in the mouth.
Would mean many clubs, possibly even the smaller Championship clubs going part time. More regionalisation is needed. Recently in the National League North, Hereford travelled to Kings Lynn for a game. Apart from asking when was Hereford towed 'up north', I wonder what the losses were for that little outing. Another example, Gateshead travelling to Torquay for a midweek league game. So many clubs are dependant on a sugar daddy to keep them going, and when daddy gets bored, there is nowhere to turn to get the bills paid. I know that @ElfsborgAddick likes to wander the country in search of football pastures new, but I'll wager that even he would not consider a return trip from Durham to Devon to watch a NL game on a blustery Tuesday evening
So depressing reading more and more of this type of thing.
A few wins and people are quick to forget. The gullible fools.
I haven’t forgotten and I’m not praising him. So many people are completely missing my point, or maybe I didn’t communicate it clearly enough. I said he’s got it wrong. But his ‘idea’ of self sustainability wasn’t a bad idea. He just never managed to put it into practice because he’s an idiot.
And also to the other posters I know he has run up 60 million. But what I mean is I’m kind of glad now that he didn’t throw obscene transfer fees and wages at people in a desperate attempt to reach the premier league. Imagine he had, we would now be sitting on far worse debts and in much deeper trouble.
Why stop at the 'idea is self sustainability?' Why not make a profit? If he had, had any ambition it might have been a different scenario but within 12 months of buying us his FFP plan was scuppered and he should have sold then. His failure to control Meire or take a sufficiently close hand has left him in the state he is.
So depressing reading more and more of this type of thing.
A few wins and people are quick to forget. The gullible fools.
That's nothing, you should see the comments on Twitter from imbeciles slagging of CARD and making snide remarks about the effort that has been put in by an awful lot of wonderful people who all have the best interests of our club at heart. ... and no I'm not an active member of CARD but fully support all they are setting out to achieve.
So I have always been a firm hater of RD and everything he has done to our club. He’s made numerous mistakes and led to me boycotting. However. I have just been reading the below:
Now don’t get me wrong this doesn’t mean RD was right all along or that I forgive him for his utter ineptitude. And I place the recent success and upturn firmly with Bowyer, Jacko and Gallen.
But maybe, just maybe RD had the right idea when he took us over. He’s clearly got it seriously wrong but his plan, to make us self sustainable, was not a bad thing. I now look at these other clubs, Bury, Bolton etc and feel glad it’s not us. Let’s be honest we were in a bad way after the Cash/Jimenez debacle but now we are probably one of the more healthy clubs in the Championship.
Im actually glad he hasn't thrown money into us and I’d take our position now over most.
Becoming "self sustainable" is a goal, not a plan. It's absolutely laudable to have a goal, but to conflate it with a plan makes no sense.
He has broadly made just three mistakes. But they're all pretty important and, for a self-described businessman and thinker, they're all unforgivable.
His first mistake is not to have a plan. He had an idea that involved sharing resource around a network, but no plan as to how that could be measured, how mistakes could be mitigated and how successes could be repeated.
His second mistake was to have a goal instead of a plan. He wanted to save money. Then he wanted to sell players profitably. Then he wanted to increase the value of players by sending them to Charlton from other clubs. Then he wanted to sell the club. Then, eventually, when all his other strategic lurches had brought no profit, and he ended up achieving a surprise promotion, he settled on the goal of not-losing-money. But then used that as a reason to put up the price and, in so doing, failed, again, to sell the club.
His third mistake was, once stumbling onto a goal which he could turn into a plan, was not to develop it further. The squad has been improved with adequate replacements for players lost after last season, but what's the further plan? Does he plan to aim for promotion? Does he aim just to avoid (another) relegation? Does he aim to ensure Charlton are as highly-placed as possible by the next window and flog the club then?
I suppose in the fullness of time, we will all come to understand what it was all about. Once the dust had settled, we will find out what the masterstroke was. My hunch? It was all about proving Katrien right. She said Roland doesn't do failure. So, if he never had a plan, he could argue that he never failed to achieve it.
So, sorry, but no. RD did not "have the right idea". He had no fucking idea.
From day one, he's been a malignant cancer, slowly destroying the club and extinguishing its life. He needs to be removed, before the harm he continues to do proves terminal.
He should certainly never, ever be considered someone who had "the right idea".
Part of the £60m debt was existing debts of around £34m. So he has doubled the debt through accumulated operating losses. You can add to the accumulated losses all the transfer fees we have received to get to the real extent of losses. This is hardly evidence of having found the formula for a self sustaining football club - or a model that doesn't involve creating debt - which some seem to have missed.
All he has done is to restrict the budget regardless of what the impact is on the team, and because he is assuming he can sell the club, regardless of the longer term impact.
Yes it makes sense to restrict the budget, it makes even more sense to spend it sensibly in the first place.
He has accidentally stumbled on LB and SG to spend an entirely inadequate budget that has been set without any reference to any clever business model but to arbitrarily stem the flow of cash RD has to find to cover losses of his own creation regardless of all other considerations. He lies to obscure this truth by insisting it is to make the club attractive to a buyer.
Due to the transfer fees received he is actually more likely to make a profit this year to service the interest on the debt he created rather than on the staff or the squad.
Part of the £60m debt was existing debts of around £34m. So he has doubled the debt through accumulated operating losses. You can add to the accumulated losses all the transfer fees we have received to get to the real extent of losses. This is hardly evidence of having found the formula for a self sustaining football club - or a model that doesn't involve creating debt - which some seem to have missed.
All he has done is to restrict the budget regardless of what the impact is on the team, and because he is assuming he can sell the club, regardless of the longer term impact.
Yes it makes sense to restrict the budget, it makes even more sense to spend it sensibly in the first place.
He has accidentally stumbled on LB and SG to spend an entirely inadequate budget that has been set without any reference to any clever business model but to arbitrarily stem the flow of cash RD has to find to cover losses of his own creation regardless of all other considerations. He lies to obscure this truth by insisting it is to make the club attractive to a buyer.
Due to the transfer fees received he is actually more likely to make a profit this year to service the interest on the debt he created rather than on the staff or the squad.
Please don't give this man any credit whatsoever.
I hesitate to question a well informed poster, but I'm almost certain that the current £65M debt, does not include any existing debt at the takeover, apart from the following.
It includes the purchase price @£18M & the loan for the North Stand, which possibly had @£5m still owing.
I'm confident Airman Brown, will provide accurate figures.
Surely we can't have run ip 65m of debt through just roland, that's crazy! Read somewhere that we were 30m in debt on relegation from the prem and there's no way cash/jiminez/slater improved the financial situation. Terrible management all round :-(
I'm sure many of us initially saw merit in being part of a network which could share expertise and participate in internal loans and transfers - and in competent hands it might have worked to everyone's benefit and moved us towards sustainability.
But, and it has been a massive BUT, the hands holding our precious club were far from competent. Not only did RD know nothing about the business, but he selected as his advisers and implementers people like Meire, Dreisen, Freye, Murray, et al, who were as hapless and hopeless as he was himself. BUT probably cheap. Except, of course, they cost him a fortune in unsuitable players on inflated wages and long contracts, as well as losing him the good will of the fans.
Yes, at the 11th hour RD has got lucky, with Bowyer, Gallen, and others on the playing side saving his bacon for him. BUT he has absolutely no justification if he tries to claim credit for this - indeed the saga this summer over Bowyer's contract made it seem RD was hell bent on killing the goose which was laying golden eggs for him, and potentially destroying all the club achieved despite him last season.
Long term we have no future under the ownership of this incompetent egotistical weirdo. I can understand why some are enjoying the short term resurgence and closing their eyes if not their minds to the underlying problem of Duchatelet, BUT if the Charlton we love is to be there for future generations, we owe it to them to leave no stone unturned to make him fully aware that he is not acceptable as our owner, and for most of us never can be.
Part of the £60m debt was existing debts of around £34m. So he has doubled the debt through accumulated operating losses. You can add to the accumulated losses all the transfer fees we have received to get to the real extent of losses. This is hardly evidence of having found the formula for a self sustaining football club - or a model that doesn't involve creating debt - which some seem to have missed.
All he has done is to restrict the budget regardless of what the impact is on the team, and because he is assuming he can sell the club, regardless of the longer term impact.
Yes it makes sense to restrict the budget, it makes even more sense to spend it sensibly in the first place.
He has accidentally stumbled on LB and SG to spend an entirely inadequate budget that has been set without any reference to any clever business model but to arbitrarily stem the flow of cash RD has to find to cover losses of his own creation regardless of all other considerations. He lies to obscure this truth by insisting it is to make the club attractive to a buyer.
Due to the transfer fees received he is actually more likely to make a profit this year to service the interest on the debt he created rather than on the staff or the squad.
Please don't give this man any credit whatsoever.
I hesitate to question a well informed poster, but I'm almost certain that the current £65M debt, does not include any existing debt at the takeover, apart from the following.
It includes the purchase price @£18M & the loan for the North Stand, which possibly had @£5m still owing.
I'm confident Airman Brown, will provide accurate figures.
I'm just going by the bank loan and creditors (exclusive of the directors loans) shown in the 2013 accounts which disappeared and which i am assuming were settled by Staprix in the form of new debt. Not a forensic examination, and there would have been spending on Sparrows Lane I guess which I have not covered, so will stand corrected on exact debt he has racked up through losses.
Would mean many clubs, possibly even the smaller Championship clubs going part time. More regionalisation is needed. Recently in the National League North, Hereford travelled to Kings Lynn for a game. Apart from asking when was Hereford towed 'up north', I wonder what the losses were for that little outing. Another example, Gateshead travelling to Torquay for a midweek league game. So many clubs are dependant on a sugar daddy to keep them going, and when daddy gets bored, there is nowhere to turn to get the bills paid. I know that @ElfsborgAddick likes to wander the country in search of football pastures new, but I'll wager that even he would not consider a return trip from Durham to Devon to watch a NL game on a blustery Tuesday evening
Certainly would not mate.
Particularly as I'd have to take the journey from Bromley to Devon/Durham first!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comments
His eyes though are very firmly on Sarf London real estate, that's the biggest worry.
Football is broken, RD has fluked the current resurgence of our fortunes on the pitch and is hanging around like a bad smell with his unrealistic price demands. Nothing this egotistical megalomaniac owner wanted to do with this club can be dressed up as being good.
What Roland was on to was shown when he took over Standard Liege ?
They had a top side and won the Belgium League for the first time in 25 years in 07/08 season, and in 08/09. Plus the cup in 10/11. Standard were back as the top team in Belgium, what could possibly go wrong ?
The answer to that question was Duchatelet, a weathy local businessman who became owner a month after they won the cup 23th June 2011.
He dismantled that successful team and made millions from the sale of the young stars of Standard Liege, notably Michy Batshuayi who scored 21 goals in the Belgian League so Roland sold him to Marseille for 4.5 million and then he was sold to Chelsea for 33 million in June 16 where Duchatelet personally made 10 million from both Transfers ! Similar to an agent.
That's what Roland was on to.
Ways of making money But in England the rules were different and he made error after error in his understanding of Cafc and it's fan base.
Roland Duchatelet Raison d'être was to make money from the young players at Cafc and unlike when he was in Belgium he has screwed up on that. Aribo who he lost for peanuts because of messing about with an improved contract.
The Douchebag has been a nightmare and just because we are not Bury or Bolton doesn't justify his tenure.
Please look up the business man Mike Garlick at Burnley who is worth a modest 50 million on how to run a successful football club in the modern age if you don't have Middle east or dirty Russian money to put into a club.
Unlike Duchatelet, Garlick doesn't leave a bad taste in the mouth.
So many clubs are dependant on a sugar daddy to keep them going, and when daddy gets bored, there is nowhere to turn to get the bills paid.
I know that @ElfsborgAddick likes to wander the country in search of football pastures new, but I'll wager that even he would not consider a return trip from Durham to Devon to watch a NL game on a blustery Tuesday evening
That's nothing, you should see the comments on Twitter from imbeciles slagging of CARD and making snide remarks about the effort that has been put in by an awful lot of wonderful people who all have the best interests of our club at heart. ... and no I'm not an active member of CARD but fully support all they are setting out to achieve.
He has broadly made just three mistakes. But they're all pretty important and, for a self-described businessman and thinker, they're all unforgivable.
His first mistake is not to have a plan. He had an idea that involved sharing resource around a network, but no plan as to how that could be measured, how mistakes could be mitigated and how successes could be repeated.
His second mistake was to have a goal instead of a plan. He wanted to save money. Then he wanted to sell players profitably. Then he wanted to increase the value of players by sending them to Charlton from other clubs. Then he wanted to sell the club. Then, eventually, when all his other strategic lurches had brought no profit, and he ended up achieving a surprise promotion, he settled on the goal of not-losing-money. But then used that as a reason to put up the price and, in so doing, failed, again, to sell the club.
His third mistake was, once stumbling onto a goal which he could turn into a plan, was not to develop it further. The squad has been improved with adequate replacements for players lost after last season, but what's the further plan? Does he plan to aim for promotion? Does he aim just to avoid (another) relegation? Does he aim to ensure Charlton are as highly-placed as possible by the next window and flog the club then?
I suppose in the fullness of time, we will all come to understand what it was all about. Once the dust had settled, we will find out what the masterstroke was. My hunch? It was all about proving Katrien right. She said Roland doesn't do failure. So, if he never had a plan, he could argue that he never failed to achieve it.
So, sorry, but no. RD did not "have the right idea". He had no fucking idea.
From day one, he's been a malignant cancer, slowly destroying the club and extinguishing its life. He needs to be removed, before the harm he continues to do proves terminal.
He should certainly never, ever be considered someone who had "the right idea".
All he has done is to restrict the budget regardless of what the impact is on the team, and because he is assuming he can sell the club, regardless of the longer term impact.
Yes it makes sense to restrict the budget, it makes even more sense to spend it sensibly in the first place.
He has accidentally stumbled on LB and SG to spend an entirely inadequate budget that has been set without any reference to any clever business model but to arbitrarily stem the flow of cash RD has to find to cover losses of his own creation regardless of all other considerations. He lies to obscure this truth by insisting it is to make the club attractive to a buyer.
Due to the transfer fees received he is actually more likely to make a profit this year to service the interest on the debt he created rather than on the staff or the squad.
Please don't give this man any credit whatsoever.
It includes the purchase price @£18M & the loan for the North Stand, which possibly had @£5m still owing.
I'm confident Airman Brown, will provide accurate figures.
But, and it has been a massive BUT, the hands holding our precious club were far from competent. Not only did RD know nothing about the business, but he selected as his advisers and implementers people like Meire, Dreisen, Freye, Murray, et al, who were as hapless and hopeless as he was himself. BUT probably cheap. Except, of course, they cost him a fortune in unsuitable players on inflated wages and long contracts, as well as losing him the good will of the fans.
Yes, at the 11th hour RD has got lucky, with Bowyer, Gallen, and others on the playing side saving his bacon for him. BUT he has absolutely no justification if he tries to claim credit for this - indeed the saga this summer over Bowyer's contract made it seem RD was hell bent on killing the goose which was laying golden eggs for him, and potentially destroying all the club achieved despite him last season.
Long term we have no future under the ownership of this incompetent egotistical weirdo. I can understand why some are enjoying the short term resurgence and closing their eyes if not their minds to the underlying problem of Duchatelet, BUT if the Charlton we love is to be there for future generations, we owe it to them to leave no stone unturned to make him fully aware that he is not acceptable as our owner, and for most of us never can be.
Just GO, Roland, and shut the door behind you.
Particularly as I'd have to take the journey from Bromley to Devon/Durham first!!!!!!!!!!!!!!