It's been a hectic working week so first chance to post on Katrien's latest own goal. On Tuesday during the press conference to welcome Russell Slade she managed to blurt something out which over-shadowed Slade's introduction and has the potential to cause ongoing damage to the club. She really is absolutely hopeless and it's an indictment to have her mismanaging our once proud club. It shows so clearly the contempt with which Duchatelet holds Charlton Athletic.
She was asked whether the change of heart over foreign network managers perhaps signalled a corresponding change in approach over ownerhsip and might reflect Roland's attempt to make the club more atrractive to prospective buyers. In her response Katrien managed to name Varney as part of a previous approach to acquie the club and to say that his offer included what would be highly controversial plans to relocate from the Valley. Once again, you have to wonder how she ever qualified in the legal profession?
Given it's already in the public domain that Meire avoided meeting Varney to hear him out, it's hard to fathom that she might know that a Valley exit would be part of any plans of Varney's interested party. She and Duchatelet are also on record as saying that they didn't entertain Varney because he might have been looking go place an advertisement at the ground or something equally less deserving of their precious time. The automatic reaction is to see this as an impulsive and naive response, albeit from an incredibly niave individual, who was trying to shoot the idea of a sale down and and to position 'the Shareholder' as a man who holds protecting the fans' Holy Grail of The Valley as paramount. The Shareholder being a man so moved by watching his first match at The Valley in A.D. 2014, that he hasn't been back since. The irony here is delicious.
Unfortunately, as Meire should know by now (she's had plenty of warnings), you need to choose your words carefully when speaking publicly and she was quickly picked-up by Varney who first denied, quite forcefully, that there was any mention or intention of his prospective buyer to move the club from The Valley. He then followed that by challenging Meire to retract her statement within 48 hours. Meire has managed to stay quiet on the subject since but her two days are up tomorrow.
The irony here is that Varney was a consummate Chief Executive when he ran Charlton Athletic and wouldn't have made the schoolgirl error that Meire appears to have. On that basis, my guess is he didn't give her 48 hours to retract her statement just because it sounded authoritative, so tomorrow could be very interesting. If Meire can't prove what she said, this is a massive slur on Peter Varney and his prospective buyers and Meire could find herself falling back on her legal training. Now, there's a thought to warm the cockles.
