ONPorter

I wrote this out a week or so ago as a full on explainer of Palace’s POV over all of this, in case UEFA decided to demote us or kick us out of Europe altogether, given how many neutrals are likely to see the decision and then ask for the intricacies of it all. It’s Palace’s perspective, I’m not saying that UEFA are right or wrong before bundles of neutrals get on my case, it really is just an explainer in the most thorough way I can manage on here. Cheers. Shares weren’t placed into Blind Trust because John Textor never had decisive control. He has spoken openly on many occasions about Parish being the man who calls the shots at Palace well before this issue became newsworthy. If Textor did have anything like “decisive control”, it’s fair to assume that we would be in just as much of a financial hole as every other club he gets his hands on. In reality, Palace are prudently run and have always remained comfortably inside PSR regulations, whilst Lyon’s debt has increased alarmingly throughout Textor’s time at the helm. Given he had clear and decisive control of Lyon without any ambiguity; why weren’t his shares in the French club placed into Blind Trust? The Deadline for putting shares in Blind Trust was July 1st until this year; why would you move that to March 1st when the season was still in full swing? We were playing Millwall in the Round of 16 on the day of the March deadline; it’s hardly as if we were on the verge of winning the first major trophy in our entire history. We had to beat Fulham (A) + Villa and Man City at Wembley to get there from that point. Lyon only got into the Europa League on the final day of the season thanks to a 99th minute Le Havre equaliser at Strasbourg which elevated Lyon into their Europa League spot on GD; it’s hardly as if this was a likely scenario back in late February. John Textor had been actively trying to sell his stake in Palace for well over 18 months prior to the Blind Trust deadline, simply because he had no tangible influence behind the scenes and grew extremely frustrated at running into a brick wall time and time again. His aim had always been to bring us into his multi-club model alongside Lyon, Botafogo and Molenbeek only to be told repeatedly that the other members of our board had no interest in such a shift of strategy. The only piece of business done between the two clubs throughout John Textor’s time on either board was the sale of a fringe first-team player in Jake O’Brien (who made 0 Premier League appearances for Palace) to Lyon in the summer of 2023. John Textor has now agreed to a sale of his shares in Palace to American Woody Johnson, meaning that with Premier League approval, there is zero tangible link between Textor and the club. John Textor has also stepped down from his role as the head of Lyon with Michelle Kang taking his place, meaning that by the time the Europa League draw is made, the man UEFA are seemingly worried about having influence will not be involved in the decision making process at either club in any sense, decisive or otherwise. Lyon were initially relegated to Ligue 2 by the DNCG after accumulating more than €500m of debt and being warned back in November of 2024 that they needed to get their house in order by June of 2025. Following the call to relegate them, they were given a 2 week period to get their house in order, removing John Textor from the position at the head of the hierarchy and injecting further funds into the club, despite little to no sign that it’s anything other than a plaster on a long-term gaping wound. With French football in a major mess in terms of TV contracts and general interest in Ligue 1, there was a widespread desire from stakeholders outside of the Lyon bubble to ensure that they were reinstated to the top tier, future proofing the league as a whole from further drop offs in interest rather than dishing out appropriate punishments for financial mismanagement on a major scale.