https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRoJyaZW6SASo where are we now?
It seems that the Charlton board actually had a plan. Identify a promising and successful manager, albeit from a lower league, who was at a smaller club so on a low wage and used to small budget. Easy pickings for us surely. Such a good plan that I can only think they asked Lennie Lawrence or someone similar to write it.
So over confident and arrogant are Meire and Duchatelet, however, that they most likely thought that they could get what they wanted. Wilder had flown to Belgium last week so the heads of agreement ie wages, length of contract etc would have been agreed long before any official approach was made.
So why did it collapse? Maybe Wilder played Charlton in order to draw out other clubs such as Sheffield Utd, the team he played for and supported as a boy.
Or as Alex Varney, late of this parish, still a Charlton fan but now a sport journalist, has said the club wouldn't put assurances over control of recruitment and selection in writing. That will surprise very few other than the perennially deluded who think that Roland never told a coach who to buy or play.
The fact that Wilder felt he needed such assurances in writing shows that not only had he done his homework but that his meetings with Roland and our incompetent CEO had not built any degree of trust.
So farewell Chris Wilder, it was fun while it lasted.
But now we are in limbo. Plan A hasn't worked and I'm not sure they have a plan B.
While we talk about Nobby Vinegar or Simon Clark opportunities and players fall away like grains of sand in your hand.
Will reported target George Moncur sign when we have no manager?
Will Northampton winger and another reported target Ricky Holmes join Charlton or wait to see where his old boss turns up.
So far had talks progressed that Wilder is said to have given Katrien his list of wanted players. Nothing to stop her using that same list but her previous recruitment record suggests she wouldn't know where to start.
And the upshot is that we sit here in limbo. No manager, no scout, no director of football either. And in reality no CEO just a mouthpiece so far out her depth that I would feel sorry for her if she wasn't as arrogant as she is deluded.
All we have is a mad man in Belgium killing our club slowly.
Comments
This whole situation for me illustrates the problem with the manager signing players. He turns up with his list of transfers, the club then respond to it. Something goes wrong, or he's sacked (which with this regime is almost a certainty), and you're back to square one. What if our next manager didn't want Holmes and Moncur, but Thierry Ambrose and Gideon Zalem on loan from Manchester City and Arsenal respectively?
We've already seen this happen to an extent with Luzon. Even if he didn't have final say, we bought players to play in a 4-4-2, and lacked creativity through the middle along with a striker who could play on their own up front. Riga came in and did his best to cobble together creativity freeing up Cousins and playing Gudmunsson/Harriott through the middle, but it meant having Igor or Mak up front on their own, neither of whom is suited to that role.
The problem runs deeper than agreeing terms with Chris Wilder or not, it's that anything done by the regime is done on a whim.
We have done neither. We've had coaches but no DOF and for a long time no scout.
It's about control. KM is weak and RD is MD
C. UK Manager and Director of Football with unspecified job duties
And still chosen:
D. None of the Above
Sell up Roland - it's the only way out of this loss-making hell-hole you have created for yourself!
Be-wilder-ed !!
We, on the other hand, are dedicated to support the team to the limit of our emotions so that it can achieve the very best results within the restriction of limited resources.
The utter frustration I feel witnessing this band of headless chickens fooling around with our club like it is some kind of experiment, being done on the cheap, to yield millions on youth sales every season - just to break even - is a sick joke and has nothing to do with essence of competitve football.
After this latest fiasco with Wilder I fear the Belgian will be around for many more years playing his mad game until he tires of it.
Family atmosphere my arse, interbred family more like.
Careful Henry - any more seditious posts like this and you'll be losing your column in the programme! :-)
So far they have cocked up the network aspect because, even with SL in it, the standard of club and players available within it was nowhere near Championship level (for the large part). They have failed to implement a DOF role and in fact have made it even worse by disposing of any semblance of a scouting network that this role might have managed.
Finally, their coaching appointments have been frankly laughable to date and at the same time those coaches that were already at the club have been allowed/encouraged to move on.
Today has been hilarious really and a clearer indication of the trainwreck our club has become we will struggle to find.
Now do the honest thing sell up and piss off.
If we were to employ him from the start of the season it would make more sense than getting some nobody in and then desperately getting Riga in in Jan-Feb.
For 1 millisecond you had me going
You actually gave me a bit of hope for the coming season
I thought you had come to your senses and was going to hire a good prospect in wilder
But somehow you've even managed to cock that up
And guess what favourite is now another one from the network
The Hungarian who was going to come in January instead of Riga
You just couldn't make it up
.
She must be HATING being CEO of Charlton but she's probably not wealthy enough to just quit as she got excited when she first got the job and has high rent or mortgage bills to pay, and a certain lifestyle to maintain. She can't go back to being a lawyer as she obviously hated it - hence taking a punt on football club senior management. Now her reputation is so low she cannot get another job that pays her what she needs and is stuck at Charlton.
She is in massively over her head and has no support from anyone who knows what they're doing, that's while she clings to RM for dear life as Rome burns. It must be horrible coming in every day and constantly getting things wrong. Her sneering or laughing textbook signs of nerves and insecurity. I'm *almost* feeling sorry for her.
So someone get her a job. Once she's gone RD will have less incentive to hold on to Charlton and will be more likely to sell.