Slaterisms

Panama and Nicaragua boxes ticked, 14 days of summer holiday over, although any hint of gloominess is lifted by the thought of my son arriving here on Saturday to spend almost 2 weeks with us.

More on Panama and Nicaragua soon, but meanwhile back at the good ship Charlton all is not HP. A disappointing start to the season has been compounded by more lack of transparency from the club’s owners.

Michael Slater took to the programme on Saturday to suggest that they are duty bound to listen to credible buyers that can help the club develop quicker but he “had not told anyone that the club is for sale for £40m,” in reference to a couple of recent newspaper stories. This after denying the club was for sale at all at the end of last season.

Slater was somewhat embarrassingly trumped by the Voice of the Valley sold outside The Valley on Saturday that had well respected Sky business editor and lifelong Addicks fan Mark Kleinman offering that the owners, Slater and Jimenez, are busily touting documents around the city looking for potential bidders in the range of £40m. Awkward.

To help with the ‘prospectus,’ the club’s majority owners mentioned that discussions had already been held with Greenwich Council over selling The Valley and building a new stadium along with a residential development elsewhere in the royal borough!

Also that the ‘management’s’ plans were for the club to sell one of the squad’s more valuable players for between £2m – £3m and meanwhile only add to Chris Powell’s squad with free transfers and loans.

Kleinman, who has no upside to offering his information, but is recognised for breaking some critical business stories in the past, said that he had little faith that a credible bidder will emerge, especially at the premium wanted by Slater and Jimenez.

One can argue that looking at new investment and credible buyers is just prudent management, offering The Valley and a new stadium with better value for non-playing revenues is also a large carrot on a stick and, although it would be nice to know auld enemy Greenwich Council’s view, I would hesitate a guess that this move is no more than white noise to entice bidders.

Nevertheless I, like I would hazard a guess, all Charlton fans, felt a large hole in my stomach when I read the suggestion that The Valley could be sold. Remembering especially that Jimenez is a property developer and Slater a lawyer, perhaps not very good ones, but developer and lawyer nonetheless.

As for player sales, one could argue that apart from Carl Jenkinson, no player of value has been sold since January 2011. Which player is valued at £3m is anyone’s guess, and remember that Jimenez overpriced Dale Stephens, but it is obvious that this is the backdrop that Chris Powell has had to wrestle with this summer.

VOTV’s Rick Everitt obviously has some axes to grind, but this is not his story, it is Kleinmann’s. Slater and Jimenez are going to tell us nothing of course. It is what we have come to expect and with the help of unnamed others they naively bought the club to make a profit, a quick one at that, and seem ready for their return, as they surprise themselves that owning a Championship football club is a loss making exercise.

Nothing is obvious, and there are lots of questions and no real patterns of behaviour except that Slater and Jimenez have systematically got rid of almost all of the old Valley guard, long-serving Paul Ellison being the latest, and replaced them with unknown quantities in a PR exercise that would even have the former Iraqi Information Minister shaking his head!

Interestingly accountant Max Deeley is involved in the sale prosepctus, connected in more ways than one to both Michael Slater and a certain Kevin Cash.

One thing that is obvious, is that whatever happens, we the fans will be the last to know and any deal will only be good for the current majority owners and I have, for a while, been pretty convinced of that.