FA CUP FINAL BUILD-UP: After ‘a turbulent few months’ behind the scenes at Selhurst Park, could the man who helped save the club from insolvency be forced out?
Parish counsel: Crystal Palace’s long-standing chairman has been seen at games with another mega-rich American
“We’re going into the build-up before the biggest game in the club’s history,” one well-regarded Crystal Palace fan said over the weekend. “The last thing we need is an egotistical American billionaire playing his games with us again.”
John Textor appears to want to stage the greatest comeback since Lazarus, as reports surfaced at the weekend that less than a year since he declared his undying love for Everton, Crystal Palace’s biggest shareholder now wants to take over Selhurst Park completely.
Anyone, football fan or disinterested bystander, who saw the television pictures after the Nottingham Forest game on Sunday, when that club’s de facto owner, Evangelos Marinakis, marched on to the pitch, angry-looking, as if to demand an immediate explanation from coach Nuno Espirito Santo for the 2-2 draw with already-relegated Leicester, will have seen it as just the kind of proprietorial interference that no club needs. Besides that, pitch invasions normally see the perpetrators banned.
And any Textor re-establishment at Crystal Palace is likely to be viewed very suspiciously by the fans, as it threatens to oust the club’s long-standing chairman.
It was only in August last year that tech entrepreneur Textor issued a 1,100-word statement apparently ending his relationship with Palace, having failed to find buyers for his Eagle Football’s 45% share in the club. “We are interested in selling our interest in Crystal Palace, largely so that we can pursue a relationship with the Everton club and community,” he said then.
Textor not only failed to find buyers for his Palace shares, he also failed to acquire a controlling interest in Premier League rivals Everton. So now, at a billionaire’s loose-end, it has been reported that he is resuming his interest in Palace.
Ed Aarons, a sports reporter at the Grauniad with impeccable Palace contacts, wrote that the weekend that, “John Textor is attempting an audacious takeover of Crystal Palace but faces competition from the New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, as the battle for control at Selhurst Park heats up before the club’s appearance in the FA Cup final next Saturday.”
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The Grauniad reported that Textor has been in talks with Palace’s other American shareholders, David Blitzer and Josh Harris, about buying their shares in Palace.
Blitzer and Harris have been part-owners of Palace since 2015. It was in 2021 that Textor joined Apollo co-founder Harris and Blackstone executive Blitzer in acquiring roughly 40% of Crystal Palace, joining chairman Steve Parish on the four-man board of directors.
While Textor has increased his shareholding since then, Harris and Blitzer now own around 36%.
The Grauniad report says that any deal to buy-out Harris and Blitzer “would take Textor’s stake to more than 80% and mean he would be able to complete a full takeover”.
That would likely see Parish, who saved the club from insolvency in 2010, shown the door.
Parish owns just over 10% of the club but effectively retains overall control. The four partners – Parish, Textor, Blitzer and Harris – have equal voting rights but Parish has the casting vote in the boardroom.
Hence Parish has been having talks with another super-rich American, 78-year-old Johnson, a former US Ambassador to the Court of St James, about buying out Textor and the other shareholders. Johnson, “was seen with Parish at Palace’s game against Nottingham Forest” last week, Aarons reports.
Textor is understood to prefer to push ahead with a takeover of the club. Textor is thought to have invested about £150million since 2021, while development costs on the club’s new main stand have soared to at least £200million, raising serious questions about the scheme’s commercial viability.
Harris and Blitzer may want out in part because of the increasingly costly stadium plan, which while it was granted planning permission in 2022, has still not started substantive construction work.
With the club’s third FA Cup final just days away, Palace have endured “a turbulent few months”, according to the Grauniad. Highly-rated sporting director Dougie Freedman has quit, reportedly frustrated with a limited transfer budget in January, chief financial officer Sean O’Loughlin left last week and long-serving chief operating officer Sharon Lacey has also moved to work in the United States.
So on Saturday, at least before the referee’s whistle signals the start of Oliver Glasner’s team’s bid to win Palace’s first major trophy, all eyes at Wembley will be on who takes their seats in the posh seats of the Royal Box near or alongside Steve Parish.
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If Starmer wasn’t a boot-kissing berk, he’d stick a 5000% tariff on any deals involving foreigners buying British football clubs. After all, we don’t want to be an island of strangers, do we Keir?
I’ve always liked the 50+1 Rule they have in Germany, I can’t say I want Trump’s pal Woody Johnson taking over!
Perhaps Crystal Palace could adapt an idea from John Textor’s earlier, brief spell of undying love for Everton FC? £200m+ for just one new stand at Selhurst Park sounds a bit pricey, so maybe Palace could instead move to a new stadium site in Crystal Palace Park, where the athletic stadium is now and where the first FA up finals were held, before Wembley Stadium was opened in 1924 (“Football’s coming home”, etc.!). That would cost more than £200m+ but would be a whole new stadium, not just one stand. As Crystal Palace Park is entirely in LB of Bromley, LB of Croydon might complain, but LB of Bromley would probably be pleased? The recycling an idea from Everton FC bit is that if the Palace men’s team go “home” to Crystal Palace, they could leave Selhurst Park for the women’s team to use ?!