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Getting To Know The Network (4 Part Radio Documentary) (31/1 Part 3, pg. 17)

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Comments

  • I think Powell would have a much stronger case than Varney if he chose to pursue it.
  • Just had a chance to listen ... why oh why is Roland at our club.
  • Thanks for this Jimmy, massively professional and informative - Unfortunately I only knew small parts but was good to hear it all together.

    It has really increased my hatred of Roland and the regime and want to do whatever I can to make them sell.

    The way the characters and the morale of the 2012 squad has been decimated is really depressing.
  • Oakster said:

    I doubt Teflon Jose and his assisant Fraeye had much to do with our survival - competent, experienced pros in the backroom staff steered us to safety - Dyer, Matthews, Roberts....

    One of the reasons I detest the smarmy Riga is that, as Roland's man, he was undoubtedly involved in the undermining of CP.

    I disliked Riga because his football career before Charlton equated to selling dodgy coaching aids (cogitraining/ senseball?) and a holiday at the AC Milan academy.

    Was this enough to merit a job in the second tier of English football? Of course not.

    In a way, it's good that he was given another crack at the job, as it was a chance for Riga to prove what a mediocre hack he really is. Just like every other Roland stooge.
    there was hardly a rush for his services once he left us the second time round - don't recall him linked with any manager's positions over the summer
  • The club has a database of fans - why doesn't it ask them whether they supprot the regime or not. Simple question and if they don't by tehmargin I think they don't, RD can say sorry I didn't realise that I'm selling!!!! Instead he says regular fans support him with absolutely no evidence.

    You are forgetting Sue, Daphne and Malcolm the Morris Dancer
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  • Well done Jimmy for the time and effort that has gone into this. I read 442 which as far as I know has a massive readership would they be interested to write something based on the programmes.
    Important point I think to be made in ep 3 or 4 particularly following RD's response is that Riga was able to keep up a team up forged in the culture created by Powell, well done we were very happy, although most thought Chrissy would have done the same. However, why did he fail so miserably when he came back after two years of mismanagement by the regime which had wrecked the clubs structure, culture and playing squad. We know the answer but I would like an answer from RD, KM and the apologists and no its wasn't the protests as result when they happened show.
  • Fair to assume Karl Robinson would phone Powell to ask him a few things on this subject?

    He should.
  • Are pink plastic pigs available in bulk in Belgium?
  • edited December 2016

    Riga did a great job. To play him off against Powell is unfair. And simplistic - sounds a bit like our owner the coward. The question that would be very telling is why when he wanted to stay in the job after keeping us up, did Duchatelet not keep Riga on. We will probably never know the answer to that, but we saw for ourselves a reluctance of Riga to play network players, apart from the one Powell did, and Reza for the odd game.

    Of course he wanted to stay in the job, where else in the division below the Premier League was he ever realistically going to get another chance?

    Only another badly run club anywhere near that level would've taken a chance of someone with such a threadbare CV. Step forward Blackpool...

    All the pride and spirit won back during 2011/12 was frittered away the moment network chumps started to be accepted as good enough.
  • I know most on here will have read it, but for anyone who hasn't the full Trust News interview with Powell is linked here - page 12 onwards:

    https://issuu.com/castrust/docs/tnt9
  • edited December 2016

    The podcasts did not make me angry as I was expecting most of it. Duchatelet's latest comments, however - I am seething!! The translation of the emails above is spot-on. There is also a nonsense paragraph in the article that says in the first weeks after the takeover, Powell rarely answered Duchatelet's telephone calls and that explains why he was forced to write emails. What a load of ballcocks!!

    Here is what Powell said about the relationship in the Trust interview in Feb 2015:

    “Within a week, after my first meeting at the Valley, I knew I wouldn’t be there too long and I knew exactly what was going to happen in regards to people like Yann, Dale and a few others and what he was going to do. It wasn’t just what he was telling me. I had a press conference where he said I was a good coach. Well, I was arguing with him just an hour before – about Charlton – I was saying to him, you can’t do that, you cannot do what you are planning to do with this club. It’s not right, it’s not fair, let’s not string people along.”

    Powell describes his first meeting with Duchâtelet, at which Tony Jiminez was also present. The omens were not good – Powell was ill the night before, and had to pull over on his way to The Valley to be physically sick. The Belgian businessman arrived with strong ideas about the playing squad, while Jiminez, keen to ensure the deal was quickly done and dusted, sided with the new man’s opinions rather than supporting his manager. “We had the nonsense with the goalkeepers. Ben Alnwick had come in and was outstanding with Ben Hamer being out. He (Roland) said Ben Hamer is not good, Ben Alnwick is not good. I’ve got a goalkeeper who’s better than both. I said, who is it, I need to know. Then it was always, oh he’s better, he’s this, he’s that. I said I need to choose who’s right, for this division and this league.”

    Clearly there was intransigence on both sides of the table, but Powell is not at all bitter in what he is describing, just deeply disappointed at the gulf in football philosophy. He is a manager who takes full responsibility for putting together his own squad, yet he was faced with the complete opposite, “I’d be in my office and there’s a player turning up downstairs with his suitcase, saying he’s come to play. Who is it? It’s Loic Nego, it’s Anil Koç. I don’t even know who they are. ‘We’ve been told you need a winger’ – yeah, but I need a winger who’s used to the Championship, and you’ve got a young boy who’s played three games for Standard off the bench. I mean, that’s not for Charlton. Charlton deserve a player who’s going to improve them.” He was clearly very frustrated at the lack of understanding of the strengths of the existing squad, “He’d say you need a right back, I’d say we’ve got Chris Solly. If he’s better than Chris Solly, going to be some player! Nego came in, played against Wigan, clearly not suited. (Roland) said, well he can play left back. I said, well I’ve got Rhoys Wiggins, and Ceddy Evina who can fill in, fine you’re not going to have two top drawer – we’re not Chelsea or Man City, but you need players who are able to play at the level. I just knew that whenever there was a time that I didn’t play them, I was going to be in trouble.”

    Powell explains how he tried hard to make the relationship work, "I was very open with them at the start – I said to Roland, I will come over and I will meet you, and you can tell me exactly what your plans are. I held my hand out, extended friendship to say welcome to South East London. I will tell you exactly what the Club’s about, what’s gone great, what hasn’t.” But Duchâtelet did not want Powell to go to Belgium. “I said to him re-sign Yann, it’s a no-brainer, he said ‘NO – I don’t think he’s good enough, we’ve got better strikers’ – and now, I know Charlton are looking for a physical striker. We had one – he didn’t want to leave. It was the same with Dale. I know this league - of course, I’m not going to get everything right, will get a few things wrong, which I did at Charlton, which I will here. But I know what it takes in this league. I think anyone in any walk of life if they’re doing a job and someone tells them they are doing it all wrong, when they have no experience of it, that’s pretty hard to take.”

    I know this was pretty much common knowledge but it's still unbelievable.

    We were in the Championship ffs, not the Woolwich & District Sunday League.
  • That's our destination under the regime.
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  • The trouble with this effing regime isn't that you become numb to all the stuff that comes out. I listened to the two episodes. On one level nothing even faintly surprised me. On another level, it's totally shocking.
  • Thoughts from someone on Roland's emails from Facebook.

    image

    Where's is this? Which group?
  • Thoughts from someone on Roland's emails from Facebook.

    image

    Where's is this? Which group?
    Which Uni do you go to?
  • Thoughts from someone on Roland's emails from Facebook.

    image

    Where's is this? Which group?
    Charlton Positive

    (haha)
  • Thoughts from someone on Roland's emails from Facebook.

    image

    Where's is this? Which group?
    Which Uni do you go to?
    Random?
  • HandG said:

    A guy on Reddit seems to have done a pretty good job of translating, makes even worse reading though... :neutral:

    So you're mainly interested in the quotes right? Not the entire article?

    “De e-mails zijn authentiek en werden dus door Powell gelekt. Powell stond op dat moment ongeveer laatste. Blijkbaar vindt hij het ongehoord dat de baas van een club die laatste staat goede raad geeft aan zijn coach.”
    "The emails are authentic, and so were leaked by Powell. Powell was practically in last place at that time. Apparently he thinks it's unheard of that the boss of a last-place club give his coach sound advice.

    “Als je de mails leest, gaat het enkel om raad en valt er nergens een verplichting te bespeuren. We hebben uiteindelijk Powell vroegtijdig laten gaan. José Riga haalde daarna onmiddellijk met die zogenaamd slechte spelers van het netwerk een gemiddelde van 1,5 punt per match. Powell haalde voordien minder dan 1 punt per wedstrijd. Meer dan 50 procent beter dus met slechtere spelers.”
    "When you read the mails, you find they only contain advice and no trace of obligations. In the end we let Powell go early. After that, José Riga immediately took the presumably bad players [from the network] and averaged 1.5 points per match. Before that, Powell had less than 1. So that's an improvement of more than 50% with worse players"

    “De club was gered. De normale fans vinden ook nu nog dat we dat toen goed gedaan hebben”,
    So the club was saved. The regular fans, even today, still think that we did a good job.

    He said - "I'm not entirely sure about a few things, mainly because of context. Especially the thing about the network. I think he's talking about players that were ranked lowly by the press?" but actually think he got that part bang on.

    The crazy old fool. And then with only the 'quality' players that they are bringing into the club now, we were relegated. Roland, if you are going to make silly assertions then you need the results to back them up.

    Truth is, we will never know how we would have finished the season with Powell in charge and without you undermining him. What is a fact though is that under Powell's stewardship, we won the League One title with over 100 points and then finished ninth in the Championship the following year with little or no player budget. What is also fact is that when we did things your way we were relegated back to League One and played in front of the smallest crowds at The Valley in many years.

    You can go cherry picking 'points per game' ratios at some random point in the season of your choosing all you like but on every important measure you are an utter failure.
    At the end of that particular season, it might have been a valid point that Riga did better with the same team. I don't agree with it, but the points-per-game stat is a pretty valid way of backing up that argument.

    With the couple of seasons we've had in-between then and now - it's not at all valid. That's what irritates me about it, clinging to that semi-truth from a while ago to dismiss the horrendous situation we're in now.
    It was probably a valid point about Riga turning things around to a certain extent and, no matter how much we speculate, we will never know if Powell would have managed the same points tally. And at that point all fans, regular and irregular were happy with Jose, even to the point of singing his name, and everything looked good. But what happened then Roland you senile old twat? Oh yeah, you sacked him and brought in the mighty Bob "youth team" Peeters.
    I think Peeters was always going to be our manager for the next season but it was more convenient for the Belgians that Riga took over in March.

    I imagine Peeters was still at Beveren and they were allowing him to see the 13/14 season out.
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Roland Out Forever!