in supporting Charlton any longer. The club is owned by a man who has publicly confirmed that he is not interested in the team winning, it seems obvious that he will be content with the team in the lower leagues with a good production of young players to sell and keep the club financially stable.
We are told to support the team but the football that they play is dire and lacks either craft, guile or guts to win a match. The owner and the CEO are willing to ditch our history and constantly lie about their ultimate intentions.
As for us supporters I don't see that silly masks are going to get us anywhere and the post match protests are dwindling, all the Belgians have to do is wait us out as the majority of supporters will just drift away leaving a mere few thousand fans to turn up next season, having purchased their tickets through a computer and allowed in the ground in a similar manner. The club won't care about the lack of season tickets or revenues as it only counts for 33% and if they get rid of more staff the overheads will reduce. The better players will be sold and the remainder will be mixed in with the youth to produce a low cost team incapable of promotion but capable of relegation again. Due to the lower attendances the Jimmy Seed stand will be reduced to minimal away standing with apartments to raise more income than that lost by gate revenue. Solly, Jackson, Cousins and Henderson will be gone and there will be nothing left of the good old days.
As supporters there is nothing we can do, oh we can sing our protests, Rick can write about the Meire mistakes but they will just turn our club into an unrecognisable youth factory that will be liked by the scouts more than the fans.
Last one out shed a tear for what was once one of the best football clubs in England.
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Comments
This season is not over but if Fulham beat us it probably will be.
I agree that we are more likely to go down from League 1 than win it, if we stay on our present course. Jose is too good over a season though for us to go down from Div.1...if he stays. The next manager really must be British though.
However, I don't agree that Charlton won't be back. We will but it could be a long wait. Roland won't be in charge forever and there is always a chance that he could change some of the ways we have been doing things. It is sad though.
Sadly they cannot be forced to go by peaceful means, and no one in their right mind will go to Criminal lengths. At the end of the day Charlton Athletic as we knew it has gone. It will probably end up as a phoenix from the ashes a bit like Wimbledon, unless a miracle comes along soon. Like Roland the Rat turns out to have been seriously up to no good, but with a Lawyer on his side, not likely.
At what point I wonder does "AFC Charlton" become an option?
Just my opinion though.
Incredible to think that there could come a time where I look up the Charlton score, shrug and get on with whatever I was doing, but there must come a point where it stops being worth the grief.
Apologies for the defeatist talk.
RD will not 'destroy' the club, he will simply continue to run it incompetently until he decides it's no longer worth it and leaves.
Then it will be a process of mending it. In the meantime, we get on with it.
In five years time all this will be no more than the Selhurst years: a bad memory...
My dad, who was a regular throughout the 70s, got pissed of with Charlton in the early 80s, took a break from it and has never been back.
Blimey, you can tell it's Monday morning.
Im a heart on my sleeve kind of fan, have been for the 20 years I have supported Charlton, normally an emotional nightmare in the stands or listening/watching at home but this current regime have finally drained all that passion out of me.
Some fans may ridicule but the Charlton I fell for as a kid does not seem to exist anywhere but outside the ground in the spirit of the protests.
I do agree with Redskin that Roland will not end our club but in my opinion he will be leave us very likely with a third of the fanbase as when he started & a division or two lower.
Then we will have to rebuild.
If I lived in SE London I'd be inclined to come to each and every protest, but dragging myself up from the Kent coast every other week to work myself up into a rage and then trek two hours home again just doesn't appeal, so as it is I'm giving my time to the grass roots where it really makes a difference to sustaining the national game. It's great to be reminded of why I fell in love with football in the first place.
I had driven up to the Valley not to watch football ffs, but to hang around for a couple of hours then go to the west stand car park to shout things basically at a wall in front of a few bored looking coppers and stewards.
That's how it felt on the way home, anyway. I just thought there might be better ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.
But today I think, well, this is going to be a long campaign not a 5 minute skirmish. And if it is all a pointless stand in the end,then so be it, at least we tried to fight the ruthless railroading of a rich man's distant wishes over what was/is a great community club.
He's not in the right. I believe we are. That's why I'll be back for the next protest whatever it is.
Apart from two good runs towards the end of the season we have been average, at best, in the Championship since we won League One and that was a one off season. The year before we finished 13th. If you look at all of the seasons since we were relegated from the Premier League (and include that season) we have finished 19th (PL) 11th and 24th (2nd div) 4th, 13th, 1st (3rd div) then 9th, 18th and 12th in the 2nd division.
After the Curbishley years that is bound to have a negative effect on enthusiasm. Richard Murray was heavily criticised for his appointment of Dowie and Les Reed, Slater and Jimenez were vilified (helped by their treatment of Airman Brown and his, subsequent, revelations) and now RD and KM are hated.
The truth is that watching football at Charlton is not as much fun as it was ten years ago. Even when we were winning the League One Title I just felt relieved to be getting out of the 3rd division. It was never an aspiration of mine to win the 3rd division, I never wanted to be in it in the first place.
I'm not sure that anything short of a side genuinely challenging for promotion to the Premier League will be enough to make the football watching experience enjoyable again. What happens if RD does sell up and take KM with him? As desirable as that is we will still have a club with significant losses each season, a poor squad that is not equipped to cope with the English second division, a dwindling fan base and the poor atmosphere that comes with it.
I remember feeling jealous and a little bitter in, about, 2008 when the media started talking about Stoke as having such a fantastic atmosphere at the Britannia. Something that had been said about us a few years before. Fans that are given a little taste of something new and exciting tend to 'show it' in the atmosphere at their home games. We were heading for the third division and Stoke seemed to have taken our place as the club that all the media talked about as being well managed and having 'great fans'. This was made even worse when, in 2013, Palace became the new darlings of the media for their fantastic atmosphere and the marvellous way their club was managed.
We've had our day in the sun and now we have to get used to life in the normal world of League Football with no money, no exciting transfers, no internationals, poor crowds constantly talking about past glories and every player showing any promise, at all, being tempted away for more money and a chance at the big time. It wasn't that long ago that we were hand picking the stars in all the second division sides and signing them. What goes around comes around.
I'd love a change of ownership but I'm not sure that, on its own, will change how I (and many others) feel about afternoons at The Valley. Maybe it is time for many of us to find something else to do with our leisure time and have a new fan base come in that is not always going to be comparing the experience with beating Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool at The Valley. Maybe some of us will never be able to accept anything less that those heady days where we were, in truth, punching above our weight.
I still relished every trip to see my beloved team play no matter how poor we were.
Im not dispirited because of a few results or because of some Premier League hangover, im dispirited because nearly everything I associate with Charlton has been removed & all the hard work Chris Powell did to bring back that Charlton feeling has been removed due to the insane anti sport policies of our Belgian overlord who can't even be interested enough to attend a game or two a season.
Simply our owners priority is no longer to have the best team we can build, we are at the horrible end of the football is a business first sport second culture and i can't support that, sport should be about passion, daring to dream not whatever this experiment is that insults the very history of our club.
In later years the joy on my sons face when he was a mascot, and kicking the ball about with Di Canio. His excitement at the Christmas parties,our shared joy at the great games we enjoyed with Curbs at the helm, great times at a marvellous club for families, with who are unquestionably the finest supporters and bunch of people anywhere.
So it really hurts and depresses me that all this has been taken away by some disgusting Belgian scumbag, and his slippery lawyer, Pinocchio.
I have resigned myself to the fact that Charlton Athletic has been taken away from us. But I really believe a Phoenix will arise from the ashes, ACFC will one day happen, and the greatest supporters anywhere will one day have a family club again to call their home and own.