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
Roll up, roll up. Have I got a deal for you. A nice little number, decent bodywork if you ignore the lumps taken out of it, just a few uncareful owners. Okay more than a few. Take it for a ride…. everyone else has!
Another owner of our club tonight. Well apparently. Who the f knows?
First yesterday we had what looked like a home made tic-tock video from potential Portuguese bidders called Corporate Football Organisation Portugal. It was hard to take Fernando Corte-Real too seriously as he rolled out the innovative idea of a having a 5-year plan to get into the Premier League from what looked like a furniture shop.
Not a lot online about this lot except it is obviously a collection of investors and according to Corte-Real “experts.”
One of the long list of items to be resolved before Huw Jenkins, or any other potential buyer for that matter, wants before buying the club, also includes a £1.5m ‘bonus’ ESI promised to pay Roland Duchatelet if we stay up.
Journalist Alan Nixon, who broke the Jenkins story, had been hinted at other unknown liabilities the last couple of days and today dropped the story. You can read it here.
Thankfully Laurence Bassini’s fat face is getting pushed into the background, and The Sun are claiming that it is ex-Swansea owner Huw Jenkins that has a deal waiting to be approved by those super chaps at the EFL.
Jenkins was owner and chairman of the Swans for 17 mostly very successful years. The 57-year old sold the club to an American consortium in 2016. He remained chairman until he left in February of last year.
It looks as if without putting in one penny of his own money Tahnoon Nimer is close to selling Charlton. Low life Matt Southall, who to be fair, did part with a pound, will also walk away with a bundle of cash.
Rumours that Laurence Bassini is the buyer appear to have been squashed. Thank god. Bassini is Southall’s preferred buyer, the deadbeat attempted to get Bassini to buy Nimer’s ESI shareholding so keeping Southall involved. Thick as thieves is quite an apt idiom.
You’d think Matt Southall might have learnt something if he was watching and listening during his brief unscrupulous period as, what was it now, right, Executive Chairman. He would have seen the power of Addicks’ fans together, committed, empowered and more resilient than any one single individual. Especially him.
And now he wants to sue the Charlton Athletic Supporters Trust (CAST) for, well, I’m not entirely sure, but you can read it all here. What a sad and sorry man he really is.
Another week. Another week of isolation, and another week of Tahnoon Nimer keeping his hands firmly in his pocket.
Staff got paid at Charlton this week, thankfully, but that money again came out of the current account leftover from the days of Duchatelet and whatever funds have been given to the club by the EFL.
The players have deferred their salaries by 25% to help the continual financing of the club, and non-playing staff were furloughed. Although those operating the website and social media platforms carry on working in earnest. That your Excellency, an oxymoron if ever I saw one, is what you call commitment and responsibility.
Maybe I’ve been locked up indoors too long, but I think the first person I may hug after all this is over is Simon Jordan.
In event times the ex-Palace owner and chairman has stood up for Charlton and it’s supporters more than Richard Murray has done for years. The world has changed, a lot, but who would have thought that in 2006?
That is how long the EFL have given Charlton, headed by Nimer Tahnoon, to respond to their investigation of ESI’s takeover of the club in January.
The EFL made the declaration today that they’ve commenced formal investigations to ascertain whether breaches of EFL Regulations and/or other misconduct(s) occurred in relation to the takeover of the club from Roland Duchatelet.
What a mess. ESI bought the club for just a £1 and took on the ongoing liabilities, with an agreement to pay a further £55m to purchase remaining assets including The Valley and Sparrows Lane in the future. ESI said there was a legal obligation do that by June.
It’s all a little bit of a despairing side show at the moment, but today the board of directors, at least those listed currently, namely Tahnoon Nimer, Claudiu Florica and Marian Mihail, issued a statement on the Official Site. A novel idea over the recent tiresome social media rants.
The club has been fast tracked it’s next EFL payment due to the current suspension of the season, and on face value the owners stating that they are not attempting to sell the club and are making an investment is a positive I think.
The Evening Standard is reporting that they have sources claiming that Tahnoon Nimer is trying to sell Charlton for as much as £4,000,000. Quite a mark up on the £1 ESI acquired it from Roland Duchatelet.
After on Monday telling fans that he’d “never let us down and that he was ready to inject money and support it,” he’s apparently looking to cash it in without doing anything as far as I can, including still convincing the EFL that he has the funds and credible sourcing.
If you haven’t seen it click here for an interview that the good peeps at CAST had with new director Marian Mihail yesterday.
Words as Addicks know only so well are easy. It’s actions and doing rather than words that we need right now.
If at all possible!
Looks as if Tahnoon Nimer has got the access to the Official Site, and following on from last night’s virtual ‘board meeting’ the Syrian has told us he’s removed Southall and Heller and appointed two Romanians to the ESI board. One name we have heard before in recent days Claudiu Florica, cleared on a technicality from a bribery and corruption case when at Microsoft and friend of Nimer. The other board member is sports and aviation lawyer Marian Mihail.
Like a drunken and beaten heavyweight fighter slumped on the ropes, Matt Southall took to Twitter today in an attempt to lay one last punch. Jonathan Heller, an apparent turncoat, in his corner dabbing Southall’s bruises co-signed the letter on Charlton Athletic headed paper. Not surprisingly the Official Site did not carry the statement.
Happy Paddy’s Day. Drinking from home today. I need one. Already.
HE Tahnoon Nimer went back to social media today, carefully written running through the extraordinary events of last week and attempting to reassure us that soon he will appoint a new board of directors once the removal of Matt Southall has been legally stamped. Here it is:
Just when you think it safe to go out.. For me tonight, I had a client dinner – probably the last for a while as COVID-19 almost entirely shuts down travel between Europe and North America and Bermuda – but I noticed my phone flashing texts and messages as the situation developed tonight at The Valley.
The first red flag was a message from the Charlton Live team cancelling their show tonight. What then followed was truly remarkable, even on the scale of Charlton histories of remarkedness.
The absolute senselessness continues in SE7 today. Firstly the absolute nonsense of a statement from Matt Southall, who guess what, has given his full support to.. Matt Southall.
“The Club wish to make it clear that Matt Southall has their full support in his role as Executive Chairman and are looking forward to working with him into the future towards a positive end to this current season and beyond.”
That Executive Chairman crap has always stuck in my craw. It’s so crass and conceited. But what staggering bollocks. Roland-esque in fact. Matt mate, we have been paying attention you know. You are a fraud.
Matt Southall’s public relations machine looks like juddering to a halt, unlike he and his pals’ Range Rovers.
Confirmation that long-time club secretary Chris Parkes has been suspended by Southall, pending an investigation. Parkes, one would assume was behind conversations with Tahnoon Nimer and the EFL as to what is actually going on at the club under Southall’s leadership.
Blimey, we used to hate this bloke with a passion. I for one apologize for my nativity to how much he understands the business of football, and cares about how football clubs are run. To be fair he also knew how to make money.
What we do know of HE Tahnoon Nimer is that he is a little excitable, not polished, and with English not his first language, that voice note was a result of a man clearly fired up.
But who here is the fantasist, the liar, the trickster?
Southall issued another statement this morning saying they have accepted HE Tahnoon Numer’s resignation. That was followed by a much more thorough and detailed account from Nimer, which tells a very different story, and a fuller one that Southall is sharing.
Chaos reigns again tonight after HE Tahnoon Nimer announced on social media to fans that he is pulling out of his Charlton investment. He has blamed Matt Southall and the senior management, which is really only Southall and Jonathan Heller of repatriating money for their own good. The voice note is something else. Listen here.
Later on the OS, Southall issued a statement saying that a letter was received today from Tahnoon Nimer which is in the hands of his lawyers for whom he will discuss what actions to take. Threats have been made to other members of the club’s senior management, about what who knows as East Street Investments morphs into a school playground squabble.
The supposed majority owner of Charlton was pictured outside Dinamo Bucharest on Saturday whilst we were losing to Middlesbrough.
There were unproven noises that HE Tahnoon Nimer had invested in Romanian top flight side Dinamo Bucharest in January. Yesterday whilst the Addicks were getting dragged into the bottom three of The Championship, Nimer was pictured outside of Dinamo’s Stadionul Dinamo looking quite pleased with himself. Local media suggest that his takeover of the 18-times Romanian champions is imminent.
The third defeat in a row, with no goals scored and into the bottom three for the first time this season. This is not for the feint hearted.
At the end of the day it was another defensive blooper that saw us lose, Ben Purrington gifting the ball away in the 17th minute that ended with McNair scoring the winner.
The Metropolitan Police FC have announced that we have signed 18-year old defender Lucas Ness.
Ness only turned 18 a week or so ago and the Police therefore were unable to tie him to a contract prior to his 18th birthday. Equally the Southern League side are also due no compensation.
The day started so well. Almost 24,000 Addicks were up and ready to go to a sold out Valley, I slept for 10 hours after a week away with work, and Johnnie Jackson put pen to paper on a new 3-year contract.
Released on Charlton Life by permission from ESI. Link to drawings and plans here.
These plans originated in the Duchatelet era but despite plenty of promising words feet were dragged, plans were changed and an infamous trench were dug, but the Sparrows Lane redevelopment became mothballed.
Most thought Matt Southall made a Freudian slip yesterday calling Steve Gallen the “Director of Football,” but nope, today the Chairman unveiled Steve as the club’s Director of Football.
Matt Southall had already shown more compassion and humility in a few weeks than Roland Duchatelet did in 6 years. He was clearly humbled by the welcome he got when he first walked into fans at the Sheffield Wednesday game.
Southall has done his Addicks research, but he is soon finding out that he has only scratched the surface of what a power house of joint forces of boardroom, coaching staff, players and fans can make.
Sounds as if we should steal ourselves for seeing the last of Lyle Taylor. ESI have had their contract offer to the 29-year old striker turned down and will now listen to offers for him. Hopefully he is moved on quickly giving time for Gallen and Bowyer to replace him.
The Taylor story has rumbled on too far for me to be shocked, or even disappointed. This is modern football I’m afraid, it’s hard to begrudge him a final payday and possibly a Premier League opportunity. We ourselves only have him because he did similar at Wimbledon, in fact there’s nothing to say Taylor may well wait at The Valley for his contract to expire and move as a free agent in the summer.
Good riddance to old fruit loop rubbish. 6 years to the day that Roland Duchatelet added Charlton to his football club collection, we are rid of the old scroat after the EFL finally ratified East Street Investments purchase for a sum guessed to be in the £50m range.
After the narcissist ownership of Tony Jimenez and Michael Slater backed by the secretive and shall we say complicated assets of Kevin Cash, we were very glad then to see a new owner with fresh ideas take the club on in January 2014. Especially after Cash cut Jimenez’s credit card up and for the longest time the club survived on a shoestring.
We had a hunch that the old man would crank open his laptop and compose one of his special emails. His disappointment this time was not directed at Addicks but to another old foe, the EFL. Oh Roly, it would have been so much easier if they’d had bought us when you told them to.
It has been some day. I have a glass of champagne in front of me, still processing today’s news that we have finally been released from the nightmare of Roland Duchatelet. I’ve also spent some time toasting those Londoners who showed such incredible instinctive bravery today on London Bridge. Some of the videos and stories coming out of that are inconceivable.
It was a day to sit in pj’s in front of the television, which I did. Although Arsenal insisted on grabbing the football limelight after sacking manager Unai Emery, the excitement oozing through the veins of Addicks was palpable amongst family and friends and online, and I get the impression that I wasn’t the only one popping a cork this evening.
I’m on my 4th expresso, but I’m still rubbing my eyes at the statement on the club website.
“We are proud and delighted to announce East Street Investments have agreed the purchase of Charlton Athletic Football Club.”
City of London
