Charlton owner Thomas Sandgaard labels Craig Freeman takeover move merely a “distraction”

Charlton Athletic owner Thomas Sandgaard has branded a supposed new takeover attempt by Craig Freeman as “a deliberate distraction.”

After the initial nightmare of Tahnoon Nimer and Matt Southall’s brief time in charge, Paul Elliott was announced as Charlton’s new owner in June. But after being rejected by the EFL in August, his takeover had seemingly collapsed.

In mid-September, Elliott was granted an injunction to stop the sale of East Street Investments (ESI) to any third party before a trial, initially scheduled for November. But shortly after the ruling Sandgaard announced his purchase of Charlton, complete with EFL approval.

Sandgaard and his legal counsel claim they worked around the injunction as it only applied to a sale of ESI, rather than to the club itself. However, Elliott has remained insistent that he is Charlton’s rightful owner.

Now, Elliott has sold his shares in Lex Dominus, the company used to buy ESI, to Craig Freeman, who runs a Welsh-based specialist dental accountants, with Freeman stating he is determined to take over Charlton.

Speaking this afternoon, however, Sandgaard, who is certain the legality of his ownership is watertight, told me he is not remotely concerned about the new development.

“My take on it is that it’s really a deliberate distraction to get the attention away from Chris Farnell, so he can keep doing what he does in English football,” Sandgaard explained.

“It’s more entertaining than anything. Basically the fact we learned that he didn’t get a Range Rover. He should buy a stream!”

Farnell had previously owned Lex Dominus prior to Elliott taking control and the sports lawyer saw his application to take over Charlton rejected by the EFL along with Elliott’s.

“As you know, we now have this competition where a fan can win one of those Range Rovers, the one Chris Farnell was driving around in,” Sandgaard continued. “It’s kind of interesting because that has driven a lot of bad press towards Chris Farnell. And if you look at Chris Farnell’s dealings in English football, including what looks like asset-stripping of clubs, he’s obviously highly dependent on his reputation in order to still do business in England. It didn’t go so well when he came to Charlton!

“So I think the announcement of selling Lex Dominus which is his and Paul Elliott’s little empty company, selling that to an individual in Wales is really meant as more of a distraction for people in general not to focus on Chris Farnell and instead to focus on all the turbulence around Charlton. So that’s interesting.

“If you look at the legal side of the ownership of Charlton, it’s all said and done so there’s really not much to talk about there. But it looks like this guy ‘Tooth’ Freeman, he probably bought Lex Dominus from those two guys for one pound. I’ve been looking at this guy and it looks like, or at least he’s stating that he’s been dabbling with being an agent in the football world. That’s probably where he met Chris Farnell. And as a matter of fact, we’ve found that during the takeover of the club there were millions of tweets relating to that and they were all very positive, there were a few that were skeptical…but there was maybe a dozen or less that were supportive of Farnell and Elliott. And one of those few happens to be ‘Tooth’ Freeman…they obviously know each other quite well. So I’m actually surprised he didn’t get a Range Rover too!

“But we also know he’s pretty smart because he’s smart enough to delete that incriminating tweet. Those guys…they just keep being good entertainment!”

When Sandgaard’s takeover finally went through in late September, Charlton were just days away from administration, and after the recent collapse of Bury, the Danish-American is looking to make sure no other club suffers a similar fate.

“I look forward to continuing to work with the EFL to improve on keeping shady characters out of English football. Bury was obviously a smaller entity, but Charlton is a pretty significant club with a lot of history and it’s amazing that it could get that close.”

Cover Photo: Kyle Andrews