Sunday 18 October 2009

Gold In Them There Valley (Pt2)

The Brummies perspective, does not look great http://forums.birminghammail.net

Gold In Them There Valley

There has been reference to former Birmingham trio of Sullivan, Gold and Brady coming into the Valley with their resources and buying up the club. Today’s report states that Sullivan is preferring a bid for Charlton over his boy hood team of West Ham due to the latter’s debt position. The resulting response on the message board (Charlton Life) is negative, understandably, since Sullivan and Gold have made their fortune from scantily clad women in magazines and newspapers. Also, we don’t want to be the affordable choice rather than the first choice.

If there is seriousness in the speculation then it will be an interesting test for Charlton supremo, Richard Murray, who for the last couple of years has been saying that he will only sell to the people with Charlton’s family values. Now with the constant, although fading rendition of the incest song at every match, you could argue that our family values and Sullivans are similar, but its probably not what Murray means.

Life has changed over the last two years and with the directors including Murray having forked out a further £7 million recently, I wonder how much pressure there is on Murray, from his colleagues to cash in, at all costs.

Charlton’s fans are indignant, at the thought of a porn baron owning us, although it would interesting to see how many of the indignant have not taken a sneaky look at a Sullivan publication, or sneered when Claire Short has sounded out against page 3.

I can imagine these three being frostily received, but we supporters are a fickle bunch and as far as I know Sullivan always backed Birmingham, built them into a premiership team, albeit recently a yo yo team and put money into the club. If they were to buy and if they were to put money into the club, their past would largely by a number of fans be ignored. For a lot of fans the hint that Curbs may come back would soothe any moral indignation and the prospect that we will return to the lower levels of the Premiership.

For me, I am happy with the ownership as it currently stands, but know it will not, cannot last. Would Sullivan be worse than a consortium backed by foreign money, at least he has a track record of backing his club with players and Managers – Francis, Bruce and McCleish and he is transparent with the businesses he runs.

I am neither for or against, if I think about it, but for those that wish against him, beware of what you wish for, we have seen a number of “unknown” saviours, in football, whose trusty white stead has been anything but that.