I may be looking at this naively but not sure what Peace did wrong selling to Lai?
As a fan i think Peace made a number of mistakes from not backing managers to some iffy managerial appointments but not sure the sale to Lai was one of them.
At the time we were an established premier league club, we had a manager in charge in Pulis who although played shocking football at that time was as safe a bet as there was to guarentee premier league football.
He sold to a consortium who as far as i am aware brought us outright for between £170m - £200m, they didnt borrow against the club or take loans out to complete the deal, they paid the money no problem and at a time when the chinese, a huge superpower in the world were trying to get into football.
At that point of sale Peace was rumoured to be an advisor i think, but Lai was the decision maker.
He came in and said business as normal, they didnt say we would go crazy, but what they did do inline with the fact we were an established premier league club was broke our transfer record when signing Burke and also for the first time in our history starting paying players over £100k a week (Krychowiak, Sturridge) and many of us said it was the best squad in our lifetime, me included.
He appointed a supposed steady eddie in John Williams to run things, he then replaced Pulis with a Pardew who again had relative success at clubs similar to us like West Ham, Newcastle and Palace, it wasnt some random unknown mate of mate from China, of course there was probably better options than Pardew but he was an experienced mananger.
However it turned out, it didnt work out with Pardew, the team under performed and John Williams was a disaster, but that is all after Peace left, hindsight is a wonderful thing but all those things listed above seemed pretty safe sensible decisions.
Since then we got relegated, cut our cloth and got promoted again, as i have said i would prefer a long term plan but Lai wants out but not sure three years later Peace can be blamed for that.
Peace is a businessman, if somebody offered me the chance to put little money into a business and make £170m profit, i would say yes! As fans we didnt really suffer for him to be a success, i know Paul Thompson did great things and Peace carried it on, under him we were promoted to the top flight for the first time in my 30 years of going, we became an established topflight club and built a top academy, new training ground and have very nice facilities.
Things could of been different, on the pitch maybe we should of had more ambitious managers who targeted cups, some wanted the Halford extended, i have no doubt there are probably some staff who dont speak highly of him, all things that happen under multi million pound businesses.
There are probably people on here who know more than me but as an everyday fan, i am not sure Peace did much wrong selling to Lai, the appointments after that were where it went wrong but they were all pretty experienced established appointments that just didnt work out.