‘ACCEPT A REALISTIC PRICE NOW, ROLAND’
FRUSTRATED Charlton fans are urging despised owner Roland Duchatelet to get real – after his bizarre call for the EFL to take over the club was widely ridiculed.
In just over five years at the helm, Duchatelet has earned the scorn of Addicks fans. The club have slipped into League One, chopped and changed managers and had a big turnover of players.
Charlton have been up for sale for more than a year, but Belgian tycoon Duchatelet, 72, has failed
to find a buyer. The sorry tale took a new twist this week when a story was posted on the Charlton website on Thursday afternoon under the headline ‘Owner Roland Duchatelet demands EFL acquire Charlton’.
Proposal
The proposal to offer the club to the EFL had been put forward at a fans’ forum on Wednesday.
Lieven De Turck, who is representing Charlton in takeover talks, suggested
the EFL “would pass the EFL fit and proper persons test, understand the monthly losses as they have the financial figures of the club and have the football knowhow to run it”.
The proposal was unanimously rejected by supporters present and described as “unfeasible”.
And Rick Everitt, of CARD (the Coalition Against Roland Duchatelet), the umbrella organisation of Charlton supporters’ groups campaigning to oust the owner, believes he has scored
an own goal with his latest idea. “I think it’s an indication of what we’ve been dealing with for the last five years,” he said. “It’s clearly an absolutely bonkers idea.
Bonkers
“No-one with any understanding of English football would think for a minute that the Football League would, or could, take over one of their member clubs. It would be asking the other 71 clubs to subsidise Charlton’s losses.
“The problem is that he won’t sell the club at a realistic market price.
“He’s well aware that there are people prepared to pay him several tens of millions of pounds, but he’s still trying to recover the circa £70m he’s spent on the club. No one is ever going to pay him that amount. At some point, he’s going to have to sell for less than that. Until then, the club is in a dangerous position.”
The EFL confirmed they’d received a request from Duchatelet, which they “will review and subsequently respond to as appropriate”.