Roland Duchatelet was officially unveiled as the new owner of Charlton on Friday afternoon.

The Belgian owns 100%of the shares and the takeover saw Tony Jiminez and Martin Protheroe step down from the board.

Michael Slater will follow them after a brief handover period. Richard Murray will stay on and becomes non-executive Chairman.

Following hot on the heels of the takeover was the announcement that left sided midfielder, Astrit Ajdarevic, had signed a six month loan deal. The Swede played for Liverpool’s youth team and was coached by Chris Powell during his time at Leicester.

He also had a brief spell at Hereford. Ajdarecvic was left out of Standard Liege’s squad that travelled to La Manga for a mid season training camp, fuelling speculation that he was en route to The Valley. He will wear the number 42 shirt.

Saturday’s match with Oxford was called off after the formality of a morning pitch inspection on Friday. The FA have rescheduled the match for Wednesday but there seems little chance of the match going ahead. Next Saturday’s match with Barnsley has a more realistic chance of being on.

Assistant groundsman, Nathan Chapman, gave the club’s website details of the problems with the pitch and the plans to rectify them. Chapman said this:

“We’re going to place a dome on the surface for a week to dry the pitch out and then we can work with the bigger machinery to get it flat and dried out to a level where it’s playable.

“We’re in this predicament because the pitch hasn’t had any sufficient drainage work done on it for the past 16 or 17 years.

“The drainage system is collapsed at one end which prevents any water from going through and as a result it just holds on the surface.

“The drainage runs are all sealed and capped and don’t run into the main chamber so there is no movement. The water just sits at the top, taking a very long time to go through.

“The only way to permanently solve the problem is to wait until the summer when we will put into action plans of a new drainage system which will then be sufficient enough.

“The reason we can’t do it now is because we need to dig the whole pitch up and pretty much start again. We are hopeful we won’t have a problem getting through these next tricky few months.”

The likelihood is the Oxford game will eventually be played on Tuesday 14 January. Charlton will know who they will face in the Fourth Round, if they can get past Oxford, before they face the U’s.

Chris Powell may play a stronger team than he had planned against Oxford if a financially lucrative tie awaits the winners.

By the time the Addicks play again, there are likely to be more new players at The Valley. Exciting times in SE7 as a new era dawns.