Let It Be So

I may be the last to break out the bubbly, get out the dancing shoes, and echo every other Addick’s heart-felt welcome to Thomas Sandgaard. I’m ready and waiting, with a large glass of red (to be followed by several others and a cognac). And I can’t wait any longer (this is France after all and I'm an hour ahead). But there’s that nagging part of me that still wants confirmation, which basically amounts to hearing that Paul Elliot has either been paid off or is now taking legal action against his former legal team for gross incompetence, preferably the latter.

Yes, we’re well aware that TS has good people working for him; and just about everyone involved wants it to be a fait accompli. Perhaps acting quickly to make funds available and, with confirmation that the EFL’s tests are not a problem, to sign up some of those players waiting in line will help strengthen the impression that this is a deal that cannot be unwound. But I don’t put any store by the notion that because TS’ legal team is very good it necessarily means that the case is watertight. Legal teams offer advice and take instructions, they do not decide the course of action or the outcome, inside or outside court.

I find it astonishing that Elliot’s team might have left such a simple loophole, to allow TS to buy the club from ESI rather than ESI itself. I also don’t know how a court might react if told that some individuals gave testimony in court that they had no evidence of an imminent takeover (of ESI) while being well aware of a plan to buy the only asset that ESI owned. There is such a thing as the spirit of the law and it has bite, so does any suggestion of courts being treated with contempt by those being economical with the truth.

Just what TS paid to ESI for the club could, I think, also be material here. If he paid a material amount to ESI, Elliot could seek redress by seeking to get all or part of that money. It would be an utterly desirable outcome to see Elliot, Nimer and Southall tear themselves apart and blow all the money available to them on legal fees. If instead TS paid the notional £1 it could, to a court, smell.

So please forgive me for still having those concerns. Hopefully by the time I wake up tomorrow they will have gone. Then I’ll just have the hangover to worry about.