Jules, I'm saddened to see that you've gone down the wholly predictable and ill informed route of "shit run club suffering the inevitable". I accept that you've had to spend a lot of time putting together a piece for every club, but your general assessment is still predictably poor IMO.
This is an extract from a response that I provided a while ago to Charlton fans who actually bothered to enquire as to what had happened to us (disclaimer - I might have got some things wrong, it's an opinion piece not a factual piece).
"The baffling thing about our current plight is that the next owners (IEC) were actually decent for 18 months. Invested in the pitch, made improvements to the stadium, funded the purchase of Euxton training ground, paid all running costs and bills on time, funded the squad improvement and most significantly continued the funding and development of the academy.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, something changed. No one knows what the trigger was but suddenly the money stopped coming in. Wages were due at the end of the month, just like every other month, and it just didn't turn up and from that moment on everything unraveled.
The most bizarre thing is the timing. If the owner (Stanley Choi, via his stooge Au Yeung) had funded the club for 1 / 2 more months we'd have stayed in the championship comfortably, they could have had a fire sale of our first team squad and recouped millions before bailing out, but instead they upped sticks, walked away and cost themselves millions.
It's very frustrating as, despite peoples perceptions and assumptions that we were just yet another "poorly run club that got what it deserved by living beyond it's means", we weren't. We had spent (by our standards) quite a bit last summer on players (8m) but hardly earth shattering figures, we were well inside FFP limits. The players bought all looked shrewd acquisitions as several had within less than 12 months significantly increased in value (Robinson, bought from Everton for 2m, fee agreed with AC Milan for 10m). Similarly, the investment that had been made in the Academy over the previous 8 years was really starting to reap rewards, 3 England youth internationals, several for other countries. Won their division at a canter, promoted to Category 2, got to the quarter final of the FA youth cup narrowly losing to Man Utd. Had a 17 year old break into the first team this season and was supposedly being watched by a lot of prem clubs, so the operating model of buying some fairly established young players with the potential for developing them and thus making future profit and developing a production line of home grown youngsters with a path from academy to the first team was looking very promising and very sustainable for the future of the club.
All that's gone, the lot has been broken up, Our (3 most) promising youngsters have been hoovered up by prem teams (Leeds, Brighton, Spurs) for peanuts, Robinson's gone to Fulham for less than we paid for him, Moore, Williams, Marshall, Lowe etc all gone for a fraction of their real value, Euxton gone, Cook gone, Youth coach gone (to Chelsea), all other assets up for grabs. if we survive at all it'll be a complete reset and will take years to recover, if ever. "
