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Inside view with outgoing Charlton Athletic chairman Richard Murray

Richard Murray
Richard Murray

Plenty has happened in the past week or so and I’m now facing up to no longer being the chairman of the football club I love.

Even when Derek Chappell took over the chairmanship of the plc board a few years ago, I was still chairman of the football club board, so not being at the top is going to take some getting used to.

That said, completing the takeover was the right decision, for the club and me personally.

In Michael Slater and Tony Jimenez, I think we’ve found the right people – football people who have also got the money to stabilise the club and give us a good future.

I wanted it to be football people. People who will take a long-term view. People who have the necessary money to make Charlton a stable club. That might not mean throwing money at it like some clubs have done but enough to make sure we’re in business and that we’re a solid club.

It was a busy festive period. We wanted to get things wrapped up by Christmas Eve but in the end it took until New Year’s Eve. Even then, though, to get everything done in six weeks, considering we had the Christmas period, is a credit to everybody. At the centre of it all was Peter Varney, whom most fans will know from his long stint as chief executive.

He’s also on the new board and his involvement certainly made everything go a lot smoother. We all know what a good guy Peter is and what a good job he’s done for the club, so I think he’d covered a lot of the questions the new owners had at the beginning of the process.

I worked alongside Peter for 11 years so I also trust him implicitly and it’s good that he is back involved again.

I’ve been involved with Charlton now for almost 20 years and have been chairman for around 15 – but I’m not going anywhere just yet.

The new owners have asked me to continue on the board and I’m looking forward to still being involved. I think the future’s going to be good for us. I have a vision and I’m sure Tony, Michael and Peter do – that we will be an important club in the years to come.

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