Running out of time
In between work stuff today, I was drafting a post entitles ‘No time to waste.’ This was on the premise that the club are rapidly out of a commodity that no one owns…. time.
Yesterday VOTV highlighted this with Rick’s most recent article. Well worth a read as always. Click here.
But, then the sand in the hourglass sped up very tellingly tonight when the EFL made a statement laying the issues out in a couple of paragraphs. The ESI have failed to “demonstrate that the requirements of the EFL regulations are met.” The EFL are now demanding a meeting “with the current majority owner of ESI and also the proposed new owners, as it seeks to clarify the ongoing ownership issues at the club in the context of the EFL regulations.”
The non-owner owners then fired up the Official Site again saying that they had responded to requests, and they will get on the blower tomorrow. That statement ominously like the one Chris Farnell put on the Bury website a year ago. Also a similar story to the demise of Salisbury City, where Farnell was also involved as their lawyer.
Now the EFL may not be fit for purpose, but I suspect they are not raving liars. Unlike our cast of F*ckwit blood suckers. This has been 8 months since EFL took us over and the EFL still don’t recognize them as Charlton’s owners.
An EFL meeting of majority owner and prospective owner would I take it to mean Tahnoon Nimer and Paul Elliott, with I assume Chris Farnell taking notes. If only we could find out when and where that would be, if it ever happens.
Anyone can buy a football club, as has been evidenced but if professional football’s governing body don’t sanction the owners because they don’t meet their criteria then they can kick them out of their competitions.
Tonight, Charlton face the real possibility of being dumped out of the league. We all know the EFL will not find funding, a sustainable plan, or any real commitment to take our football club forward. Yet, it appears to suit all of the chancers claiming to own our 115-year football club so they can break us up for scrap.
There literally is no time to waste, and we need to publicize this systematic destruction of our historic football club to everyone.
Chicago Addick 
Our only hope of survival as a football club is administration. That would at least force Roly’s hand.
Starting to think you are right Alex. Take the 12 points next season. Stabilize with youngsters and go on from there hopefully with a Barclay and Varney backing.
Let’s end this farce, if it means Administration so be it. If we go into Administration hopefully Barclay and Varney can then take control. There are several promising players in the U23s and U18s and augmented with judicious selections from the ranks of available out of contract players and some loan players along with the remaining 1st. team squad players still under contract we may be able to retain Div.1 status despite the 12 points we will be deducted., then we go for promotion in 21/22.
I’m hating it that I have to write this, but admin could be the wisest move. It would mean debts written off and the club sold to new owners who *hopefully* have got some sound backing behind them. Effectively a factory reset. It means starting off next season at minus 12 points, but we’ll have all year to make them up and so promotion next season is a write off. It also means a lot of people who are owed money taking a bath but they might not get paid anyway, I feel for them.
Then the EFL need to get their house in order – there are too many clubs out there like Charlton dodgy owners who can’t answer simple questions like what stake do you hold in the company and opaque finances. Wigan recently went into admin with a wage bill of £19m against annual turnover of £11.5m, that is not sustainable and too many clubs in the Championship are operating on rickety balance sheets. Perhaps wage caps and the ownership issue could be resolved with an unambiguous statement laying out who the owners are and what their stake is. It concerns me that our consortium has just one publicly identifiable member in it. What is going on?