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This article is part of Football League World’s ‘Terrace Talk’ series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…
Charlton Athletic have made a promising start to the new League One season as they eye a push for promotion.
The Addicks are in their fifth consecutive campaign in the third tier of English football, having suffered relegation in 2020 from the Championship.
The south London outfit have spent eight of the last nine years at the level, having gone straight back down after their 2019 promotion to the Championship.
It has been a difficult period of time for the club, with many ownership changes and off-field issues holding them back.
Nathan Jones though will be hoping he is the man to bring the club back to the second tier this year, with the backing of current owners SE7 Partners, which includes ex-Sunderland chief Charlie Methven.
Charlton Athletic: Past ownership groups seen as significant club regret
When asked what the club’s biggest regret to this day is, FLW’sCharlton fan pundit Ben Fleming claimed that sales to the wrong owners really set them back.
He believes that the initial sale to Roland Duchatelet was the beginning of the string of bad ownership moves by the club, and that followed on with the likes of Matt Southall and East Street Investments.
“It’s tough to pinpoint a transfer or a managerial appointment, we’ve had quite a few average managerial appointments in the year, so I’m not necessarily sure there’s one that sticks out as particularly bad or worse than the other,”Fleming told Football League World.
“I think if you look at what’s held us back, it’s pretty obvious that it’s been off-field stuff – ownership issues and not doing our due diligence in terms of who took over the club.
“So I would have to say that whether it’s Duchatelet coming in and not putting the funds into the club, or Tahnoon Nimer and Matt Southall coming in – East Street Investments and the absolute shambles that they were.
“Even Thomas Sandgaard coming in and promising the world, and not being able to deliver and him moving on.
“I think off-field things are going to be more what marred, or has marred our recent progress.
“The owners are the club, so that’s something that the club regrets because each time the owner was looking to sell and they probably didn’t do their due diligence.
“Maybe the original owners (Michael Slater) who sold to Duchatalet will come to regret that – maybe they do now.”
Charlton Athletic ownership issues have held them back for too long
Charlton’s biggest issues have all stemmed from mismanagement behind the scenes, with supporters really being put through it time and time again.
Duchatelet offered promise when arriving in 2014, but it soon turned into disaster, relegation and claims from the Belgian that some fans wanted the club to fail – he eventually sold to East Street Investments after a six-year stint, which involved the aforementioned Nimer and Southall, but that also ended in disaster, and was doomed to fail after just a couple of months.
Sandgaard meanwhile was an ambitious man, but he couldn’t get the best out of the Addicks either following his takeover in September 2020, but it’s hard to put him in the same bracket as the previous custodians.
Now though, the signs are positive that Charlton are now finally back on the right track, but the path to get there was arduous and stressful.
Jones was a strong appointment from SE7 Partners last season, with the Welshman having valuable experience in the EFL.
But it will be a competitive League One season, so the push for promotion will require the team to be at their very best every week.
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