Since relegation from the Premier League in 2007 every Charlton Athletic supporter has their own personal low point. There are plenty of options to choose from.
For Jen Offord, author of The Year of the Robin about the pandemic-affected 2019/20 season, it came shortly before football was paused. “I remember going to the last home game before the Covid lockdown, against Middlesbrough,” she says. “We lost 1-0. That match was rubbish, it was the only one where I actually resented being there, waddling down six months pregnant to watch.
“At that point the writing seemed to be on the wall.” It was, insofar as Charlton suffered their third Championship relegation in 12 years. At that point the threat to the club seemed existential.
Charlton were loosely in the hands of holding company East Street Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based group that had bought the club for £1 from Roland Duchatelet that January. But three of its members failed the fit and proper owner’s test, so the group and seemingly the club was sold to Paul Elliott, a businessman with no previous football experience. Charlton’s official website called him their new owner in June 2020.
Enter Dane Thomas Sandgaard, who thought he had bought the club directly from ESI majority shareholder Tahnoon Nimer. After some court wrangling, Charlton’s website ran another new-owner story by September, anointing Sandgaard.