Under New Ownership - at last!

Finally! Finally the news that Charlton Athletic supporters have been waiting on for five weeks since the announcement that Roland Duchatelet had at last found a buyer for the club. The EFL have completed their review of the proposed takeover and sanctioned completion. We are now free from the nightmare of the last five years and are shot of the weird man, made arrogant by wealth, who made a huge mistake in 2014 by second guessing how Financial Fair Play would pan out.

It has been a very difficult last five years (the first year was hopeful) after FFP failed to deliver the opportunity Duchatelet thought would arise and he was left with a string of club investments in which he no longer had any interest. He did manage to offload Standard Liege fairly quickly but they had Champions League pedigree and the anger of the Standard fans towards his dire stewardship was too close to home, so he cut and ran. Sadly, Charlton Athletic were a distant problem and one he was determined not to take a haircut on, especially as his initial investments went south and his appointed Chief Exec dug furiously at the growing financial hole.

It was us, the ordinary fans who have suffered, of course, Duchatelet didn’t bother to see us actually play live after his visit in October 2014. Many, like me, were driven from the club by the ‘war’ Katrien Meire fuelled with the supporters. The deluded Duchatelet just couldn’t see it, in spite of howler after howler he refused to see the logic of what was patently clear – his appointment was driving the club into the ground. The revenues fell off a cliff which forced a policy of player sales and cost-cutting. The grasping Meire eventually left her boss in the lurch when it was clear she was beyond redemption in SE7 and a better offer arrived from the naïve Sheffield Wednesday owner. If Duchatelet wanted a second opinion on Meire, he’s certainly had one since – gone within 12 months and now under a Misconduct Charge by the EFL.

Anyway, today is not a time for yet more reflection. We have had years of that and we all know the score. Rather, it’s a time for celebration and for hope. Hope that the incoming Abu Dhabi owners will avoid the mistakes of Duchatelet and that they will work with the Club supporters to help us move forward and, once again, become the model of a well-run progressive football club which we once were. They have certainly started that by getting the communication with the supporters right.  It will take time but I think we can afford to be patient given the last five years.

So, farewell to the strange old man with mustard-coloured teeth and paragraph Tourettes. If he did anything for Charlton Athletic longer term, it was to give us the blueprint for how not to run a football club and a very long list of clear red lines for the future.