The club issued the following statement on Wednesday:

https://www.cafc.co.uk/news/view/5b2a6b566699f/news-charlton-athletic-takeover-update

CAS Trust welcomes the fact that the club says that is EXPECTING a takeover to be completed. That is what we and the vast majority of supporters wants to see happen as soon as possible.

We are encouraged that the takeover would be by "a group of investors linked to The Australian Football Consortium". What we have heard so far from this group is that they will bring the ambition and respect for the club's fans and history which we have long been craving.

As agreement on price is not referred to as an existing problem we infer from the statement that the obstacles to the completion of the deal seem to lie in matters of a legal nature rather than in disagreement about the value of the club. However, it would have been even more encouraging if it had been overtly stated that price was not still a stumbling block. Worryingly, it is possible that resolution of matters of a legal nature  might yet have an effect on price and potentially delay or destroy the deal.

Mention of "the challenges of assembling an ownership group" reminds us that a consortium may be more demanding when critical decisions need to be reached.

The apparently advanced stages of negotiations with the Australian consortium and the club's willingness to issue a joint statement would also seem to imply that the second (British) interested group that Richard Murray maintained last week were still involved, would now seem to be out of the picture or on the sidelines at least.

We are aware that the Australian Consortium has invested a large amount of money over the last year in reaching the current position. We are also very pleased that they have a long term plan.

Nevertheless, we are football supporters and, with pre season just a couple of weeks away, we are concerned that "preparations for the upcoming season" can hardly be anything near satisfactory. We look back enviously to preparations for the victorious 2011/12 season, when Chris Powell and his respected staff team were by now very advanced in their identification and recruitment of the players who would form his record breaking squad.

We welcome this joint statement but we recognise that it raises as many questions as it answers. We have therefore written to the club requesting (for the second time) that a date be set for the Fans Forum meeting which should have been held in early May. There has only been one Fans Forum meeting since September 2017 and we are urging the club that it would be a constructive move at this point to enable fan representatives to meet and ask questions, even if some of these questions cannot be addressed because of confidentiality issues.