Charlton Athletic fans have had too many false dawns and disappointments to get too caught up in a new sense of optimism. Photo: Focus Images Ltd/Ben Peters
After being eliminated from the Premier League in 2007, every Charlton Athletic fan has had his own setbacks. There are many options to choose from.
For Jan Offord, author of The Year of Robin, about the pandemic-affected 2019/20 season, it was shortly before football was put on hold. “I remember going to the last home match before the Covid quarantine was against Middlesbrough,” she says. “We lost 1-0. That match was bullshit, it was the only match I really resented being there, hobbled around six months pregnant to watch. At that moment, it seemed that the inscription was already hanging on the wall.
And so it was, as Charlton suffered their third league relegation in 12 years. At that time, the threat to the club seemed real.
Charlton was in the hands of the holding company East Street Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based group that bought the club for £1 from Roland Duchâtelet in January of that year. But three of its members failed the fit and proper owner test, so the group and presumably the club were sold to Paul Elliott, a businessman with no previous football experience. Charlton's official website named it its new owner in June 2020.
Enter Dane Thomas Sandgaard, who thought he bought the club directly from ESI majority shareholder Tanun Niemer. After some litigation, by September another story about the new owner dedicated to Sandgaard appeared on the Charlton website.
Sandgaard was more popular than his predecessors, despite his habit of strolling around the field before games, donning an electric guitar and playing along to «Valley Floyd Road», to the obvious discomfort of the fans. Duchatelée has been in charge of the club for five years since 2014 and is still the owner of the Valley and Charlton training facilities. Things went so badly under his rule when there was a failed attempt to create a multi-club ownership model that a game against Coventry City in 2016 was postponed because protesting fans threw hundreds of stuffed pigs onto the pitch.
One of the strangest yet most effective forms of fan protest in football history. Photo: PA 
Thomas Sandgaard played the guitar, not very popular, but belonged to him. Photo: Getty Images/Jacques Feeney
So, just four owners in the last four years, and before them Tony Jimenez and Michael Slater, who bought the club from Richard Murray in 2010. He guided Charlton through homelessness, a return to the Valley and seven mostly joyful years in the Premier League. They were an exemplary club of their time.
Hope for a better future comes with every new owner. In July, SE7 Partners took over, a consortium of seven foreign investors, some of whom even have football on their resumes. For the first time in many years, a proper structure has been created with the appointment of a chairman and a technical director. There is talk of continuous improvement and promotion in the first league, but skepticism is to be expected.
“We need to be balanced on this,” says Heather Alderson, vice chairman of the Charlton Athletic Supporters Trust. “We are supporters who have gone through this four times, and we are not going to jump up and down on sticks and shout “hooray!”
They're off to a bad start to the season with four losses since their opening day win, but there's potential here. The valley is not the most modern, but larger than Selhurst Park, which has hosted Premier League football for ten years. The academy is well thought of. Coach Dean Holden, though trailing former players Lee Bowyer and Chris Powell, seems to understand the spirit of the club.
It is more difficult to understand what constitutes success. Rick Everitt was the editor of The Voice of the Valley fanzine and worked in Charlton in various capacities for 14 years. «I don't understand why someone pays £12 million for a business in the state it's in and how they expect to get that money back unless they're offering a very substantial investment,» he says.Charlie Methven describes himself as the «slightly unenthusiastic front man» of the new owner group. He says they don't intend to sell if they are offered a promotion, «our investors are doing this for the long term.» He has a small stake in SE7, but his role is as a bridge between executives and a group of investors, as well as an attempt to raise money. He was previously an executive director at Sunderland, a period of mixed results documented in the Netflix documentary Sunderland Until Then. I died. Charlton was warned by many Sunderland supporters to proceed with caution.
Viewers of Netflix Sunderland documentary «Til I Die» will remember Charlie Methven very well Photo: Getty Images/Ian Horrocks
What Methven can't be blamed for is playing with the gallery. There is a scenario that most new owners follow: one clear figurehead; a mention that they are just the keepers of the club; declaring his goal to gain a foothold in the Premier League.
There is little of that in our hour-long conversation, focusing instead on fixing deficiencies like the creaky ticketing system and overly long lines for food and drink. “All these things really matter,” he says. “Clubs fly, you walk in them and everything seems easy. When you have a long period of bad luck in a club, dry rot seeps into the walls.”
Whatever improvements are made, it is impossible to escape the frightening financial climate outside the Premier League. Methven says Charlton can't do well in League One, but they've been there nine of their last 14 seasons. Despite cost cuts and what many fans see as a chronic underinvestment, the club is still losing too much money. The solution, he says, is to reduce operating losses to £1-2m a year and aim for a medium-term net profit from player trading.
“You will do this if you have any competence at all, especially if, like Charlton, you have one of the most productive academies in the country,” he says.
Charlton – Two decades of decline
It all depends on progress. “I think success looks like Charlton Athletic have stabilized in the Championship with a business model that allows them to compete in the top 10 in that league.
“Between number eight in the Premier League and probably , number 10 or 11 in the first league, it's just a ladder that teams go up and down. The question is, have you built wiggle room into your contracts and into your broader income base to ensure you don't run into any huge hardships in the ups and downs?»
Football fans need to be aware of this more and more. There are still fans who urge clubs to endlessly buy new players, no matter how bad it usually ends up. Just as many are fluent in FFP, able to understand a range of accounts, and confident in using the phrase “net spending.” Heightened financial awareness is helpful, but it makes rallying around your club the old emotional way even more difficult. Although many owners choose to get in the way of this team, Methven once again resists. “No one should think that running a club in an emotional or non-business way is some sort of altruistic approach. This causes many people to cry.”
Given a seven-year exile from The Valley since 1985, Charlton fans understandably feel uncomfortable about not owning the stadium. According to Methven, this is more of a pleasure than a necessity. “It is interesting to draw a parallel with the statement that a club cannot succeed if it does not have its own stadium. I wonder if anyone has said this to Manchester City or West Ham?»
He admits it's easier to invest in a stadium when it's yours and «understands 100 percent» the depth of the fans' feelings «Charlton». But he also downplays concerns that the stadium is in Duchatelet's hands and is only being leased back to a club expiring in 12 years.
The Valley is not currently owned by the club. Photo: Getty Images/Henry Brown
“I am deeply skeptical that Greenwich Council will be the first council in the whole country to give permission for the construction of residential buildings on a home football stadium,” he says.
“The fans, the current owners of the club, are interested in reuniting the stadium with the club, but this must be done in a way that does not jeopardize the future of the club itself. If the club pays an unprofitable price for something it doesn't really need, it will jeopardize the future of the club itself.”
At the moment, the more pressing issue is to improve results and build momentum. High-ranked striker Miles Lieburn, the son of former Charlton striker Carl, has been injured, so it looks like he will stay despite rumors of interest from the above leagues. Teenagers Zach Mitchell, Karoy Anderson and Deji Elerewe show promise. However, this team still needs investment.
Methven and his band will have to fight to convince Charlton fans that the promise of a new one is real this time around. For many, he will always be the slightly embarrassing reality TV guy. Does he regret giving Netflix access to Sunderland to the Death?
«Nothing, because if you do these things, you must do them right.»
«If you ask me: «Would I like me to do this?» “Didn’t say or do one or two things in 12 months?” Certainly hundreds. But I can't blame the level of access they've been given, I can only blame my own idiocy for that.»
There are therefore no plans to revise their plan to replace Sunderland's pre-match music. with a cool trans? «No, the last thing Charlton needs right now is my intervention in the music.»
The only constant factors in Charlton over the past decade have been uncertainty and upheaval. But at least the red robin can sleep peacefully.
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