The Daily Mail Online is reporting that we have been taken over "on Friday night" by Belgian millionaire, Roland Duchatelet. Duchatelet is the 67 year old owner of Standard Liege who top the Belgian league. He is also the leader of Vivant, a Liberal political party in Belgium.
Hard to know what to think about this, especially as the price being touted is £14m. First question would be why did Josh Harris back out? Perhaps Jiminez has paid the price for gambling with a poor hand? Anyway, I will be happy if this is true as it should give us the security we need. My second thought is to wonder whether the manager and players were aware of this on Boxing Day and it reflected in their play, although I will quickly discount that on the basis that they are professionals and there would be no reason for them to have been aware any earlier than anyone else (Twitter also a huge risk at that stage in negotiations).
If you want to look for a negative, Duchatelet's tactics when taking over at Liege was to sell all the best players and start from scratch which provoked a very strong reaction from the fans. That's not to say he would do the same here and I am guessing he will need to be far more cautious not being as familiar with Championship football.
If it gets confirmed on the Official Site, then Sunday should be interesting.
Hard to know what to think about this, especially as the price being touted is £14m. First question would be why did Josh Harris back out? Perhaps Jiminez has paid the price for gambling with a poor hand? Anyway, I will be happy if this is true as it should give us the security we need. My second thought is to wonder whether the manager and players were aware of this on Boxing Day and it reflected in their play, although I will quickly discount that on the basis that they are professionals and there would be no reason for them to have been aware any earlier than anyone else (Twitter also a huge risk at that stage in negotiations).
If you want to look for a negative, Duchatelet's tactics when taking over at Liege was to sell all the best players and start from scratch which provoked a very strong reaction from the fans. That's not to say he would do the same here and I am guessing he will need to be far more cautious not being as familiar with Championship football.
If it gets confirmed on the Official Site, then Sunday should be interesting.
It's on the website, Dave, so "hoera, hourra", let's look forward to mussels and frites at the Valley. M Duchatelet could become a famous Belgian!
ReplyDeleteGeoff - can't see confirmation yet, just an acknowledgement that talks are continuing. The fact that the price of £14m was given out with the news does worry me a bit that Jiminez and Cash are still playing poker here and this could turn out to be another false dawn.
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDeleteHad an amazing conversation last night with a Belgian guy who lives a couple of miles from us (first time I've met him) he is an Anderlecht supporter but was incredibly knowledgeable regarding the English game, when I told him I was a Charlton supporter, he laughed, OK, I've become hardened to that retort over the years, however, he didn't laugh due to my support for the ADDICKS but because he knew of the RD bid, he said that Liege supporters have warmed to him but apparently he does have the ability to make people adore and hate him in equal measure.
We spoke about the rumour that the deal had stuttered/collapsed and he said that he would see if a Liege friend of his knew anything. He called me half an hour ago and said that his Liege friend had heard that the deal was definitely off, nothing been reported officially however.