Lee Bowyer says he is over the moon as Charlton’s takeover is finalised – and discusses his transfer plans for January

BY LOUIS MENDEZ

Lee Bowyer says he is “over the moon” that East Street Investments’ takeover at Charlton has been finalised.

It had been announced that the Abu Dhabi-based consortium had agreed a deal with former owner Roland Duchatelet back at the end of November, subject to approval from the EFL.

The club finally announced that the takeover had been concluded this afternoon.

“I’m over the moon,” said the Addicks chief, who will expect to enter contract negotiations with his new bosses shortly with his current deal expiring at the end of the season.

“Everyone is happy. I’m happy. The fans are happy, well I’m guessing they’re happy! The club is moving forward. Roland wanted to sell it and we’ve got a group of people who want to do good things with this football club. I’m excited that they’ve come in. I’m looking forward to working with them.

“It’s going through [new chairman Matt Southall],” added Bowyer, when asked if he had yet been in conversation with new majority shareholder Tahnoon Nimer.

“I’ve met Matt a couple of times and some positive things have been said. I’m happy with what I’ve heard. If we can all work hard and try and push on – it’s not going to happen overnight, we have to be patient.

“The most important thing is that we make ourselves an established Championship side and then build. If you look at Bristol City, Preston, teams like that, it’s taken them years to build and become an established Championship side. We’re no different. We’ve started at the bottom, that’s what we’ve done. Now, slowly but surely, we’ll take the club forward.”

The deal concluded a few hours before Bowyer took his injury-ravaged side to face play-off chasing Swansea. The Addicks, who started with five players aged 20 or under as their injury crisis continued, were narrowly beaten 1-0 after a valiant performance.

Bowyer says that he will liaise with Southall now in order to discuss potentially adding to his squad in January.

“It’s only just gone through today so the most important thing was concentrating on [Swansea],” explained the Charlton boss.

“Once I go home, then I’ll see Matt more frequently, I’m sure. Then we can have proper conversations and see where we’re going to go and what’s going to happen. I know for sure that we won’t rush into anything because, that would be stupid of us.

“Our recruitment, with the bodies fit, is good. We’ve got good players in the building. I’d never disrespect the players that I’ve got because we were doing really well when we had a normal amount of players that we could pick from.

“When you’ve got fifteen players with injuries, it’s tough. But we will have players back. Jonny Williams and Tomer Hemed are both outside training. Once they start drip feeding back, we’ll be good. Obviously, bringing in a couple here and there, that will just make us stronger.”

PHOTOS: KYLE ANDREWS