On these boards the words 'heart of the club' and 'Charlton's soul' or variations on this theme have been bandied about frequently in recent times, generally amidst much wailing and fist-waving. At Watford there were as many anti-Duchatalet chants as pro-team chants (and more of either than anything the home crowd came up with in fairness.) But in all honesty, what is actually different this time? It was not so long ago that Murray (still held up today as a proper Charlton fan regardless of his eventual, debatable legacy) appointed three managers in a single season - Dowie, Reed and Pardew. That's as many as Roland has managed in Riga, Peeters and now Luzon if/when that paperwork is finally signed, and with the caveat of course that Riga was only ever intended to be a short term appointment - compare his six month contract and six month term with Les Reed's three year contract and only serving two months at most of truly diabolically bad football.
More recently, there was huge debate and controversy when many held the view that Powell should have been given money and backing not the sack as he had done a good job with poor players and no money - but he had got the job in the exact same circumstances, when it was Parkinson who had got a lacklustre team on a shoestring budget into the play-off places of the league, having to deal with the wreckage Pardew left behind. This is not to deride Powell's contribution of course in getting us promoted, merely illustrating my point that a struggling manager rather brutally dismissed is by no means exclusive to the Duchutalet model of ownership. As it turned out of course, he was in fact replaced by a young man with very little managerial experience but was by all accounts a nice bloke, and a playing legend. Fortunately Powell turned out to be a good manager but let's not pretend it was not a gamble when then, as now, there were more proven and experienced options readily available.
Of the team that started today, only two were 'network' signings (Buyens and Ben Haim), but three were promoted directly from the academy (Harriott, Cousins and Solly), so it's hard to claim that this was a mere Liege B team. Solly, Wiggins, Wilson, Cousins and Harriott all came up with the team that won the league, Ben Haim, Bikey, Church and Onyewu have all played in the Championship for other teams, this is not by any stretch nine or ten foreign players not knowing how the English game is played.
AND YET... despite this, there is still the feeling that somehow this is not the 'real' Charlton, the heart and/or soul is gone somehow. I share this feeling to some extent, less I think than many as I am a relative Newbie in life as well as name - my first game at the Valley was in 2004, I was fifteen and not really 'into football' so I can hardly claim to have the same history with the club as some on here. It just seems to me that the way the club is run is no more 'nasty' or unfair or even particularly different to how it has been run for a long time; the only real difference is that our newest owner is completely upfront in seeing it as purely and totally a business proposition and managing it accordingly.
I was going to end with a question or a moral but can think of neither, so I guess I am just saying thanks to those who slogged through that blather and feel free to add any observations or correct any errors. This is a very strange and dangerous time for the club I think ALL fans agree - standing together is essential but discussion and debate surely can't hurt!
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Comments
Bring back Parky
If RD wants to make money out of this club he will need to appoint the right manager not an arse licker.
Provide better quality players who are worth going see each week.
Re engage with the supporters who I think have been amazing over the past 8 years and who are the ones who have kept this club alive.
Finally get us back into the PL.
Take a look at the PL now and the top of the Championship to see it is not impossible if we have a well run club as per Murray, Varney and Curbs.
And some tactical awareness and now experience
Not something that can be read out of a Belgian handbook
Gladly take him back
In my opinion it is the day of 7th May 2006 when Curbs was sacked, not released and all that nonsense but sacked.
I know he was dragging his feet over a contract;however, there was no need for a knee jerk reaction from RM.
All that nonsense that if he left they would be Curbs signings not the new manager is rubbish. How many new managers come in working with the previous incumbents signings and it is just a seamless transition.
Give it a year on and some other poor bastard would have been dumped with ID.
Curbs was running that club and RM was his assistant, not the other way round. The club has not settled down since then and I cannot see it happening anytime soon.
Since the 1980s there has been a long-running theme of supporter involvement in Charlton Athletic. That's not to say that the supporters ran the club, although it helped that those running the club were supporters of course, but it's long felt like a positive symbiosis of all the elements needed to be successful. Not everything was perfect by any means, but at least it felt like it was our club and that those running it understood the importance of what it meant to be a Charlton supporter.
I think it's unfair to attribute all the blame for that collapsing on Roland Duchatelet. In truth, at least in my view, the rot set in in the Pardew years when there was a mini-boardroom coup and we lost the Supporters' Director. Despite the last owners not giving two hoots for the views of us fans, at least this was offset in part by Chris Powell - someone who totally 'got it'. Since his departure, the fans - in my view - have been cast aside with nary a thought. This is summed up in Katrien Miere's statement that we just 'have to accept' that it's Duchatelet's club and he will run it as he sees fit.
Personally I think that's folly, not least because our successes in all this time have coincided with the supporter base being at its most active, whether outside or inside the club. I think there is deep felt disappointment, if not disheartening, that the owner appears to have no interest in how we could help him make Charlton successful, because I am persuaded that the club would be so much stronger if we were all united.
Part of the solution is acceptance on the owner's part that English football is not Belgian or European football and that the Championship is not your everyday second flight. It probably also needs acceptance by the fans that the days of their deep involvement in the strategic direction of the club are in the past, although any business would be making a grave mistake not to understand the needs and desires of its market and stakeholders when planning its strategy.
Therefore, if you have an intelligent representative fan organisation such as the Supporters' Trust willing to offer its time for consultation then it becomes all the more difficult to understand why the owner wouldn't at least explore it. Still, better late than never and hope has far from deserted us; triumph and disaster being twin imposters, of course.
Our best bet at this time remains, to try and reason with him, and show him that greater engagement with fans isn't just talk, it actually worked for the financial benefit of the club in the period 1992-2004, roughly.
Don't let logic get in the way of a good moan.
thenewbie, you have shown us intelligence and the ability to communicate. Absurbistan you have shown us..............
It seemed that when Riga was put in place he didn't have (that we know about) the pressure to play the network players, and the players that were already there (Harriott, Jackson, Sordell etc), finished the season strongly. Off the back of staying up, I was happy with the new regime because we achieved what was needed, safety.
Over the summer, the signs were encouraging. New pitch, new players (Vetokele, Bikey, Henderson and JBG outside the network, the rest from within). That seemed like a fair balance. I think it was 4 from outside, 3 from within. Obviously the biggest question mark was the appointment of BP. I think the consensus among the fans was for Riga to continue, and there was generally a big question mark over BP's experience. On the other hand, I hadn't heard of Riga and he did a good job, so why not BP? Maybe RD sees something in him we don't.
Then we have the decent start. The Derby game got everyone thinking we might just be at the start of something a bit special here. It was also my first game of the season, so I definitely got caught up in the excitement, and I remember thinking, I don't believe I saw one ball played over the top that night, something I'd never seen at Charlton before.
So the season wears on, and yes, we never matched the high point of Derby, but if you go 11 games unbeaten and get a couple of decent wins, you still think we've got the making of a good season (I would also add to that we didn't know Wigan and Brighton etc were going to have such poor seasons, we thought we'd taken 4pts of potential promotion contenders)
It is the last 2 months that have left me scratching my head. We became more defensive. We stumbled across an early season formula that worked well given the personnel and balance of the team, but became over reliant on it. All of a sudden, Igor isn't as sharp and is injured, the defence aren't the wall of the resistance they were, and we don't look like scoring. Presumably this is when it is all going wrong and all these Chinese whispers came from.
All of a sudden BP is supposedly slagging off players in Dutch, certain players in the dressing room are arguing with others. That core that CP left under the stewardship of JJ is nowhere to be seen.
I now am seriously worried about the network. I'm still grateful to RD for the initial and ongoing investment, but I liken us to a dog he's bought and doesn't sustain with the right care and food. He may have believed that his model can work re: FFP and giving us access to a decent talent pool, but I really, really hope he realises it's not working at the moment.
The events of the last week have been nothing short of farcical. BP sacked on Sunday, 20 applicants for the job, decision made by Tuesday and GL hired who is contracted to the network to 2016 already (or so I have read on here). KM comes out and says we have to accept that RD has his way of running things etc. If that was the case then she should've just come out and said that RD/her/whoever, have lost faith in BP, we think GL has a better chance of achieving our goals.
They've massively left themselves open to criticism and acting in the way in which they have, it is no surprise people are questioning the identity of our club etc, and fans are turning their back. The worst thing is that I think based on this last week and the decisions made and how they have been communicated, Saturday may not be the low point
Personally I am going to continue to go and support and back GL and the team, I just think we are in such a mess behind the scenes now we may have sealed our fate back to League One. I hope not, and I want to think positive because I think we have some talented players.
Apologies if I am just repeating what others have already said elsewhere, it is just that since last Sunday there has been so many new threads with variations on a theme that I didn't even know where to put this.
We have a break now before Rotherham, I think it is needed for all of us. Let's hope by the time we play Rotherham we can come back fighting and the recent events won't hurt as much, because we all know this is a big 6 pointer
One positive that this season has highlighted so far is the blossoming of so many Lifers !
Excitement/apathy/anger/joy/incredulity/highs/lows/villains/heroes......SO like a novel that Agatha Christie would have been proud of. And Lifers have taken time & much thought to try to make some sense of all these components, with a huge degree of success. Well done to all concerned !
What remains to be seen is whether this one ends with the famous Belgian triumphant once again, assisted by his little grey cells (and his trusty sidekick ) & solving the problem or whether, for once, he fails in his task. Sacre bleu !
A page turner indeed....and one that's bound to keep its readers guessing to the very end.
"At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters.
Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques." (Bill Shankly)