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 moreLast March was a pretty uncertain time for everyone, the pandemic was unravelling quickly, as was the ownership situation at Charlton Athletic.
A year ago tonight I wrote that I had just got indoors from having dinner with a client…. probably the last for a while I said. It was.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Lyle Taylor has never been one to hide his true feelings. Rightly he stepped away from social media after taking himself a little too seriously, although he couldn’t resist the odd barb, which has kept us amused during lockdown like the photo above of his namesake’s Range Rover dealership just after Matt Southall and his partner had their cars impounded.
Taylor is extremely likeable, articulate, grounded and an all round good bloke. Matt Southall is neither of those things.
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.
Albury Addick summed it up quite nicely yesterday. Stop making excuses Tahnoon Nimer, sh!t or get off the potty. What a nonentity you really are.
A little more social media sparring between Southall (still driving his Range Rover) and Nimer, and all the while young lawyer Marian Mihail attempts to explain it, whilst chucking onto the fire that Southall put in another £2m of invoices…. I refer back to Albury’s post.
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.
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.
First of all, and importantly, how are we all doing?
We all have a lot to think and worry about and depending on your frame of mind the childish social media spats between Matt Southall and Tahnoon Nimer have either been a welcome comedy gold distraction or a distasteful embarrassing side-show, especially when the world is going through so much torment.
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:
What an extraordinary week, unprecedented since the war years, or possibly 9/11 and 7/7, in my lifetime. The week moved quickly didn’t it. The Coronavirus moving across the world like a tidal wave, changing the way we live our lives almost instantly.
Then we just shake our heads at the farcical but possibly ruinous saga going on at Charlton. From whispers to chaos to realization in the space of a week.
The world’s markets crashed taking savings and pensions with them. Then this week I had my own personal work development, which will be transformational and unsettling at the same time.
Brexit…. All is forgiven.
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.
The public spat being carried out between Matt Southall and HE Tahnoon Nimer puts them both in a terrible and embarrassing light. Neither of them will come out of this well, and whilst the two individuals will have reputations damaged, perhaps infinitely, the biggest damage of all is to those that love the club, and those in the dressing room trying to save it from relegation against all the odds. All of us suckered in by the bullshit and lies.
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.
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.
Morning Addicks. That was a restless night’s sleep wasn’t it?
A bad, bad week up in Yorkshire for Charlton ended in capitulation and the season’s worst defeat yesterday as Karlan Grant helped himself to a couple of goals and raised anxiety levels to bursting amongst Addicks’ fans.
Funny isn’t it? In the summer we were like ‘jeez Bow loves signing a midfielder’ and then we ended the year playing 19-year old’s in there alongside the Duracell battery that is Darren Pratley.
Bowyer signed three more midfielders today, two very experienced ones and another young prospect ripe for improving.
To much fall out on Birmingham fan sites, David Davis signed on loan until the end of the season. I feel the club was trying to make this permanent but run out of time.
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.
Lots of cheesy grins and happy faces watching the Thursday press conference today at The Valley. The press were clearly given the heads up that this was not going to be your regular Sparrows Lane Thursday session, as Sky, BBC and ITV joined the local hacks.
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.
No surprise unfortunately as we whimpered out of the cup again, but with obvious mitigating circumstances as an extraordinary young Addicks team that included a 16-year old lost to a far more experienced West Brom side.
Chris Brunt, Gareth Barry and Charlie Austin alone have played more than 1,600 games between them. Barry making his professional debut before seven of our lot were even born!
Get in!! Happy New Year Addicks 😁
The club have confirmed that the takeover of Charlton Athletic by East Street Investments (ESI) has been completed.
What a way to start the new decade, and I loving some of the words from Matt Southall, and although time will tell, he has already shown great commitment and understanding to what it means to be an Addick.
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.”
Sarasota, Florida
