I have been trying desperately over the last week to make sense of the situation at the Valley . Reluctantly and although I didn't agree with it at the time I could see why Chris Powell was sacked and rather like Parky 3 years earlier I feel this was vindicated by subsequent results . Although I believe SCP would probably have kept us up ,I am not sure it would have been so comfortable and we would have had a nervous afternoon at Bloomfield Road . Riga's departure once he made it clear he wanted to stay was in my opinion baffling .
To try to make sense of this my mind went back 10 years when I studied the Diploma in Management studies and read an excellent book comparing football and business management called the 90 Minute manager
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-90-Minute-Manager-Lessons-Management/dp/0273708309 by Chris Brady and David Bolchover.This book helped me understand the similarities and differences between the two and start to grasp a lot of the concepts I had learnt about on my course because the authors gave case studies which I could understand. It also assisted me in understanding changes in modern Football on issues like rotation as opposed to the game I was introduced to in the 70's . I can never remember anyone ever speaking about rotating Flanagan and Hales. We also didn't discuss the merits of different formations in the way we do now.
The authors analysed managers' skills and spoke about the level that a manager could manage. How some managers could generate an immediate impact whereas others needed time.They felt in general football Chairman were too emotional about the decision to sack and that sometimes in business managers only worked on short term contracts and worked in terms of precise specifications . One case study they gave was Joe Royle at Manchester City. Essentially the authors felt Royle had proved himself as an expert in getting teams out of the lower divisions having achieved this with Oldham and City , but his achievements were much more modest when he managed in the top flight apart from a brief spell when he first managed Everton . They said the rational business decision would have been to sack Royle once the pre Saudi City had been promoted to the Premier League rather than wait until relegation a year later. Ironically at that point when he was sacked the authors claim he should have been retained because his skill was in getting teams promoted from the lower divisions. Could Riga's skill be seen as having the impact to keep us up and now Peeters has the different skill set more suitable for the longer project?
When talking about the balance of the team they portrayed how football has become a squad game and how rotation should work . When future Addick Jesper Blomqvist was signed by Alex Ferguson for Manchester United it wasn't to replace Ryan Giggs , but rather emulate him because he appreciated the importance and balance that Giggs brought to the side and that the Welshman could not remain fresh for the 60 games that United might have to play. This is exactly why I would like us to sign another left footed winger ,not to replace Callum Harriott ,but to supplement him.
The examples they gave on succession planning and how it worked differently was Bill Shankly and Matt Busby . They said there was a time to use it and a time when bringing in an outsider to freshen things up. Whereas the favoured son at Liverpool Bob Paisley made a pre condition of taking the job that Bill was told to go nowhere near the club , Wilf McGuiness let Busby continue to enjoy a role . This resulted in Paisley winning European Cups thus building on his predecessor's legacy and indeed improving on it.He then handed on to the next in line in the boot room Joe Fagan. In contrast McGuiness got sacked quickly and within a few seasons United were relegated . I wonder if there were shades of this approach last season with Moyes, Van Gaal will be a different story I suspect.
So did Roland have a rational business plan? Did he see Jose as an expert in providing a short term fix to enable us to survive with Peeters being seen as a better prospect for the season? I hope rather like the sacking of SCP three months ago I will see the logic in a years time.
Comments
Now I must get back to the suicide themed threads.
I'd give Roly's approach more credence if Peeters already had a track record of building long-term success, though. Otherwise it just feels like a big gamble.
Interesting. The contract situation between JR and the club may perhaps support your theory regarding JR.
On a side note, I'm not sure the pre condition about Shankly is correct. Shankly was banned (or told not to attend) from the training ground at a later date.
According to the book Paisley made it clear he didn't want any interference from Shankly from the outset ,but allowed him to attend the training ground almost for humanitarian reasons as he didn't seem to have much of a life outside football . He was banned when he started to try to interfere. He then went over the Mersey to watch Tranmere train as his old captain Ron Yeats was the manager.
Time will tell if that is why we have switched managers, but it is reassuring to think it might be why even if there is little evidence right now.
Some of Duchatelet's decisions may work as this has. But for fans of clubs like Southampton and Charlton, is ripping out managers and players with genuine affinity for a club really worth it for the sake of a slightly higher league position? Because we're never realistically going to be challenging for major trophies with the big boys, the answer for me is a simple no.
For fans of clubs like us, surely it's more about the special memories and affection we have towards the team at a given time more than anything else. And these memories and feelings are at their strongest when the club is full of people who care, and love it like we do.
That's why, despite watching nearly a decade of us playing a better standard in the Premier league, my fondest Charlton moments came in more recent years. Because of the fist pumping and joy of Powell every time we got a big result, because the likes of Hamer, Solly, Morrison, Jackson, Pritchard, Kermorgant, Hughes, Euell, Dyer and others genuinely seemed to care so much about us.
For me, sharing the joy of a 1-0 win at Oldham with these people represents a greater fan experience than beating a better team with transient foreign loanees and a manager facilitating the business model of someone living in Belgium.
Football is so painfully business-oriented as it is, so surely we want to cling on to any semblance of sentimentality while we can. When we all fell in love with football and Charlton growing up, it wasn't clever boardroom decisions that drew us in. It was the players and the managers who seemed to represent what the club was about.
So while we can sit here, analyse and validate Roland's decisions (and I hope they are validated going forward), is this really what it's all about? As I try to work out who Charlton really are and why all these unknown people are here, I struggle to even find the relevance of the argument outlined above - even if it is a good one.
Echoes my thoughts posted earlier this week regarding the "emotional ties" around our Club which is very important to me.
We are left with RJ's suggested plan - a more suitable manager to build a winning team to get us out of the Division in Peeters than JR the fire fighter keeping us up with little time to work. The only other scenario is that RD just "winged it", got lucky with JR and hopes he's signed a Tin Tin to fire us into orbit. My feeling is that RD is someone with a strategy and an implementation plan to deliver on that strategy. Everything I have read about him suggests that is the case. Peeters may turn out to be two Bob rather than a golden guinea but he will have been identified some while ago as a potential manager for one of his network clubs. My view is that we are RDs most important football investment to date, more so than SL, because we can deliver for him something that SL can't, namely access to the richest league in the world via a team based in one if the greatest and largest cities in the world. I am therefore of the view that RD expects great things from a Peeters led team. If RDs judgement over Peeters matches his one over Riga, we could be in for an exciting ride?
I remain, like smiley/stripey Nigel, very optimistic for the future.
I think Neil Warnock would probably be a better current example of a promotion specialist who didn't cut it in the Premiership than Joe Royle. A Division down Simon Grayson seems to thrive in getting teams out of League One , but normally gets sacked once he is in the Championship. Before reading the book I felt that our ex striker Ronnie Moore when he was at Rotherham or Southend's Steve Tillson were unfortunate not to have been given bigger jobs having taken their respective clubs up two divisions , now I accept that their skills are in the lower divisions . Keith Hill would be another example with his recent triumphant return to Rochdale .
To expand on its piece about Shankly and succession planning. It notes that Bill himself was an outsider when he came in from Huddersfield. Shankly created what was popularly known as the boot room where a group of coaches would famously drink Whisky plot the downfall of Liverpool's opponents and talk about football . The boot room would scout Ireland,Scotland and the lower leagues and picked up many of Liverpool's legendary players from there and assimilate them into the Reserves for a couple of years before unleashing them into the first team. This ensured that they learned the Liverpool way . An example would be Ian Rush who only played 7 times in his first season after his move from Chester.
The boot room succession passed smoothly from Shankly to Paisley and then on to Fagan. When he retired in 1985 the succession chain was broken because the both of the natural successors Ronnie Moran or Roy Evans were overlooked in favour of Kenny Dalglish. Although Dalglish was an insider to the club , because he was a player he wasn't part of the boot room succession plan . Dalglish was successful for a number of years , but the authors claim that Liverpool's decline started under him because he brought in a different type of player who would be expected to fit straight into Liverpool's first team immediately . An example would be future Addick John Barnes who was an established England International when he moved from Watford . This change in approach became even more evident when Graeme Souness took over in 1991.When Liverpool did revert back to the boot room by appointing Evans four years later the authors believe that it was too late because the natural link had gone and football had evolved.
I always feel that when Alan Curbishley offered to see out the last year of his contract , we missed the opportunity to have a succession plan . Clearly Curbs had been our most successful manager in decades and when Dowie brought in players like Faye and Traore these were not the type of players that Charlton had built its success on . One of the most impressive things SCP did was rebuild that Charlton team spirit. We felt we had got our Charlton back .To Jose Riga's credit he also managed to galvanise that . I just hope Peeters does not destroy this.
Do you remember those dinky white domes that Powell used to have positioned on the touchline at half-time at The Valley? On the way out for the second half, our players would sprint, check, and weave between them. Meanwhile, our opponents were loping out of the dressing-room, the keeper touching the crossbar and making it bounce for luck, and them all hopping around in anticipation.
We should have done that fitness training in the gym or at Sparrows Lane the week before - not in front of our opponents and 15,000 fans. I noticed there was a second-half under Riga a few weeks ago when the opponents were out on the pitch and the ref too, kicking their heels without us, and I assume this wasn't merely a psychological delaying tactic by our manager. I hope Riga was using every single second in the dressing-room to instruct our players how to win.
We lost that one, against Barnsley, who a few days later were relegated. It's a delusion to think we Charlton fans need cajoling for our support like recalcitrant children, just as it's a daft conceit to imagine we are naturally more loyal or deserving than the fans of Blackburn or QPR - or North Ferriby United.
While we were lodging at Sell-Out Park and set for an 'away' game against Palace, Ian Wright - virtually unknown then - came hurtling out of the tunnel at five-to-three and leaped up and down on his own like a man electrified. He was a man possessed, and this was just the warm-up; not for him the consciousness-raising huddle with all his team-mates. Within 70 seconds of kick-off, Wright leaped in our box and hammered a header against the bar.
We, Charlton, should be doing this routinely, especially at The Valley. We should start games aggressively - go straight for the jugular - so that even the most solid defenders are disturbed. While the right-back is wondering if that ricochet really is a corner, looking askance at his team-mates, we should have already taken it - fizzing, fast and accurate.
Our ponderousness lets us down. There was a period during last season when I willed us to be relegated. From my seat in the Lower North I admired the way our opponents attacked: the spacious, easy strides from midfield - always a man over - then the cutting ball to the striker, then the deft lay-off, and the shot at goal. When the striker was blocked or he blasted over, he loped back to his team and they began again.
Our opponents were playing within their capabilities. After half-time at 0-0 or us 0-1 down, we would attack the Covered End with nervous desperation: all ragged and frantic: something might happen. It takes much more than hope to score: I can still see Jackson, Kermorgant and BWP climbing over each other to meet a good cross a couple of seasons ago - and Bradley hammering his fists on the turf in sheer frustration as the ball slipped wide.
Duchatelet's ambition for us is weak. Many Lifers ask for fifteenth next season, or to end securely in mid-table. We are a terrific club with an imposing ground and 15,000 tremendous fans. With good players coached by an experienced manager we ought to frighten the bloody life out of every single opponent at The Valley.
Richard, Neil Warnock was also the name I thought of when reading part of your article.
In relation to L'pool the succession policy was always going to be affected post Fagan. Paisley and Fagan both had periods of adaptation as heir apparent prior to accepting the main job. Due to the short period of Fagan's reign & his unexpected departure, there was not the same time for a successor to become established and prepare for the main role. Further the role must have taken an extra unexpected dimension post Hysel.
A succession plan post AC would have been an attractive proposition to most Charlton fans. It would probably have enhanced stability within the club following the departure of AC and increased the duration of our stay in the EPL. But how viable was such a plan? It seems possible that non of AC's staff at the time would have wanted to manage the club. Nor does it seem likely any established top level manager would wish to join AC's backroom staff. That would leave lower level managers or people who had never managed as the potential successors under this type of plan, and for that to work the person would have needed to have been recruited early (perhaps about 2002). Even if the correct person could have been identified, recruited and trained, it still leaves the question would AC have welcomed such an individual amongst his staff? As ever these things are more difficult in real life than on paper, which is not to say they should not be attempted.
On a separate note today is the 29th anniversary of the Hysel disaster. May those that their life as a consequence rest in peace. Thoughts with the surviving victims and all the victims families.
Charlton got it right with Curbs. We got relegated (as expected) in our very first season in the Premier League with him and we stayed calm, kept the majority of our squad and went straight back up with ease. I just don't think that would happen these days. How many promoted clubs would keep their manager if they were struggling?
On the other hand, Charlton waited far too long to sack Pardew in my opinion. We should have sacked him when it became clear that we we not going to even make the playoffs in our first season back down. That would have given a new manager the remainder of that season and the entire summer to build for the following season. Instead, we kept onto him for too long and were pretty much relegated by the time he was finally let go.
Royle, incidentally, is still looking to get back into management. Or so he said in a recent interview with Four Four Two.
So if the premise is that Powell was removed because he was not playing the Liege 4 + 2, and Riga chose not to play the Liege 4+2 why would an intelligent man have any such expectation. He would not. He would know straight away he was not embracing the supposed vision for which apparent lack of compliance the previous Manager/ Head Coach had lost his job.
Remember Riga had worked for the owner before and would have some experience of the man and his approach.
Who in their right mind is going to get on the phone to their boss and I say now look boss I know you sacked the previous guy for not playing "your" players and you know I didn't play "your" players either but guess what I am not still going to play "your" players in the future but I still want the job.
Really? Thank you for highlighting the absurdity that has dominated this board for the past week.