Barclay and Varney drop out
The Andrew Barclay and Peter Varney takeover of Charlton was always destined to fail. Too good to be true. A progressive young empathetic businessman with plenty of family money combined with, well, simply one of us. Not only an Addick, but a proven leader. I’ve had dreams not as good as that.
Richard Murray has poisoned Roland Duchatelet’s mind towards Peter Varney about absolute claptrap. But the snake Murray got into the Belgian’s head and he was never prepared to speak to Varney or Barclay. Add to that as Barclay said himself, the risks of doing business with ESI are also too great, then today the pair decided to drop out of their bid to buy the club.
So after 6 months of due diligence and an open and professional approach the Barclay and Varney bid is dead.. at least for now.
Step forward then Thomas Sandgaard, the Danish born US based founder, chairman and chief executive of medical device manufacturer Zynex Inc, based in Colorado.
Since bringing his bid out into the open, primarily to get Duchatelet to take him seriously, Sandgaard has actively interacted with Charlton fans online and has now made contact with the Belgian, who vitally still owns The Valley and Sparrows Lane.
Sandgaard is also engaged with ESI v1, and one would think that his initial aim will be to navigate through the mess and at least purchase the club from ESI and then take on the mad Belgian. There is also a strand of thought that Sandgaard engages with Barclay down the road.
I’m frazzled by all of this to be honest and my overwhelming hypothesis of Sandgaard is to trust no one. Yet Varney and Barclay’s promotion of him has given me more comfort, but I’ve honestly not had the time, or the stomach to shape an opinion. Plenty of others have though if you have the energy to read through them.
One man though stands in the middle of all of this carnage. Well, this one, the last one, the one before and the one before that if my memory serves me correctly.
Richard Murray did good things for this club a long, long time ago, although very much not on his own. Yet I really struggle to find any evidence of what positive marks he has made on the club for the last decade. This is always a tricky subject, because under Murray’s chairmanship Charlton had the best times of my 45 years of supporting this darn football club.
Nonetheless amongst all of this noise and chaos of ownership, I keep coming back to one person. Murray’s influence has long been only about brown-nosing and manipulation. I can almost forgive him that, but what I can’t forgive is the utter silence. The silence of guilt and the couldn’t care less.
With talk now of Murray espousing a move to the Greenwich Peninsula, it is now time to remove him from our club.
Chicago Addick 
He espoused this once before I seem to remember – back in the good days – and Peter Varney was at his side then. I was so, so disappointed it was even being talked about, and still can’t understand it. Mind you – what would RR do then with the stadium?
Agree totally. After Douchebag sacked Chris Powell just as Charlton were about to take on Sheffield Utd in a Quarter Final of the cup, Murray should have resigned in protest but instead he chose to fall into line with RD. Had he done so and, been more vocal, he would probably enjoy to this day the support and warm regards of the fanbase. But he chose to support a wrong ‘un. His silence can be interpreted as unconditional support for RD. Now it appears that Murray is insidiously conniving in the shadows to re-locate Charlton to Greenwich Penninsula. He of all people will know how much the Valley means to Charlton supporters so it is a huge slap in the face to fans. Murray knows the Valley is the Club’s spiritual home on which the campaign to return Charlton to the Valley was based. Murray is a judas who cannot be trusted. He has been rumbled and I think the time is long overdue that he fell on his sword. As an aside, Greenwich Council has said it will resist all attempts to relocate Charlton out of the Borough which is great but it is notably very quiet about its position regarding the Club being relocated within the Borough. Hmmmm.
Just playing devil’s advocate here..but if we move from the Valley what does Roland do with the place? Developing it for housing is a non-starter, you won’t get another football team to re-locate there either…if we move Roland has some very expensive and redundant real estate on his hands. Maybe this is a threat to Roland to come to the negotiating table sooner or later.
Easy, solution give ESI £2 for the club and take over commitment to purchase Ground and training facilities in which ESI have no hope of honouring. Simples. Can I take my tongue out of my cheek now.
Don Nash. First visit to Valley 1946 (aged15) been supporting ever since.
Thanks for the comment Don. You have seen many things (including the FA Cup Finals hopefully). Has there been times worse than this?
In my time I remember thinking we’d lost the club forever in 1984. I don’t feel that at the moment, but then again I’m older and more battle worn now!