Much has been written on this forum and elsewhere regarding the intentions and plan that Roland Duchatelet has for the club. Only today a piece on Dr. Kish's Blog added to the numerous versions of the truth regarding our remote and mysterious owners true intentions.
After two years of speculation and scrutinisation of the evidence. The truth remains as elusive as it was on day one. The owner has demonstrated by his continued absence that he has no interest in Charlton Athletic as a football team. If he has a benevolent reason for owning the club he has Shown no inclination to share it with the supporters.
Duchatelet's presence in London in the shape of Ms. Meire who has proved to be a disappointingly ineffective CEO whose failure to communicate effectively with the fans either by design or indifference has pushed the relationship of supporters and club to breaking point. This despite recent words that more effective dialogue would be sought.
The appointment of the phenomenally under qualified Karel Fraeye as "interim" head coach has proved as expected to be a disaster in terms of results and what's worse, the spin and lies related to this mans appointment have been nothing less than an insult to the Inteligence and patience of the fans.
The fledgling protests organised behind the West Stand and The Black and White initiative will gain pace and fervour as the season slips away and the spectre of relegation looms large. Fans are voting with their feet and attendances are dropping at an alarming rate.
The Charlton Athletic Supportes Trust have for the whole period of Duchatelet's tenure battled to build a constructive relationship with the owner and CEO but much like the entire fan base have been treated with contempt and tolerated rather than be seen as a conduit to having Charlton Supporters on board. Their mission statement to build a dialogue with the club is proving to be a fools errand. The owners attitude is an affront to the hard work the Trust and others supporter groups do week in week out.
I understand that CASTrust are waiting to see what happens during the January window before deciding their next plan of action. I can understand this policy of wait and see but all the evidence points towards the club making signings that will be short term and without an adjustment to the budget. It is highly questionable if this will be enough to avoid relegation and even if successful will be as much by luck as judgement.
Enough is enough. As a Trust member I now want to see the Trust Board act and not wait until the end of January when it will be too late to have any impact or influence the club.
The gloves must come off now. Open conflict. Public condemnation of the CEO and owner. Start a fight and take it to the club. Action not reaction. There are a lot of people wanting to support some form of protest both active and passively but need to be effectively led. The Trust needs at this point to be seen as the rallying point for all the fans. In my view it cannot any longer remain on the sidelines. It is clear that unless change is forced there will be none.
Our special, and it is still special football club is in danger of death by a thousand cuts. Now is the time for The Valley Party spirit to return. Waiting even a week longer might not be good enough. The rot needs to be stopped right now. Leave it much longer and apathy and disenchantment might just have gone too far.
I have started this thread in the hope that others who feel like me can add number and weight to my argument and request that the Trust say to Meire and Duchatelet. We won't lie down quietly. You want a fight then you've got it. All guns blazing and as much public noise as is possible. Christmas Eve seems to me to be as good as time as any.
Over to you
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Comments
Calm, rational and reasonable.
What's not to like?
Firstly, let me emphasise that I have an enormous amount of respect and appreciation for the people who form the Trust Board; they step up and give a lot of their own time to represent us fans who through geography, personal inclination or other circumstances are not able to take a leading role. I believe they are honourable and talented people.
I also understand their desire to not have anything get in the way of what MIGHT become a warmer relationship with the club and Meire in particular. Just yesterday I said on another thread that the diverse comments illustrated why the Trust felt it difficult to represent the fans effectively with the club. There are so many alternative views just on this site (let alone the much bigger, wider fan-base) on the nature and extent of the problems facing the club, and even more so, on what could and should be done to shake the club into action. The "let others take action while we stay clean" has an obvious appeal.
However, I have come to the conclusion that failure of the Trust to take a more active role at this stage would be a dereliction of the Trust's own aims “To Preserve Charlton Athletic Football Club for This and Future Generations”, "To give the fans a voice and represent their interests in the running of the Club", "To actively support Charlton Athletic Football Club in achieving success both on and off the pitch" and "To assist in preserving the long term future of the Club, it’s history, culture, values and identity in our Community".
So, what should the Trust be doing? In my view:
1. Conduct a full consultation process with fans so the Trust can state with a high degree of certainty the real number of fans who are unhappy with the way things are being run, articulate exactly what the issues are and what fans would like to see happen. Note - this is way, way more than just another survey. It would take some time, and would need to engage the active support of a wide range of supporters groups and individual fans to collect data.
2. As part of the consultation process, seek to coalesce the wide variety of views into a clear, articulate statement that the great majority of fans would accept.
3. Lead for the fans in presenting these views and their supporting data to the club.
4. In the meantime:
- make it clear to the club that this action is being undertaken as a strategic initiative and invite the club to participate.
- provide a focal point for ongoing protest activity, providing logistical support, publicity and "on the ground" leadership of protest events.
The club is in a critical state, it's time to raise the stakes.
Earlier this year, prior and subsequent to the 'supporter' meeting held at the Valley, I again supported the Trust seeking dialogue with KM.
But do you know what? I feel like I have been treated as a sucker by the club - it may have taken a while for me to realise it (I am an optimistic person by nature and tend to give the benefit of the doubt if things are going in the general correct direction) but I just cannot ignore the disrespect that, RD in particular, has given.
'We are all his children', 'RD knows best', 'Ultimately it's his club' - in other words, give us a condescending pat on the head and we should be happy that he arrived and saved our club - and I must not forget, as a few of the trolls on here keep reminding us, that there was no-one else interested - without RD we would be in ... well ... an even worse position than we are now!!!
Action is needed, on social media, on normal media, in public and via any other channels that we can utilise.
To the Trust Board, you still have my support but you no longer have my mandate to sit back and await developments during January - ordinarily it would make sense to await such developments but we have been here before. As mentioned above, I supported waiting last year - just look where that got us! To put it crudely, they are taking the piss - the longer we sit back, the more they will get away with it.
We need to be told the ultimate game plan - it is obviously not, primarily, to get us to the Premiership - other aims are in place. It's time to give RD a 'metaphorical' kick ... and the sooner our non-CEO starts showing the capability of those in equivalent roles, the better ... and if not, we need to embarrass her by publicising her non-achievements as widely as possible. Many of us have suspected that she sees us as just a notch on her CV - well, let's make sure that everyone knows she has failed in this role.
We all need to come together and united against the owners, I am generally scared how far the apathy may go and the long term damage it will do to Charlton.
As a trust member I would like the trust to take the lead now along side the great work HI and Joe have done to ensure we have a Charlton we love and can be proud off once again.
Agree with your general 'thrust', disagree on timings. You want people to 'act now'. Those people have families, jobs like me and you, and it's Christmas. Nothing is really going to happen in the next 10 days.
The ST have the balancing act that whatever action or non-action they do, there will be people that will loudly and publicly disagree with that action and no one knows how big an impact that will go on to have later, particularly if time proved they called it wrong.
I understand their current passive stance as it is a much easier and less impacting one to take than an aggressive one. But I stated towards the end of the AGM a couple of months back that it is important that supporter wise they don't 'miss the boat' in being a representative of supporter view / feeling and that if they miss this opportunity, it may be hard to re-establish again.
Their 'fear' I suspect is they go big in some way publicly against the club, the team win 4 out 5 games, supporter unrest dies down 70% and they have given the club an opportunity to completely arms length them again.
It's a tough call, and one way or another it will have massive ramifications for them as a body if future events that can't be predicted (namely results) proved they called it wrong.
But I feel the point will come sooner than February to be more aggressive.
I agree we cannot expect the Trust to get activated this week ... but early January is still way better than the end of January.
As for the rest I totally agree that whatever is done will be a gamble based on your possible scenarios.
It might be more if a gamble however to sit on their hands and do nothing.
I've made my view clear but there are always other arguments.
PragueAddick Member
December 22
RedChaser said:
@PragueAddick I don't see LLs comments as disrespectful to Airman or A2TR but it is good to learn that the Trust board are having a rethink and are seeking feedback from its membership, well done.
Prague responded;
I am sure LL didn't mean them disrespectfully either, but nobody who invests personal time and energy in trying to do stuff for Charlton wants to read that it would all be much more successful if the Trust moved in on it. We certainly don't believe that. The Valley Party never had a "leader" (other than for election registration purposes)That's a fact.
We all got together on Skype last night to thrash out our tactics in the coming weeks. And most of us will meet for a curry on 29th too. It would be incredibly dumb to comment publicly on possible plans B and C, but of course we must have them ready. It's Christmas, but we will do our best to stay ahead of events. Nothing will happen before Christmas at the club, but then we enter a fast moving period with many games, and the window. We are not going to sleep through that.
It is for Trust members however to make their current feelings known and Prague has requested that they email in accordingly as Hex mentions above.
I suppose the only thing I can say is, if I received a survey today with a choice between the Trust continuing dialogue or ditching that avenue and taking direct action, I might vote for the latter. This is mostly because I do not trust those in charge of our football club. I fear that even if the Trust does get regular dialogue, it will be carefully stage managed by the club and they will only be allowed to engage with them on specific issues. I can't ever envisage a meaningful relationship with the fans and the current regime. I do not believe it's what the club wants. I think they will however be willing to try to use the fans where possible when they have something to sell, like the T20k for example.
You may or may not be aware I was a founding board member of the trust, until this last AGM.
Part of the reason I stepped down was partly through three years of rather exhausting work, and like Razzel felt I had done my best, culminating in the Woolwich meeting ( remember that) which was to stop the concerns some of us felt was around the corner, I take no comfort for being vindicated from that approach, which sadly finds us in the state we are in.
As a member of the trust, and anyone else has the right to make representation to the board especially on such a crucial matter.
Therefore do as I have done, write to any board member, or the secretary Richard Wiseman. He is duty bound to report this to the board.
It may also surprise you that I have written along the same lines especially in regard to the statement, and to do this by means of a survey completed on there site, and via the trust stall on the Christmas\New year holiday matches.
Furthermore I have also asked for the clarification of the interim manager, a proposal to appoint an experienced championship manager, and also a vote of no confidence in the CEO if this is not immediately agreed. ( I bet that goes down well!)
As the Woolwich meeting has mandated the trust to seek dialogue, which was again ratified at the AGM in October I feel they must contact there membership BEFORE agreeing to formally adopting a protest.
Richard Hunt has already written on CL that the board has been divided on this issue, but it has to go along democratic lines voted on by the membership which was after all overwhelming, and suggested that you write to the trust about your concerns if you are a trust member.
Of course some of the 'trust hatters' will claim that this is just pissing in the wind, and that it just a pointless exercise. They may well be right, but then writing on a social media website is probably just as futile if the 'Roland does what he wants mantra' crap attributed to our current CEO maintains.
Let me assure you there is a diverse range of opinion on the board on most subjects, even ACV was debated, I know because I was one of the main architects of that as well?.
...... after all some people on here spend hours writing on social media sites!
Here are the details: Board members are on the trust website.
secretary@castrust.org
Enquiries - enquiries@castrust.org
Membership - membership@castrust.org
I agree that a survey of membership might be required but if that is the catalyst for outright action and protest then bring the survey on.
Only my view but I suspect direct confrontation with the club by CASTrust at this point might be more unifying than divisive.
It's leadership we need now and I'm hoping that the Trust are the group to provide it. Missing the boat now will leave the door open for others to pick up and run with what will surely be a shitstorm at some point soon.
I believe the Trust is and should be the leading supporters group. They need to step up right now.
SHG and Davo make good points re: a full consultation period with the fans to determine what and how the fans feel, whether enough of us are ready for them to make that claim that we no longer want RD at the club.
It's a real rock and a hard place because once you make that statement and claim as the fans' representative body, we no longer want our owner here, it's very difficult to go back. I also believe that knowing what I read from the likes of Prague and the other trust members, they are level headed people who probably advocate diplomacy and dialogue, rather than all out statements that is, very very impacting.
For me, I would be happy for the trust to take that next step as I believe RD is an idiot. He's arrogant, doesn't care and doesn't know what he's doing. I would obviously like us to start winning, but would hope that wouldn't dissipate the RD out movement.
I don't think anything will happen until the new year anyway. Also, I'm sure results will play a part. I'm not confident we're gonna get much out the next 3. I think that will add to the feeling of RD out.
I'm also keen to understand how many of us actually engage with the trust over your individual views. There's a lot of talk on here, but do we actually follow that up with specific messages to the trust board?
I still support the trust and think they do an excellent job and am happy to be a member. Yes I would support them going all out and getting behind an RD out campaign.
Like The Trust and many others, I'm torn between action now & waiting until the end of January.
I suggest a compromise and say Friday 15th January.
If we have made no positive progress in terms of a coach (not expecting it) and made some good signings, without offloading good players, at the same time, then I say gloves off.
In Feb the Trust organised a public meeting in Woolwich, at the time there seemed to be a real groundswell of opinion that the club was not being run well. The Trust took those actions, put its neck on the line and was left high and dry when results turned round and that groundswell of opinion dissipated.
If the club is being run badly now, then it was being run badly in March and April, and it was being run badly in the first month of this season. Where were the calls for protest then ? Where were the calls for the Trust to lead the vanguard then ? And, if the Trust take up the cause, will you still, really, support the Trust in doing so if the results turn around ? If your answer to that last question is yes then asks yourself the first two questions, I'd be interested in your answers.
I was concerned by the depth of squad but the early omens were good. For me personally it all changed when it became obvious that Luzon just like Peeters before him was not really being supported. The lies told when Fraeye was appointed just made me feel like a mug punter to Meire and Duchatelet.
We need to act. In actual fact I don't necessarily want the Trust to say We want Roland out. What I do want is for the fans to let him know that we know we've been spun a line once to often and we won't accept it.
We demand better communication. We demand that Roland comes down from his ivory tower and speaks to us.
I want him to know that we are prepared to stay away until he does. Now if that's the point he thinks stuff that I'm out then that's his decision.
All I know is that we can't sit here moaning while he sits there in Belgium thinking we are mugs. We have to shout and shout very loudly. The club is dying on its arse.
All I would say is let's give our Trust reps a bit of 'trust' and support and show a bit of faith in their motives and strategies.
The likes of Richard Hunt, even if he has warped ideas re the EU :-), has shown both back in the Valley Party days and more recently with the Olympic Stadium business that he is not afraid to ruffle feathers if necessary no matter the so called prestige and influence of the owners of those feathers.
Others have a similar outlook from what I can and have seen so let's back them.
If results turn around I certainly won't stop supporting the Trust. I gave them support previously even when I didn't fully agree with their approach.
I understand your points fully but can we really allow RD and KM even more time when all they have committed since the last meeting is an ad-hoc Target 20000 group which we all know is absurd in the current situation.
Once bitten twice shy? Yup, that not only applies to the Trust but to us too ...we have given the board far too much leeway and they give us little in return. They need to know that we have a limit.
I would support the Trust regardless. Going back to your first two questions. Well I was prepared at the time you suggest to give them time. Yes the comms was piss poor but I thought there were good signings and was hopeful. I fell for the spin. I was made out to be a mug. Things have changed since those early encouraging signs.
Your questions are fair enough, but irrelevant now. We need action and we need the Trust Board, the representatives of the largest collective of Charlton fans (and PAYING members at that) to lead it. For sure, there are lessons to be learned on all sides from the Woolwich event and it's aftermath.
Thank you for your comments, which have all been made in mature and respectful terms. Some of you have already had replies from us, unfortunately not @ShootersHillGuru, I hope you didn't start this thread because you felt ignored, SHG.
In short as @RedChaser has mentioned we are doing our best to convene and move forward despite it being Christmas. We will have a statement out soon after Christmas. It is already clear there has been a shift in mood of the membership, and while @Davo55 makes a good case for full consultation (which I support), others on the Board feel that we will get a lot of criticism if we survey while Rome burns.
We are therefore already working on Plans B and C. As one of us said in the Skype call, the rational likelihood that Fraeye is about to embark us on a 5 match winning run, is not very high, and we can therefore plan accordingly. Personally I think @Covered End s suggestion of Jan15 as a cut off date is sensible. It gives us time to use the informal channels we have to assess what might be in the pipeline. You'd also think that if they are going to boot Fraeye out, it will happen by Jan 15.
I do hope though that everyone read carefully @se9addick s remarks. We have not forgotten last year. That's why we need to make sure that we listen first and foremost to Trust members, and particularly how their own views have shifted since even mid autumn when we last did a survey. It's clear that this thread has been started and dominated by Trust members who appreciate our difficult position. We appreciate it.