FAN’S VIEW 23/24 – NO.6

LEAGUE ONE: OXFORD UNITED 2 CHARLTON ATHLETIC 1

These are pinch yourself times. After that defeat at the Abbey Stadium no sane individual would have remotely considered Oxford United being two points clear at the top of the league four games later. Supporting a football club can be truly wondrous.

We might only be five games in but with 12 points in the bank are way ahead of last season. Then our win at Exeter in the 12^th match took us on to 13 points.

Much as I liked what Karl Robinson did at the club – until it started to unravel at the back end of 21/22 – what we’re witnessing now to me is a level above.

The way we moved the ball around in the first half was outstanding and Marcus McGuane’s performance was as good as I can recall from any player wearing our shirt in many a year. He was imperious, a figure who caught the eye almost constantly. The player we thought we were getting when we signed him permanently but who didn’t really blossom under the previous regime.

We played as a team, we had structure and within that individual flair was allowed to flourish without being detrimental to the collective.

Take Tyler Goodrham’s early goal. He brought a high ball down just inside the Charlton half and then ran with it, jinking expertly past a defender, with the ball obeying every command his boots were transmitting. This was positive front foot stuff. On the edge of the area he had Mark Harris to his right demanding to be fed but instead and with utmost confidence he smacked it home himself. On another day, in different circumstances with a different outcome, the wrong decision would have been made, but we’re flying and this was exactly what was required.

We could have done with another goal to round off our display in the first 45 minutes but despite the stats I can’t recall either keeper having to pull off many saves in either this or the second period. The final tally recorded is that we had 16 shots with five on target and the visitors nine with three on target. Seems excessive to me.

Charlton’s record so far this season of one win and four defeats provides dismal reading for their fans but they’re no mugs and I can see them finishing a lot higher than their current 19^th position.

In the second half they came out fired up and with an over physical approach became more dominant and for long periods stopped us playing our football. They accumulated six yellow cards (to our three) which indicates that some referees are still clamping down as instructed. However, sharing around the taking one for the team tactic doesn’t benefit the team being fouled on the day. It will be other opponents later on who will face weakened teams due to suspensions. Under the current climate this will be sooner than in previous seasons. It should hopefully over 46 games just about even itself out with the dirtier more cynical teams suffering more.

A shot fired wildly over after good build up play hinted that the Addicks lacked clinicality in front of goal but with Alfie May in their ranks they will score from time to time.  In the past two league campaigns for Cheltenham he scored 43 goals, that’s some going. Sure enough it was May who equalised for the visitors in the 63^rd minute. Cameron Brannagan gave away a free-kick which was taken quickly. Referee Adam Herczeg ordered a re-take which was again taken quickly. Even though we’d had a warning, at the second time of asking not every Oxford player had fully switched on to the situation.  George Dobson played it to Nathan Asiimwe, the ball then being pushed on to Chem Campbell who too easily beat Brannagan. Campbell toed it on to May who registered from close range.

As well as we’d played in the first half this could now have gone either way and a draw wouldn’t have been a disaster but we are a team with belief who have a sensible game plan to follow in whatever circumstances we’re faced with. No panicking after being pegged back. No collapsing. No throwing caution to the wind with all out attack and getting caught on the break.

Just keep playing your game.

In the 78th minute Ciaron Brown was taken off and new signing Greg Leigh came on. Brown had done nothing wrong. He’s done us proud since his arrival at the club but good managers know. A 7 out of 10 every week could be upgraded to an 8 out of 10er. Just saying. Leigh looked good.

Also no noticeable step backwards with Finn Stevens in for Sam Long.

As the game began to draw to a conclusion Charlton were throwing lots of men forward. With eight lined up across the edge of our penalty area Lloyd Jones won a high ball played in. Stephan Negru – who’d earlier shot with little composure sending the ball tamely back to the keeper when he could have put us ahead again – then managed to get a head on the ball as he back pedalled. This averted the immediate danger but didn’t get the ball away.   Michael Hector gave Elliott Moore a shove but our captain pushed back and got a head on the ball which still refused to move away from the edge of our penalty area until Stan Mills took it on his chest and, turning under pressure, knocked it to McGuane.

We then saw an Oxford United we’re starting to become accustomed to but one we’d not seen in years. Meaningful counter attacking. Mills was out of the blocks. He’s rapid. Others went with him. The ball was next played to Ruben Rodrigues on the right wing. The Charlton defence – what there was of it and that wasn’t a lot – were all over the place. Rodrigues played it first time to Mills. Perhaps there should have been a bit more pace on the ball or perhaps Mills should have taken it a bit more cleanly. I feared the move, promising as it was, was about to come to nothing but fortune favours the brave and Dobson’s toe in poking the ball away from Mills, sent it to where Mills wanted it to go. That was to Goodrham who then bagged his second.

With five normal minutes plus another added five we saw the game out with little panic, Gatlin O’Donkor once again coming on and doing his bit.

He’d replaced Mark Harris who’d had one of those thankless lone(ish) centre-forward roles where a lot of hard work and intelligent running has to be put in for no immediately noticeable reward, particularly to the untrained eye.

For all this positivity – and I’ll enjoy it whilst we are where we are – I am not going to get carried away. We’ve only kept one clean sheet so far and three of our four wins have been by a single goal. Fine margins where possibly on these days it could have gone the other way but I have to say we’ve deserved all of these wins. Just don’t get complacent is my mantra.

Also playing the positivity card, we achieved this win without Josh McEachran, who currently can’t get in the side, new loan signing Sonny Perkins and injured Marcus Browne.

A cracking day indeed. One I turned into more of an away day experience, as I occasionally do, when it’s the Kassam at 3 o’clock by starting off in the Royal Blenheim at 11:30. That’s when it opens, there’s a good choice of beer, there’s a CAMRA discount on some and the staff are very friendly. It would be rude not to from time to time. On this particular Saturday though there were fewer Oxford United fans on the premises than usual due to the latest train strike. Still good chat though. I think the Rotherham United fan with RUFC tattooed on his knuckles was initially a bit surprised when I mentioned the Cutlers Arms. Hope him, his partner, son and dog enjoyed their weekend in our fair city.

At 10 to 2 instead of catching a bus I decided to walk to the ground. Achieved in a couple of minutes shy of the hour mark is really good practice for walking football.

That had worked up a hunger so I was forced to buy a pie in the ground which is something I very rarely do. Have to say it was one of the best I’ve had in recent years at a football ground. Not your standard pukka stuff. Steak and ale. Quality and a lot of meat. Not gristle as one often ends up with.

We have a rest this midweek but there’s no real let up, as there won’t be for the next eight months. Port Vale next back at the Kassam. If they were to beat us they’d leapfrog us in the table. Yes, no room for complacency and I have no worry at all that Liam Manning will allow that to creep in.

Players leaving the pitch after a job well done

Now onto the finances and ownership of our opponents which will be included in all FVs after league games. This is all the work of Colin Barson and I have to say that it provides such fascinating detail that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Athletic (nothing to do with Charlton) came knocking.

FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF CHARLTON ATHLETIC FC

So, Charlton Athletic, an analysis that a few fans have said they’re looking forward to. I’ll start with the numbers, using the standard format, and then go on to their ownership situation.

As you can see from the table below (Y/E 2022 remember), they feature at both ends in a number of the categories that are analysed. Their average attendance, at 13,436, is about 40% above the divisional average and their total income is about 30% above the divisional average, both placing them in 6th place.

(NB: Five of the clubs in L1 hide behind abridged accounts but there are 17 that publish the detailed stuff and they can be ranked accordingly. Derby and Wigan have no accounts available.)

Their match income of £4,918,000 is the second highest in the division (nearly double the divisional average) but their commercial income is rather surprisingly about half a million pounds below the divisional average. Having questioned this, it appears that the club are currently hamstrung by a very poor catering contract that their previous owners negotiated. Like us, they don’t own their stadium, but rent it from a previous owner (more of that later) who charges them rent of £500,000 per annum. Where they differ from us though, is that this rent allows them full 24/7 usage and full benefit of all stadium income, such as matchday F&B, catering, conferences, all non-matchday events etc. So, to end up with a contract where a third party are taking most of the income is a spectacular own goal by the previous ownership. They are pretty good at player trading and the £3,306,000 realised in 2022 is the second highest in the division for the year and the previous 3 years have yielded approximately £13.5m in total. Charlton have a very good academy, being in that South London area that currently seems to produce a high number of top-level footballers. They have, in recent years, regularly been amongst the top ten clubs in the whole country for the number of academy graduates that go on to have a professional career. They measure, and target, the number of players that their academy produces, by means of a percentage of their full-time squad, which is good to see.

Charlton’s expenditure puts them toward the higher end of the division. Their cost of sale (wages by another name) is 4th highest at £10,622,000 and their administration charges are an astronomical £9,204,000. Added to other costs, it means they are the 3rd most expensive club to run in League One. The high administration costs are due, in part, to more historical (and badly negotiated) contracts for some of the running costs of the club. All of this resulted in a loss for the year of £7,417,000 which is the second highest in the division. The club had a fairly average cash at bank, at the time of the accounts, but negative equity of over £20m, placing them 20th of the 22 clubs who published the information. This, of course, was the situation in 2022. So how about the present, and Charlton’s ownership situation?

It’s fair to say that Charlton have had more than their fair share of owners from the long list of wrong’uns who pitch up in football boardrooms up and down the country! They’ve had long historic problems that go back to before their six-year exile from The Valley, which began in 1986. I won’t go into all of that but will concentrate on more recent matters. As we all probably know, they are currently owned by a group that includes Oxford United fans Charlie Methven and Simon Lenagan and I’ll try to put together how that came about and how it currently fits together.

If we go back to 2014 the club was acquired by Belgian businessman Roland Duchatelet, who at the time was seen as a bit of a white knight. He owned other clubs and it was thought Charlton might benefit from certain synergies that come with being part of a multi club ownership group. The purchase by Duchatelet included the club, The Valley and the club’s extensive training ground in Eltham. But he was very much an absent owner and although he covered the losses, he created a disconnect with the fanbase and was hugely unpopular, leading to many demonstrations against his ownership. By the time he “sold” the club to the very dodgy East Street Investments (ESI) in January 2020 the club, its stadium and its training ground were under separate ownership, with Duchatelet retaining ownership of the stadium and training ground. Sound familiar?

I’ve put sold in inverted commas as there followed about eight months of confusion, where it was not sure who owned the club. ESI were based in Abu Dhabi and were fronted by a guy called Matt Southall. They claimed that the takeover had EFL approval, but the EFL said it did not. Then stories started emerging from Charlton that Southall and his cronies were swanning around in brand new Range Rovers, renting penthouse apartments and generally living the high life, all charged to the club. While this was going on, in June 2020, ESI were allegedly taken over by a guy called Paul Elliott (not the ex-footballer of the same name) although this was disputed. In early August 2020 the EFL reported that Southall, Elliott and ESI’s lawyer Chris Farnell had all failed its Owners and Directors test, throwing things into further turmoil. Enter Thomas Sandgaard.

Sandgaard bought the club in late August 2020 and it was ratified by the EFL in the September. He is a Danish businessman, living in the USA, who made his money in the music business. His introduction to the fans was to play his guitar and sing to them, on the pitch, before his first game, a kind of musical Michael Knighton! That should have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing, but he was probably well meaning, just a bit eccentric and unusual. I have met him and his son, who he made Director of Football, and they were very nice people, but my first impression was that they knew absolutely nothing about football and were way out of their depth. During his three years of ownership Charlton racked up well over the £20m negative equity shown in the 2022 accounts and it’s fair to say that for the last year or so of his ownership Sandgaard wanted out, which brings us to the current new owners.

In December 2022 a company by the name of SE7 Partners Limited was registered at Companies House. This company had two Directors, Charlie Methven and Ed Warwick and it was to be the vehicle used to purchase Charlton Athletic from Thomas Sandgaard. The backers of SE7 Partners Limited is a company called Global Football Partners (GFP) who are registered in the Cayman Islands. GFP consists of seven principal owners, who each own varying percentages, but all greater than 5%. These people are Gabriel Brener and family (American private investor and former majority shareholder of an MLS club), Joshua Friedman and family (Co Chairman of Canyon Partners LLC a leading global alternative asset management firm), Warren Rosenfeld and family (owner of major US recycling firm Calbag Metals), ACA Football Partners (Singapore based football investors), Munir Javeri (Founder of Connecticut based investment firm Sahana Capital), Marc Boyan (Englishman based in the US and CEO of Miroma Group a global marketing, media and content company) and Charlie Methven, who needs no introduction to Oxford United fans. An agreement was eventually reached with Sandgaard who would write off the debt that was owed to him in exchange for whatever price SE7 Partners/GFP agreed with him for the club. This doesn’t quite wipe out the entire negative equity though, as about £7m is part of a bond scheme going back to when Charlton moved back to The Valley and is payable to the bondholders who are mostly previous directors or sponsors of the club. It is not payable on demand but is only due if and when Charlton reach the Premier League, so it is a very soft debt. The change in ownership officially went through in July 2023 and the new owners have installed a new senior management team. Charlie Methven is the owners’ representative and is the point of contact for the senior management team, meaning that they only have to deal with one owner rather than seven, who are spread around the world. It will be interesting to see how it pans out, but they have already been busy, as about an hour before finishing this report they sacked Dean Holden, their manager.