Feb 11
That man of the people Laurence Bassini has threatened to wind Charlton Athletic up unless he is paid the £1.7m he thinks he is owed by the football club after he ‘helped’ bring in ESI to rescue the club from Roland Duchâtelet.
Please click for moreAs many of you would have seen recently Matt Southall is once again attempting to get his slimy hands into a professional football club.
Southall is set to buy a 25% share in Rochdale. This news has been met head on by the Rochdale’s Supporters Trust with significant guidance from Addicks’ fans.
Please click for moreThe year of all years crawls to a welcome end tonight. Sadly nothing will be much different when the sun rises tomorrow, and it is probably going to get worse before it gets better. Still, a new year brings new dreams and hopes of better times ahead.
We have a Chinese guy in our office, and after he returned to Bermuda from being back in China at the beginning of January he was made to stay at home. When he did come back to the office he wore a mask. It was odd to see him walk around with a mask and no one quite knew how to act around him.
Fast forward 12 months and the entire world has been heavily inflicted by Covid-19. This silent terror of a virus has literally changed the world we live in, a film set only previously in the minds of story tellers.
Paul Elliott has poked his head out of his hole claiming that he is the true owner of East Street Investments (ESI). Tahnoon Nimer has disappeared off the side of the planet as phantasm’s have a habit of doing and Elliott has emerged victorious of owning a company that owns nothing except some really negative Google searches.
The dark clouds lifted in SE7, the sky cleared and in walked Thomas Sandgaard. Guitar, sunglasses and all.
It was still the dead of night in Castle Rock, Colorado but a man slept in his bed knowing that the next day he would be the owner of Charlton Athletic Football Club.
It was no dream, Sandgaard had finally closed the deal after getting EFL approval and OADT sign off. With no shortage of help from top law firm Freshfields Druckhaus Deringer, the Dane had navigated the shark infested waters of ESI and claimed ownership of our historic club.
I thought that Thomas Sandgaard hit all the right notes in his Sky Sports interview earlier. Ambition without overpromising, an understanding of the club and it’s community as well as it’s fan base. He talked in simple compassionate terms and is clearly motivated to make the transaction with ESI happen as soon as possible.
As has become apparent, the critical assets of The Valley and Sparrows Lane will have to come later, and I won’t sleep well at night until all of the parts of the jigsaw are under one roof. Nonetheless Sandgaard needs as much negotiating power as possible, and time is more on the Dane’s side than the Belgian’s.
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.
I was awake way before the alarm this morning feeling restless. I avoid looking at the phone because I know that is the day starting. But, first glance of the phone and I’m leaping out of bed.
Solicitor Chris Farnell was terminated by Charlton today as ESI v1 wrestle control of the club back from Chris Farnell and Paul Elliott aka ESI v2. Both Farnell and Andrei Mihail were removed as directors of ESI on Friday.
After the last EFL missive which ended with something tacky like: “The League will not provide a running commentary on this matter but will update as appropriate.”
Well Addicks took the bait and have bombarded the EFL all week demanding regular updates and it appears that a meeting took place, and the EFL gave an update to Rich Cawley.
There’s been a fair bit of cloak and dagger planning this week as Addicks furiously unsettle and destabilize those pretending to own and care about our football club.
If you are able to I’d recommend getting to The Elephant & Castle Pub in Woolwich Market at 6.30pm tonight to show solidarity and help support action to protect our historic football club from thieves and charlatans.
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 mocking of our great club continued late today when Matt Southall and odd bedfellow Jonathan Heller removed Chris Farnell, Claudiu Florica, Andrei Mihail, Marian Mihail and Tahnoon Nimer from the ESI board of directors.
Yesterday those two muppets changed the address of the company from Floyd Road to an address in Deansgate, Manchester.
Our last two games, no hopes, and no points, so as we were then.
Positives to move on with? We didn’t lose to Millwall in injury time, and more seriously we played very well against Brentford. The absolute form team in this division who had been brushing teams aside pre and post lockdown.
Excuse me Mr. Elliott for not getting too excited with your undoubted charm and sincerity. Thanks, but I’d rather keep my powder dry and if your face positively comes into my mind in a year’s time then you would have done good things.
But, it is deeds now and not words that Addicks are searching for, and I’m on a really bad run of broken promises and relationships so forgive me my restrain.
Repeat. No, not that one. ⬅️
Consortium (kən-ˈsȯr-sh(ē-)əm) – an agreement, combination, or group (as of companies) formed to undertake an enterprise beyond the resources of any one member
Chicago Addick 