Friday 3 January 2014

Hip-Hip-Doo-Sha-Ta-Lay or Douchebag?

Whilst we await confirmation on the Official Site that Roland Duchatelet has acquired our famous football club for a measly £20m the takeover appears to be polarising fans' opinion. For ease of reference I am summarising below.

Camp A - Hip-Hip-Doo-Sha-Ta-Lay

1) The guy's loaded, how can it be bad news?
2) He's moved on the potless squatters
3) He has experience running football clubs
4) Standard Liege are top of Belgium's Premium League
5) £20m is a major investment and he's in this to make money
6) Promotion to the Premium League is the biggest prize in sport
7) He's a politician, so we can expect him to actually communicate with us
8) He has a stable of other clubs in less competitive leagues with players to move around
9) He's a pro-European and will value us as much, if not more, than Standard Liege
10) He's 67 and wants some fun before he retires

Camp B - Douchebag

1) His money's all tied-up in business and other football clubs
2) He's over-extended himself with four clubs and will rob Peter to pay Paul
3) His track record with the Standard fans is not too clever - they are raising funds to try and buy him out
4) He brought in a new manager and sold the best players at Standard after taking over
5) The Valley, Sparrows Lane and the playing squad are worth £20m, so he's got them cheap by taking on the debt
6) He'll never invest enough for the Premier League - we will be a feeder club for Standard Liege
7) You can't trust politicians
8) His grand plan is to move players between his four clubs artificially enhancing their value before selling them for a profit
9) He is a Belgian politician and knows where his bread is buttered - Standard Liege will always come first
10) He's 67 and has a short-term plan to get us competing in the Championship and sell us on

For me proof of pudding will be what he does between now and May. He can't gamble with a new manager with us in the position we are in. We need a couple of quality players in order to secure our Championship status. He needs to communicate well with the fans and set-up a convincing strategy for the club. 

If he does those things, then we can have few complaints and satisfy ourselves that we are shot of Jiminez & Co (more on them on another day).

PS It's been hammering down for most of the night in SE7 and the rain has just stopped (8am). Expect confirmation at 11am that Saturday's cup match against Oxford United is OFF.

4 comments:

  1. Camp A for me , he will definetley have a strategy for success rather then the last lot who only took over the club to cross their fingers and hope for a rich Arab to come along so they could make "easy money" .
    The only problem I can see with our Belgian friend is that his strategy may not work!! But in my mind he recognises that he needs success to make his investment work and we cannot ask for more than that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sciurus Carolinensis Nemesis3 January 2014 at 11:39

    Camp A item 2 carries enough weight for me to happily fall in behind Monsieur D. Nothing involving Spanish tony was ever gonna be good for anyone but spanish tony and even he didn't come out of this one very far ahead, if at all. Bon débarras! As they probably say in Liege
    Bienvenue M. Duchatelet

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh joyous day! The Mute, the Citeh fan and Part-Time Protheroe have all left never to return. We owe Roland one for that alone. But wait, he's made a thoughtful first move in appointing Richard Murray non-exec Chairman. He has bought out Murray's stake, so he has chosen to do this and it's a smart move. The fans know Murray bleeds Charlton and that he oversaw the most successful period in modern times and has kept the club afloat on and off for a long time. We owe Roland two for that. My bet is Richard Murray will promote contract extensions where they are needed including Chris Powell. New CEO please too. Scratching my head to think of the ideal candidate....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Camp A for me, a very wise move appointing RM and if, as stated by camp B followers, that he's only in it to make money, well, there's only one way he is going to achieve that and that is by getting us back to the Premiership, which surely none of us can complain about.

    With the amount of stick he seems to get from the Liege supporters, who's to say that he's not thought that he's time there is done and let's face it, there's potentially more money to be made from getting Charlton into the Premier League.

    It's my bet that he has already planned an exit strategy from Liege.

    ReplyDelete

Go on, you know you want to....