Charlton owner Duchatelet: EFL allowing increased losses has saddled me with club I cannot sell
Charlton owner Roland Duchatelet has slammed his own league bosses for allowing clubs to lose more money every year.
The Addicks chairman, who bought the club in 2014 and has faced big protests ever since, is fuming after failing to sell the SE7 club for two years.
A succession of potential suitors have been put off because only clubs with the resources to win promotion from the Championship to the Premier League stand to make a profit.
So owners gamble millions in the hope it will get them to the Promised Land – and possibly multiply their investment 10-fold.
But even that kind of profit would mean risking £20million every year – and that is no guarantee of success.
Duchatelet told TalkSport the EFL is “not fit for purpose” and they were operating a “stupid system” amid the cashflow problems experienced by Bury and Bolton.
He said: “I have tried to sell the club for two years now and many clubs in the EFL and Championship are for sale but who would like to buy a club like that? If they now do their analysis of their situation they all decide not to go into this stupid system.
“That’s a problem and I would love to be out of it, believe me. However, I’m stuck because the system is a stupid system and you cannot get out of it.
“The big problem is that every owner of a Championship football club is expected to lose £15million in operational losses every year. This is not an acceptable business model.
“At least in League One and League Two it is better in the sense there is a decent financial fair play system – for example they make some clubs that are not in a good financial situation not compete in the competition.
“If we don’t spend money we will be relegated and the fans get angry.
“It is not sustainable. It explains why so many owners want to sell their club and why so few people buy a club in England.
“When I bought the football club there was a very big improvement on the financial fair play so that football clubs in the Championship could only lose £6million a year.
“While I was then in my first or second year, against the will of a large number of clubs in the Championship, they changed it so you could lose £13million instead.”
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I’m not a fan of the way Roland treated our club to date but I must admit he has a valid point, why would you want to pump millions into a second or third tier club in the hope of getting to the so called promised land?although it’s not just the efl, television royalty to the premier league as opposed to the other divisions is totally unbalanced as well, I’m charlton through and through but on this occasion I for one says well said RD
Speaks a lot of sense from a purely business perspective and it is obvious that the EFL need to act.
The current situation is unsustainable and more clubs will undoubtedly follow the likes of Bolton and Bury on the road to ruin.
Unless he gets out he will continue to loose millions so if he wants out then why don’t he give it away he will save in the long run
So the business set up is unsustainable, perhaps. Rules sand finacial arrangements, should be changed, probably. However, Roland bought the club and has not behaved as a fit and proper owner. That is what the fans have against him, to dsay nothing of staff cheated of bonuses etc. He has had opportunities to sell and seems to have failed to do so – due to the price he sets , and conditions and demands he places on the buyer. That is not how business works. If you are that anxious to sell, you sell at the best deal you can get. It is disingenuous and pathetic to throw your hands up and say the system is unfair and play the victim. A club is founded on optimism, sometime blind optimism, he is robbing the club and the fans of that. The sooner he departs “this stupid system” the better.