@Henry Irving I ask questions as that is what I believe in doing to get to the truth. My belief - you haven't got a clue what you want. You want RD out, but I'm afraid that isn't an end goal as we need someone to own the club. Questions and questioning leads to answers, not just blindly protesting. No, I don't think you know what you're protesting for - the real goal, not the RD out part. Have a read of Plato's Republic - you may understand a little more...
I think the problem is that a group of people backed the club to lose. And yet we have lost one game in the last eight.
The latest article in the Telegraph states that "having managed just one league club, Robinson is ill equipped to understand what he is taking on at the Valley" within the opening paragraphs.
The author is Rick Everitt who has managed no league clubs and is seeking to make a name for himself pissing all over CAFC in the national media.
So just like when G21 was launched before Riga had lost a game back in March 2014, Robinson is now condemned before he has even taken his place in the dug-out.
The problem is that some peoples simplistic analysis stated that RD funds a paper thin squad which is ill equipped to compete. Two games after Slade has gone is perhaps too soon to draw conclusions but the fact is that we went in 2-0 up at half time in both games.
We are making around 13 chances per game but the difference is that they are of a better quality. More on target, more goals.
As posters like @seth plum have stated perhaps we might just support the club and worry about the Board's approach to the Championship whenever we get back.
As for people going to the national media pissing all over the club? Well as @LeedsbasedTownfan states from his perspective, protests on Wembley way will look pretty f##king stupid.
We have no idea how the next five weeks will go, how the double header vs Millwall will end nor what the squad will look like on January 31st 2017.
But some have allowed their pessimism about the future and their feelings of angst override rational analysis of our current prospects and future outcomes.
This has allowed a post-truth narrative to be published unchallenged in local and national media.
For sure I could have popped up on here to challenge it but not my job and I have no interest in engaging with the type of person who is unable to grasp simple facts.
Post truthers simply don't like rational analysis. They just repeat their feelings as if they are fact. We saw it with the Brexit referendum and we saw it with the Trump Presidential election.
And now we see it with our club where so called "analysis" focusses on the interest bill whilst dismissing the millions spent on capex, paying off bank debt and paying for the current team.
Yes, the likes of Bauer, Pearce, Ajose, Holmes and Magennis all cost fees. And they are starting to look like a side that can make the play-offs.
It is the job of the club, not me to deliver a competitive side and a compelling narrative. The fact that the owner is pumping in £1M a month to fund losses, capex and player acquisition and the fact that we have relied on just 15/16 players all season suggests to many we have turned a corner.
I was there at Gillingham and we all watched the Swindon game on Sky so we all know how poor we have been. But we've also been at all the home games.
So sure, people can protest, do their worstest but wtf are they moaning about if we keep climbing the table?
Ah yes, Koc, Nego and Reza.
Move on lads, move on.
You talk total rubbish and will always give the Belgians your support no matter what they do and what devastation they leave us in.
If you had been promoted to the Premier League under Chris Powell, would you have still wanted him sacked?
Absolutely not!, I didn't though embark on a campaign of hate against him or throw plastic toys on the pitch after watching the latest shit he served up on the pitch.
Because after a year he was sacked.
3 years later, Meire and Duchatelet are still here.
This is a very valid point, a point accepted.
I would have been in a very dark place had Powell continued in his role at our Club. Now, I am starting to understand your pain a bit better.
I revert back to my initial point and fingers crossed the arrival of Robinson will herald better fortune for you. He needs though to be given a chance by the Owner and fans alike.
Disrupting his first match in charge is quite frankly incredulous.
his first match in charge is Saturday week against MKD's, he doesn't take charge until Monday. You really should check your facts before spouting off.
Fair enough, I take it that there will be no more protests then when Robinson is in the dugout on that basis.
Charlton Athletic, one win off a Play-off place, spent more than most other league 1 Clubs in the summer (and will do again in January), I believe the owner is covering a funding shortfall every month and you have just appointed a young ambitious, respected Manager in Karl Robinson.
As I posted earlier, your Managerial appointment policy has been a joke. The communication that has or hasn't taken place between Club and fans I accept has only fuelled the discontent. The Club has not been run well overall, I get that.
But the level of hatred and blinkered, relentless protesting is disproportionate. Some fans, not all will not be able to credibly justify when challenged what they are protesting about other than the stock 'RD and Meire out'.
Whilst other fans around the Country had sympathy for a while with your 'plight', it is now becoming ever more difficult to substantiate and justify.
Especially when you win matches, climb the table and continue to sign better Players than other Clubs in league 1 can afford to do.
It will be interesting to see how this protest pans out if you end up getting promoted. I suspect that not wanting to lose face will mean the hardcore element will bang on regardless, whilst the majority of Charlton fans will instead be enjoying their football on a Saturday afternoon with no interest in protesting whatsoever.
There are s lot of ifs and when's in your post. And it's a bit patronising to be fair. So you speak for "fans" around the country do you? What about the football world at large? I'd suggest that most people within football and the media are generally supportive of our lawful and good natured protests and can see the awful way the club is being run and destroyed. 6-7,000 fans and falling is simply disgraceful for Charlton.
I think it is the owners who need to give Robinson a chance to do his job not the fans.
It's the plight and cause bit that I just don't get in terms of the level of protestation, there is a mismatch.
I would also like to challenge one of the ex Charlton players or managers when on TV for example they say "what's going on at that Club is terrible".If they were asked to elaborate, they wouldn't have the slightest clue what to say to substantaite their sound bite.
Your protests are lawful, agreed. What has been posted on here about Meire, somebodies Daughter, somebodies Grandaughter, possibly Sister is though absolutely disgusting and does not cover your fan base in glory.
If you had been promoted to the Premier League under Chris Powell, would you have still wanted him sacked?
Absolutely not!, I didn't though embark on a campaign of hate against him or throw plastic toys on the pitch after watching the latest shit he served up on the pitch.
Because after a year he was sacked.
3 years later, Meire and Duchatelet are still here.
This is a very valid point, a point accepted.
I would have been in a very dark place had Powell continued in his role at our Club. Now, I am starting to understand your pain a bit better.
I revert back to my initial point and fingers crossed the arrival of Robinson will herald better fortune for you. He needs though to be given a chance by the Owner and fans alike.
Disrupting his first match in charge is quite frankly incredulous.
his first match in charge is Saturday week against MKD's, he doesn't take charge until Monday. You really should check your facts before spouting off.
Fair enough, I take it that there will be no more protests then when Robinson is in the dugout on that basis.
Charlton Athletic, one win off a Play-off place, spent more than most other league 1 Clubs in the summer (and will do again in January), I believe the owner is covering a funding shortfall every month and you have just appointed a young ambitious, respected Manager in Karl Robinson.
As I posted earlier, your Managerial appointment policy has been a joke. The communication that has or hasn't taken place between Club and fans I accept has only fuelled the discontent. The Club has not been run well overall, I get that.
But the level of hatred and blinkered, relentless protesting is disproportionate. Some fans, not all will not be able to credibly justify when challenged what they are protesting about other than the stock 'RD and Meire out'.
Whilst other fans around the Country had sympathy for a while with your 'plight', it is now becoming ever more difficult to substantiate and justify.
Especially when you win matches, climb the table and continue to sign better Players than other Clubs in league 1 can afford to do.
It will be interesting to see how this protest pans out if you end up getting promoted. I suspect that not wanting to lose face will mean the hardcore element will bang on regardless, whilst the majority of Charlton fans will instead be enjoying their football on a Saturday afternoon with no interest in protesting whatsoever.
There are s lot of ifs and when's in your post. And it's a bit patronising to be fair. So you speak for "fans" around the country do you? What about the football world at large? I'd suggest that most people within football and the media are generally supportive of our lawful and good natured protests and can see the awful way the club is being run and destroyed. 6-7,000 fans and falling is simply disgraceful for Charlton.
I think it is the owners who need to give Robinson a chance to do his job not the fans.
It's the plight and cause bit that I just don't get in terms of the level of protestation, there is a mismatch.
I would also like to challenge one of the ex Charlton players or managers when on TV for example they say "what's going on at that Club is terrible".If they were asked to elaborate, they wouldn't have the slightest clue what to say to substantaite their sound bite.
Your protests are lawful, agreed. What has been posted on here about Meire, somebodies Daughter, somebodies Grandaughter, possibly Sister is though absolutely disgusting and does not cover your fan base in glory.
Oh give over, you're always gonna have the odd idiot that says something that goes beyond what's acceptable, happens at every football club/forum//match and is a lot worse at clubs other than Charlton. What does that first bit plight and cause even mean? To suggest that players and managers wouldn't have a clue how to elaborate on the goings on at Charlton is ridiculous from you, you're talking out of your arse, good wind up though. Your arrogance about our situation is insulting and misinformed.
If you had been promoted to the Premier League under Chris Powell, would you have still wanted him sacked?
Absolutely not!, I didn't though embark on a campaign of hate against him or throw plastic toys on the pitch after watching the latest shit he served up on the pitch.
Because after a year he was sacked.
3 years later, Meire and Duchatelet are still here.
This is a very valid point, a point accepted.
I would have been in a very dark place had Powell continued in his role at our Club. Now, I am starting to understand your pain a bit better.
I revert back to my initial point and fingers crossed the arrival of Robinson will herald better fortune for you. He needs though to be given a chance by the Owner and fans alike.
Disrupting his first match in charge is quite frankly incredulous.
his first match in charge is Saturday week against MKD's, he doesn't take charge until Monday. You really should check your facts before spouting off.
Fair enough, I take it that there will be no more protests then when Robinson is in the dugout on that basis.
Charlton Athletic, one win off a Play-off place, spent more than most other league 1 Clubs in the summer (and will do again in January), I believe the owner is covering a funding shortfall every month and you have just appointed a young ambitious, respected Manager in Karl Robinson.
As I posted earlier, your Managerial appointment policy has been a joke. The communication that has or hasn't taken place between Club and fans I accept has only fuelled the discontent. The Club has not been run well overall, I get that.
But the level of hatred and blinkered, relentless protesting is disproportionate. Some fans, not all will not be able to credibly justify when challenged what they are protesting about other than the stock 'RD and Meire out'.
Whilst other fans around the Country had sympathy for a while with your 'plight', it is now becoming ever more difficult to substantiate and justify.
Especially when you win matches, climb the table and continue to sign better Players than other Clubs in league 1 can afford to do.
It will be interesting to see how this protest pans out if you end up getting promoted. I suspect that not wanting to lose face will mean the hardcore element will bang on regardless, whilst the majority of Charlton fans will instead be enjoying their football on a Saturday afternoon with no interest in protesting whatsoever.
As often happens in a long post, there's right and wrong here. My major grump with this is that our 'plight is becoming ever more difficult to substantiate and justify'. 18 days before sacking Slade, our CEO was on the radio using him as a demonstration of the new era at the club. They sacked him having lost one match in six, and having beaten Scunthorpe in the cup. To be fair, the Scunthorpe game was one of the only ones when Charlton even remotely entertained. Slade's foorball was awfull. But fans of his previous clubs all said it would be. They were right. In twenty years as manager, he never achieved a promotion. That is ongoing too. So who gave him the job, on what basis, and what did he do wrong that wasn't a strong possibility in may when they interviewed him? You say we are climbing the table? Yep, spot on, and long may it continue. Most of that is the last two matches (coinciding with Slade not being on the bench). But it's a bit of a flash photo. The rest of the season we have continued to sink. Personally, I am optimistic about Robinson. His (very short) track record suggests attacking football, played to feet, which after the last few, would be a delight. He is also a young hungry manager, which all sounds good. However, nothing within the club has changed. Our daft CEO is still there. The owner recently brushed off the protests in Belgium as a 'handfull of dissatisfied ex employees who can't bear the thought of a female CEO' or words to that effect. So our owner remains at best laughably uninformed about the club he owns, and on a more realistic level, continues to lie. If Robinson gets us up, the protests will trail off - most football fans tend to live a bit hand to mouth, and short term wins are always enough to blunt the anger. But that's not where we are today. And to suggest we have turned some sort of corner is merely to look on a superficial basis at the last fortnight. The owner has a lot of apologies to issue. And they make no sense while the CEO continues in her position at our club. Sorry to drone on :-(
Cant believe the pathetic arguments on here. It's like being in amongst a group of school girls. For what it's worth I think Robinson is a good appointment and he gets my support. Even if the regime is shit it shouldn't affect anyone's support for the team. Especially on Match days
Can't believe the whining on here. It's like being amongst the 3 wise monkeys.
The original image was of four wise monkeys, see know evil, hear no evil and speak no evil of course which is the one everybody knows but there is a 4th, now popularly shown with his hands between his legs and entitled 'do no evil' but I believe (don't take this as gospel until you or I verify it) the ancient Chinese temple original was of him with his hand on his heart and entitled 'know no evil/have no evil in your heart'. Does anybody on CL know for sure ?
In my opinion, I believe RD is in this for himself and his network family only. He has no interest in Charlton other than to make money and provide job opportunities for his chosen ones, all of whom seem to be completely unqualified, inexperienced and painfully out of their depth. He lives in another country, never visits, and has declared the club is 1.5% of his overall interests.
Everything he and his "CEO" have said indicates that he wants to use the club to develop players in the academy and sell them on at a profit. To be able to do this he needs a premier quality academy facility and the club in the Championship to attract the best youth prospects possible. He is (slowly) building the new academy currently.
They seem to have realised last summer that his network stooges would not get the club back in the Championship, hence hiring Slade and now Robinson.
It may be that Robinson does well and gets them up in the Championship. Once there, he may get the team punching above it's weight - he didn't quite manage it with MK Dons, but he is still young and learning his trade.
However, everything that has happened so far suggests there will be no investment or stability for a serious push to the premier league. This is because it does not fit with the vision they have. Had the FFP rules not changed, then maybe it would've been feasible, but RD will not gamble like Derby and co have - he'd now sooner keep the club mid champ and make a few million a year on player sales.
I believe there are now 3 main things that are therefore driving people away - (1) the immediate annoyance of relegation, as well as the woeful and at times offensive and disrespectful SMT at the club. If Robinson gets the team winning then these people may return; (2) the seemingly pointless activity of following a club that has no ambition to get back to the Premier League; (3) the desire to not give Charlton money, as it is ultimately contributing to the owner's long term plan to make money for himself.
Eventually, once back in the Championship, I believe he will sell, as the club is in London, has a premier league stadium and will have premier league academy facilities. It will be very attractive to investors and this will make him a lot of profit. I think this is his long term goal. But in the process he will have destroyed a lot of what made the club so special to people, as well as creating some dreadful division among what is a cracking fan base.
I welcome your postings and I will try to simplify a complex situation.
Huddersfield Town have a glorious history, Herbert Chapman, League Champions year after year, Bill Shankley, Dennis Law, Frank Worthington, Ian Grieves. and so on.
In one match in that history you lost 7-6 to Charlton. In that game you were winning 5-1, but the players from Charlton strove to win the game, indeed players from both teams, the fans were engaged with the excitement of the sport and the ultimate aim for everybody there that day was clear, to win or try your damnedest to.
You watch Huddersfield, high in the table, and want wins and points to sustain your excitement for your club within the sport.
Now imagine following a club where winning doesn't really matter.
Imagine going the see Huddersfield play and if they lose 0-3 at home it really is no big deal. After all one of your players can have 100% success rate in tackles, passes and dribbles in a 0-5 defeat. And that player can be sold on because of it
Imagine that is your role, to be a quaint decorative backdrop whilst players are farmed through your club. Would you shrug and accept that? Especially if the related activities around the club are embarrassing, alienating, hostile, exploitative, patronising and incompetent at the most base level?
You may be right that the wider football world don't get it, we do because we are living it. Huddersfield fans are usually gracious, but be grateful you support a club that participates in the sport of football. For our owner the football seems to be an odd chore that gets in the way of his mad masterplan.
What is this rise up the table that is supposed to make me get behind the club a bit more now? 15th to 11th in League One behind AFC Wimbledon, Fleetwood Town and Southend? Lower than where Phil Parkinson was with Pawel Abbott as a big signing.
It is probably true that, if the club was successful in footballing terms (even unto the Premier League), people would not protest.
However, those things about which we are protesting are the reasons why the club, under the current regime (as it has demonstrated itself to be), will not be successful in footballing terms.
I don't really "need" our owner to be a fan of our club (though it would be nice), but I absolutely need any owner to understand what football is about and to want football success. Achieving it is not essential, but trying makes a bloody big difference.
We may, historically, be mainly a second tier team, selling on players to those above us, but only with this regime has this actually been the ambition. The network model can work, provided that it is structured to make it enhance the prospects of each club, but our involvement is in a network run in many ways by Arthur Daley. At each club in which Duchatelet has been involved, it seems to me, the priority is not the team but the placing of players in the shop window in the hopes of maximising profits from their sales.
If Duchatelet changes his approach, things could improve, however...
The regime, like a leopard, has not shown itself, to date, to be capable of changing it's spots (indeed, with evolution, it seems that the leopard could adapt more quickly).
You express your point of view well generally. However it's clearly based on an extremely limited, entirely superficial understanding of the situation our club is in.
Imagine for example your own club in the same situation. A young, up and coming manager, a club legend in fact, has recently achieved promotion and looked to have turned a slide down the leagues around and injected a much missed sense of togetherness back into the club. After years of decline you finally felt you'd got your club back. A cliché that happened to be true.
He wasn't perfect, but at last the club were moving in the right direction and you, the fans, were part of that.
A new owner, the richest your club has ever had comes in. Okay he has other clubs and some left field ideas but you're prepared to give him a chance and see where his network, moneyball-lite system gets you.
He appoints a young, totally inexperienced CEO to oversee the running of your club. Fair enough, it's his money, you welcome them and again are prepared to give them every support you can as a group of fans. She's not really interested in what you can offer though. She knows best.
The new owner immediately starts interfering with on field matters. Contacting the manager demanding certain players should be playing, rotating clearly inferior players into your club, sometimes even without the managers knowledge they are arriving, or insisting others are sold as not being good enough. Others are forced out of the club for free only to walk into other Championship club sides.
The inevitable happens and the manager's sacked when he refuses to play along with the owners interference. He's replaced by a unknown coach from another network club. This is nothing new, managers are replaced by new owners all the time and despite the reasons behind the sacking your supporters are still prepared to get behind the new manager and give him every opportunity. He also refuses to play the inferior players foisted on the squad.
He doesn't get the job at the end of the season as expected.
In fact he's just the first of a ridiculous sequence of extremely short term appointments of trusted network coaches, some better than others, some frankly so far out of their depth they can't see the shore, but none able to make any progress on the pitch.
Each time the club is able to reorganise during the transfer window it is left unbalanced in key areas and arguably weaker in others. The supporters can see this a mile off and also the another utterly unnecessary, predicable relegation.
In the meantime your new CEO continues to make a series of, at best odd but often untrue, statements and proclamations, labelling you all "weird customers" who should be grateful you might get a brief chance to see a young player make a few appearances for your team before being sold on to another rival team. The owner himself is on record as not being really bothered about results and never attends the games himself. Your club shows absolutely zero ambition.
Experienced, longstanding behind the scenes staff are jettisoned or proactively leave without so much a nod from the clubs new management team. Everything incidental to the actual football noticeably deteriorates, season tickets are sent on mass to wrong addresses, the ticket office closes during the week, an NHS call centre opens instead, emails go unanswered even from potential investors, important positions go unfilled for months, junior staff are left unsupported and struggling, in fact pretty much everything behind the scenes that could be mishandled is.
Your CEO has long since refused to engage with supporter groups unless they are prepared to go along with their view they are doing a fantastic job, the club is moving forward and any dissent is led by a minority of disgruntled ex-employees. This despite all evidence to the contrary.
Sponsors are leaving, crowds are a fraction of what they were, the media are pouring a mix of scorn and bewilderment on your club's plight and by now your club is widely recognised as the template for a poorly run organisation that is proactively at "war" with (the majority of) its supporters.
Yet still, the 8 managers that have been given the poisoned chalice of managing your club are supported. Every single one of them. Not because they were great, despite the CEO's bizarre suggestion they each improved on the last. But because as supporters you recognised they were not the problem.
These are merely a few of the potted highlights of the last few years, are you seriously suggesting your own club's supporters would calmly sit there passively allowing events to wash over you in the hope that, if you're lucky, you might achieve promotion back to the division you were in before this nightmare started?
As you can tell from the length of my post I really struggle to put succinctly just what an absolute mess from top to bottom of our club they have made. :-(
I've given up correcting most people like LBTF in real life that its not about a few results as they start to glaze over after the first 10 minutes.
As you can tell from the length of my post I really struggle to put succinctly just what an absolute mess from top to bottom of our club they have made. :-(
I've given up correcting most people like LBTF in real life that its not about a few results as they start to glaze over after the first 10 minutes.
I'm taking that post on holiday with me hopefully I'll get through it in seven days.
Sounds like it so where does that leave COL? If he's on the payroll already he's got to turn up for work somewhere in the network I suppose.
Be interesting to be a fly on the wall at the training ground to see how much involvement he has with the players and coaching staff or is it just a watching spying brief .
Sounds like it so where does that leave COL? If he's on the payroll already he's got to turn up for work somewhere in the network I suppose.
Be interesting to be a fly on the wall at the training ground to see how much involvement he has with the players and coaching staff or is it just a watching spying brief .
@Henry Irving I ask questions as that is what I believe in doing to get to the truth. My belief - you haven't got a clue what you want. You want RD out, but I'm afraid that isn't an end goal as we need someone to own the club. Questions and questioning leads to answers, not just blindly protesting. No, I don't think you know what you're protesting for - the real goal, not the RD out part. Have a read of Plato's Republic - you may understand a little more...
I think the problem is that a group of people backed the club to lose. And yet we have lost one game in the last eight.
The latest article in the Telegraph states that "having managed just one league club, Robinson is ill equipped to understand what he is taking on at the Valley" within the opening paragraphs.
The author is Rick Everitt who has managed no league clubs and is seeking to make a name for himself pissing all over CAFC in the national media.
So just like when G21 was launched before Riga had lost a game back in March 2014, Robinson is now condemned before he has even taken his place in the dug-out.
The problem is that some peoples simplistic analysis stated that RD funds a paper thin squad which is ill equipped to compete. Two games after Slade has gone is perhaps too soon to draw conclusions but the fact is that we went in 2-0 up at half time in both games.
We are making around 13 chances per game but the difference is that they are of a better quality. More on target, more goals.
As posters like @seth plum have stated perhaps we might just support the club and worry about the Board's approach to the Championship whenever we get back.
As for people going to the national media pissing all over the club? Well as @LeedsbasedTownfan states from his perspective, protests on Wembley way will look pretty f##king stupid.
We have no idea how the next five weeks will go, how the double header vs Millwall will end nor what the squad will look like on January 31st 2017.
But some have allowed their pessimism about the future and their feelings of angst override rational analysis of our current prospects and future outcomes.
This has allowed a post-truth narrative to be published unchallenged in local and national media.
For sure I could have popped up on here to challenge it but not my job and I have no interest in engaging with the type of person who is unable to grasp simple facts.
Post truthers simply don't like rational analysis. They just repeat their feelings as if they are fact. We saw it with the Brexit referendum and we saw it with the Trump Presidential election.
And now we see it with our club where so called "analysis" focusses on the interest bill whilst dismissing the millions spent on capex, paying off bank debt and paying for the current team.
Yes, the likes of Bauer, Pearce, Ajose, Holmes and Magennis all cost fees. And they are starting to look like a side that can make the play-offs.
It is the job of the club, not me to deliver a competitive side and a compelling narrative. The fact that the owner is pumping in £1M a month to fund losses, capex and player acquisition and the fact that we have relied on just 15/16 players all season suggests to many we have turned a corner.
I was there at Gillingham and we all watched the Swindon game on Sky so we all know how poor we have been. But we've also been at all the home games.
So sure, people can protest, do their worstest but wtf are they moaning about if we keep climbing the table?
Ah yes, Koc, Nego and Reza.
Move on lads, move on.
'Post-truth narrative' lol somebody has been watching an Adam Curtis documentary. What exactly is post-truth about the 7/8 (lost count) managers we've had under this regime? The relegation? The abysmal attendances and atmosphere? The string of countless backroom staff changes - in a setup that is threadbare at times, and at others has all sorts of random hangers-on. The almost constant media gaffes, stupid statements, and childish mistakes?
I want to move on. I have never been an anti-Belgium, anti-network, oldschool valley protestor. I even thought the network concept could be a great advantage at the beginning of the Duchatelet era. Just look at Watford and RB Leipzig.
But here's the thing - they keep cocking everything up so badly that moving on is just impossible. I'm reminded every time I go to the games, either by the terrible lack of atmosphere, the fact that we are getting pasted by some rubbish team in league one, the fact that the manager is new/absent every few months.
I notice that your post comes after a few decent results. It's much easier to make out that the problem isn't a big deal when we've had a couple of wins, and of course I hope they continue. But the best indicator of future success is past performance, so forgive me if I don't delete the cache of Duchatelet fuck-ups just yet.. it seems that would be a little naive to say the least.
Superb post from Bournemouth, that should be made a sticky at the top of this site or printed on a leaflet and given to every single one of the fans who somehow still back the SMT.
Superb post from Bournemouth, that should be made a sticky at the top of this site or printed on a leaflet and given to every single one of the fans who somehow still back the SMT.
Cheers but I think that if people can't see the absolute mess up of running the club they've made by now they never will.
You express your point of view well generally. However it's clearly based on an extremely limited, entirely superficial understanding of the situation our club is in.
Imagine for example your own club in the same situation. A young, up and coming manager, a club legend in fact, has recently achieved promotion and looked to have turned a slide down the leagues around and injected a much missed sense of togetherness back into the club. After years of decline you finally felt you'd got your club back. A cliché that happened to be true.
He wasn't perfect, but at last the club were moving in the right direction and you, the fans, were part of that.
A new owner, the richest your club has ever had comes in. Okay he has other clubs and some left field ideas but you're prepared to give him a chance and see where his network, moneyball-lite system gets you.
He appoints a young, totally inexperienced CEO to oversee the running of your club. Fair enough, it's his money, you welcome them and again are prepared to give them every support you can as a group of fans. She's not really interested in what you can offer though. She knows best.
The new owner immediately starts interfering with on field matters. Contacting the manager demanding certain players should be playing, rotating clearly inferior players into your club, sometimes even without the managers knowledge they are arriving, or insisting others are sold as not being good enough. Others are forced out of the club for free only to walk into other Championship club sides.
The inevitable happens and the manager's sacked when he refuses to play along with the owners interference. He's replaced by a unknown coach from another network club. This is nothing new, managers are replaced by new owners all the time and despite the reasons behind the sacking your supporters are still prepared to get behind the new manager and give him every opportunity. He also refuses to play the inferior players foisted on the squad.
He doesn't get the job at the end of the season as expected.
In fact he's just the first of a ridiculous sequence of extremely short term appointments of trusted network coaches, some better than others, some frankly so far out of their depth they can't see the shore, but none able to make any progress on the pitch.
Each time the club is able to reorganise during the transfer window it is left unbalanced in key areas and arguably weaker in others. The supporters can see this a mile off and also the another utterly unnecessary, predicable relegation.
In the meantime your new CEO continues to make a series of, at best odd but often untrue, statements and proclamations, labelling you all "weird customers" who should be grateful you might get a brief chance to see a young player make a few appearances for your team before being sold on to another rival team. The owner himself is on record as not being really bothered about results and never attends the games himself. Your club shows absolutely zero ambition.
Experienced, longstanding behind the scenes staff are jettisoned or proactively leave without so much a nod from the clubs new management team. Everything incidental to the actual football noticeably deteriorates, season tickets are sent on mass to wrong addresses, the ticket office closes during the week, an NHS call centre opens instead, emails go unanswered even from potential investors, important positions go unfilled for months, junior staff are left unsupported and struggling, in fact pretty much everything behind the scenes that could be mishandled is.
Your CEO has long since refused to engage with supporter groups unless they are prepared to go along with their view they are doing a fantastic job, the club is moving forward and any dissent is led by a minority of disgruntled ex-employees. This despite all evidence to the contrary.
Sponsors are leaving, crowds are a fraction of what they were, the media are pouring a mix of scorn and bewilderment on your club's plight and by now your club is widely recognised as the template for a poorly run organisation that is proactively at "war" with (the majority of) its supporters.
Yet still, the 8 managers that have been given the poisoned chalice of managing your club are supported. Every single one of them. Not because they were great, despite the CEO's bizarre suggestion they each improved on the last. But because as supporters you recognised they were not the problem.
These are merely a few of the potted highlights of the last few years, are you seriously suggesting your own club's supporters would calmly sit there passively allowing events to wash over you in the hope that, if you're lucky, you might achieve promotion back to the division you were in before this nightmare started?
Another new addition to the coaching staff. Ritchie will initially be assisting Karl Robinson but will also no doubt have half an eye on securing a position on Chris O'Loughlin's coaching team for the March '17 to October '17 shift.
Friend of mine staying at the Hilton in Greenwich, sent me some pictures of Karl knocking back 3 large glasses of red, a lot of answers in a bottom of a glass of red....
Friend of mine staying at the Hilton in Greenwich, sent me some pictures of Karl knocking back 3 large glasses of red, a lot of answers in a bottom of a glass of red....
Don't just tell us. Show us. No ones going to get in trouble ha
Comments
I would also like to challenge one of the ex Charlton players or managers when on TV for example they say "what's going on at that Club is terrible".If they were asked to elaborate, they wouldn't have the slightest clue what to say to substantaite their sound bite.
Your protests are lawful, agreed. What has been posted on here about Meire, somebodies Daughter, somebodies Grandaughter, possibly Sister is though absolutely disgusting and does not cover your fan base in glory.
18 days before sacking Slade, our CEO was on the radio using him as a demonstration of the new era at the club. They sacked him having lost one match in six, and having beaten Scunthorpe in the cup. To be fair, the Scunthorpe game was one of the only ones when Charlton even remotely entertained. Slade's foorball was awfull. But fans of his previous clubs all said it would be. They were right. In twenty years as manager, he never achieved a promotion. That is ongoing too. So who gave him the job, on what basis, and what did he do wrong that wasn't a strong possibility in may when they interviewed him?
You say we are climbing the table? Yep, spot on, and long may it continue. Most of that is the last two matches (coinciding with Slade not being on the bench). But it's a bit of a flash photo. The rest of the season we have continued to sink.
Personally, I am optimistic about Robinson. His (very short) track record suggests attacking football, played to feet, which after the last few, would be a delight. He is also a young hungry manager, which all sounds good. However, nothing within the club has changed. Our daft CEO is still there. The owner recently brushed off the protests in Belgium as a 'handfull of dissatisfied ex employees who can't bear the thought of a female CEO' or words to that effect. So our owner remains at best laughably uninformed about the club he owns, and on a more realistic level, continues to lie.
If Robinson gets us up, the protests will trail off - most football fans tend to live a bit hand to mouth, and short term wins are always enough to blunt the anger. But that's not where we are today. And to suggest we have turned some sort of corner is merely to look on a superficial basis at the last fortnight. The owner has a lot of apologies to issue. And they make no sense while the CEO continues in her position at our club.
Sorry to drone on :-(
In my opinion, I believe RD is in this for himself and his network family only. He has no interest in Charlton other than to make money and provide job opportunities for his chosen ones, all of whom seem to be completely unqualified, inexperienced and painfully out of their depth. He lives in another country, never visits, and has declared the club is 1.5% of his overall interests.
Everything he and his "CEO" have said indicates that he wants to use the club to develop players in the academy and sell them on at a profit. To be able to do this he needs a premier quality academy facility and the club in the Championship to attract the best youth prospects possible. He is (slowly) building the new academy currently.
They seem to have realised last summer that his network stooges would not get the club back in the Championship, hence hiring Slade and now Robinson.
It may be that Robinson does well and gets them up in the Championship. Once there, he may get the team punching above it's weight - he didn't quite manage it with MK Dons, but he is still young and learning his trade.
However, everything that has happened so far suggests there will be no investment or stability for a serious push to the premier league. This is because it does not fit with the vision they have. Had the FFP rules not changed, then maybe it would've been feasible, but RD will not gamble like Derby and co have - he'd now sooner keep the club mid champ and make a few million a year on player sales.
I believe there are now 3 main things that are therefore driving people away - (1) the immediate annoyance of relegation, as well as the woeful and at times offensive and disrespectful SMT at the club. If Robinson gets the team winning then these people may return; (2) the seemingly pointless activity of following a club that has no ambition to get back to the Premier League; (3) the desire to not give Charlton money, as it is ultimately contributing to the owner's long term plan to make money for himself.
Eventually, once back in the Championship, I believe he will sell, as the club is in London, has a premier league stadium and will have premier league academy facilities. It will be very attractive to investors and this will make him a lot of profit. I think this is his long term goal. But in the process he will have destroyed a lot of what made the club so special to people, as well as creating some dreadful division among what is a cracking fan base.
Now how does that compare to Dean Hoyle?
I welcome your postings and I will try to simplify a complex situation.
Huddersfield Town have a glorious history, Herbert Chapman, League Champions year after year, Bill Shankley, Dennis Law, Frank Worthington, Ian Grieves. and so on.
In one match in that history you lost 7-6 to Charlton. In that game you were winning 5-1, but the players from Charlton strove to win the game, indeed players from both teams, the fans were engaged with the excitement of the sport and the ultimate aim for everybody there that day was clear, to win or try your damnedest to.
You watch Huddersfield, high in the table, and want wins and points to sustain your excitement for your club within the sport.
Now imagine following a club where winning doesn't really matter.
Imagine going the see Huddersfield play and if they lose 0-3 at home it really is no big deal. After all one of your players can have 100% success rate in tackles, passes and dribbles in a 0-5 defeat. And that player can be sold on because of it
Imagine that is your role, to be a quaint decorative backdrop whilst players are farmed through your club. Would you shrug and accept that? Especially if the related activities around the club are embarrassing, alienating, hostile, exploitative, patronising and incompetent at the most base level?
You may be right that the wider football world don't get it, we do because we are living it. Huddersfield fans are usually gracious, but be grateful you support a club that participates in the sport of football. For our owner the football seems to be an odd chore that gets in the way of his mad masterplan.
However, those things about which we are protesting are the reasons why the club, under the current regime (as it has demonstrated itself to be), will not be successful in footballing terms.
I don't really "need" our owner to be a fan of our club (though it would be nice), but I absolutely need any owner to understand what football is about and to want football success. Achieving it is not essential, but trying makes a bloody big difference.
We may, historically, be mainly a second tier team, selling on players to those above us, but only with this regime has this actually been the ambition. The network model can work, provided that it is structured to make it enhance the prospects of each club, but our involvement is in a network run in many ways by Arthur Daley. At each club in which Duchatelet has been involved, it seems to me, the priority is not the team but the placing of players in the shop window in the hopes of maximising profits from their sales.
If Duchatelet changes his approach, things could improve, however...
The regime, like a leopard, has not shown itself, to date, to be capable of changing it's spots (indeed, with evolution, it seems that the leopard could adapt more quickly).
You express your point of view well generally. However it's clearly based on an extremely limited, entirely superficial understanding of the situation our club is in.
Imagine for example your own club in the same situation. A young, up and coming manager, a club legend in fact, has recently achieved promotion and looked to have turned a slide down the leagues around and injected a much missed sense of togetherness back into the club. After years of decline you finally felt you'd got your club back. A cliché that happened to be true.
He wasn't perfect, but at last the club were moving in the right direction and you, the fans, were part of that.
A new owner, the richest your club has ever had comes in. Okay he has other clubs and some left field ideas but you're prepared to give him a chance and see where his network, moneyball-lite system gets you.
He appoints a young, totally inexperienced CEO to oversee the running of your club. Fair enough, it's his money, you welcome them and again are prepared to give them every support you can as a group of fans. She's not really interested in what you can offer though. She knows best.
The new owner immediately starts interfering with on field matters. Contacting the manager demanding certain players should be playing, rotating clearly inferior players into your club, sometimes even without the managers knowledge they are arriving, or insisting others are sold as not being good enough. Others are forced out of the club for free only to walk into other Championship club sides.
The inevitable happens and the manager's sacked when he refuses to play along with the owners interference. He's replaced by a unknown coach from another network club. This is nothing new, managers are replaced by new owners all the time and despite the reasons behind the sacking your supporters are still prepared to get behind the new manager and give him every opportunity. He also refuses to play the inferior players foisted on the squad.
He doesn't get the job at the end of the season as expected.
In fact he's just the first of a ridiculous sequence of extremely short term appointments of trusted network coaches, some better than others, some frankly so far out of their depth they can't see the shore, but none able to make any progress on the pitch.
Each time the club is able to reorganise during the transfer window it is left unbalanced in key areas and arguably weaker in others. The supporters can see this a mile off and also the another utterly unnecessary, predicable relegation.
In the meantime your new CEO continues to make a series of, at best odd but often untrue, statements and proclamations, labelling you all "weird customers" who should be grateful you might get a brief chance to see a young player make a few appearances for your team before being sold on to another rival team. The owner himself is on record as not being really bothered about results and never attends the games himself. Your club shows absolutely zero ambition.
Experienced, longstanding behind the scenes staff are jettisoned or proactively leave without so much a nod from the clubs new management team. Everything incidental to the actual football noticeably deteriorates, season tickets are sent on mass to wrong addresses, the ticket office closes during the week, an NHS call centre opens instead, emails go unanswered even from potential investors, important positions go unfilled for months, junior staff are left unsupported and struggling, in fact pretty much everything behind the scenes that could be mishandled is.
Your CEO has long since refused to engage with supporter groups unless they are prepared to go along with their view they are doing a fantastic job, the club is moving forward and any dissent is led by a minority of disgruntled ex-employees. This despite all evidence to the contrary.
Sponsors are leaving, crowds are a fraction of what they were, the media are pouring a mix of scorn and bewilderment on your club's plight and by now your club is widely recognised as the template for a poorly run organisation that is proactively at "war" with (the majority of) its supporters.
Yet still, the 8 managers that have been given the poisoned chalice of managing your club are supported. Every single one of them. Not because they were great, despite the CEO's bizarre suggestion they each improved on the last. But because as supporters you recognised they were not the problem.
These are merely a few of the potted highlights of the last few years, are you seriously suggesting your own club's supporters would calmly sit there passively allowing events to wash over you in the hope that, if you're lucky, you might achieve promotion back to the division you were in before this nightmare started?
Give over.
Grapevinesque:-)
I've given up correcting most people like LBTF in real life that its not about a few results as they start to glaze over after the first 10 minutes.
Seriously, great post
Nugent to stay, Barker to join?
Be interesting to be a fly on the wall at the training ground to see how much involvement he has with the players and coaching staff or is it just a
watchingspying briefI want to move on. I have never been an anti-Belgium, anti-network, oldschool valley protestor. I even thought the network concept could be a great advantage at the beginning of the Duchatelet era. Just look at Watford and RB Leipzig.
But here's the thing - they keep cocking everything up so badly that moving on is just impossible. I'm reminded every time I go to the games, either by the terrible lack of atmosphere, the fact that we are getting pasted by some rubbish team in league one, the fact that the manager is new/absent every few months.
I notice that your post comes after a few decent results. It's much easier to make out that the problem isn't a big deal when we've had a couple of wins, and of course I hope they continue. But the best indicator of future success is past performance, so forgive me if I don't delete the cache of Duchatelet fuck-ups just yet.. it seems that would be a little naive to say the least.
http://www.hucknalldispatch.co.uk/sport/football/ex-stags-star-barker-expected-to-join-charlton-1-8262429?