Peter Lim - The Peter Pan-Esque owner for Valencia

Peter Lim: ‘I own a football club and see what happens next. It’s nothing more’

Does this look like the words of someone who gives a flying F about the club on a personal level, heck even consider it as an asset that an owner cares even if it is out of self interest, highly doubt so but one can only speculate.

The situation with Peter Lim seems all the more baffling considering he is the same person that has led Salford City, a club backed by the class of 92 to 4 promotions within 5 seasons. But Valencia seems to be a venture that has not gone too well for him if one is to go off public perception of his ownership and that is being very liberal to him to say the least.

Peter Lim is the one who saved Valencia CF from a certain Bankruptcy and the fans are so eager to drive him out of the club. You might wonder what could have gone wrong considering they were UCL regulars for the most part of his ownership and were regularly producing great talents along with doing a decent job in La Liga. The situation is so bad that murmurs of frequent stadium boycotts are being considered a reality rather than it being a setting of a dystopian work of fiction.

While on paper all might seem business as usual thanks to the fantastic work done by Rubén Baraja, their current manager. Things are not quite what they seem if you manage to get hold of a Valencia fan. The drama that is going on outside the 90 yards would put peak Arsenal Fan TV to shame. This has been a saga that is almost into the  5th season which makes it seem like chaos is likely the new normal for them. On top of that virtually signaling that the center piece of a community is now their private property and using it as an experiment for his footballing buddies is a sure shot way to get the general public on the wrong foot.

Many clubs are in debt, a few have accepted their fate of being selling clubs, a select few have all these plus not so ideal owners at the helm. But what happens when you combine all these ails and lump them on an owner who does not seem interested in the community. The local connect that a club has and only treats it as a toy, milking it dry of whatever assets it manages to produce and sell it at the first time of asking without taking any context into account just to get that money in through the door for years on repeat.

To simply put, Peter Lim saved Valencia out of Bankruptcy but that was backed by a loan. Now the owner is using the assets owned by club to recoup the cost without investing it back into the club.  His public dealings with the club supporters has not been the best PR exercise. 

Countless requests to abdicate his position or to sell the clubs have also been quashed by the Singaporean mogul as he continues to hold onto this once historic club believing he is still the man for the job. But all being said and done, time is running out for him and that leveraged buyout seems to be backfiring on him. He could only hope to have time to turn it around else his fate awaits him being forever remembered in Spain as the Spanish Glazers, not a legacy one would want especially when you initially owned a club with good intentions.

Cover Credits - Rabona TV