With Charlton now facing their most important and most exciting run of matches for best part of a decade, it is worth remembering that we still have some unfinished business. It’s been great to see people regaining their enthusiasm for things Charlton, but conversely there’s been little or nothing recently by way of protest. He is still here. The team might be doing well on the pitch, but the club is an absolute shambles.
Do people think it’s a done deal and they don’t have to bother any more? Is it a case of hopelessness or fatigue? Are you scared that chanting ‘Roland Out’ will detract from the team’s performance? Are you scared that those who deride protests as ‘negative’ will pick an argument with you? Or has red become the new black?
I don’t know what’s happening to galvanise opposition to the regime anymore. CARD have gone distinctly quiet. Do they still exist? ROT did put a plea on here for support and, I hope I’m wrong, but from my perspective it seemed to get decidedly lukewarm response. At the Rochdale game I didn’t see so much as one anti-regime badge (except my own). Has everyone given up or have we decided that as Roland has so skilfully masterminded a 50th place finish in league football that we’d like him to stick around?
I’ll end on a personal plea. Whether we end up despondent, euphoric or disappointedly proud at the end of the play-offs, please can everyone put themselves in a position where they can, hand on heart, say that they did something over this period to let Roland know that he should exit the stage as quickly as possible. Remember that the most important prize isn’t a day out to Wembley or regaining our place in a division we should never have dropped out of. The real prize is getting an owner who cares about the club and with whom we might have some chance of proper and sustained success.
For those of you who are going tonight, enjoy the match. COYR.
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Obviously I don't want my club in the third tier of English football, I want us to succeed like any of us does. I think it's more important to get rid of the horrible bastard who owns my club. Any success we have under him doesn't feel like success to me and whilst Bowyer, Jackson and the players have done amazingly well to get us in a position that we could be out of this shitty league soon, I am enormously concerned it will do more harm than good as Dushitalet is still hanging around.
I've also stuck by and had the courage of conviction to deprive myself of my weekend social with my pals to not endorse his regime by buying a season ticket. Tonight is a bit different and I think we've all got a duty to get behind the players and do all we can to show potential owners also what support is there should they choose to engage with us.
I'm hugely disappointed by the amount of people who have blatantly used the protest movement as an excuse not to attend when the team are playing shit, and that annoys me because it weakens everyone else's stance. It takes some conviction not to go when things are going well.
Do well on the pitch and have some success and the owner could be a far right sycophant from Kathmandu and happy fans wouldn't bat an eyelid.
The bigger picture is a serious worry as the minority well know. The man is poison.
It's hard because you want the club to do well but I think we need to fall a bit further in order to get the outcome that serious protesters want. Going up could be a chain around our neck in terms of getting rid of the old scroat.
I've not been a boycotter, though, so have a different perspective having suffered some of the atrocious dross on show over the last couple of seasons. I keep telling myself it's character building, but I really don't want to see another game against the likes of Bury or Oldham or Rochdale...
COYR
If the Aussies (or any other buying party) had come forward in public and publicly stated that Roland was constantly moving the goalposts and preventing them completing the deal, then I'm sure protests would have started again. As it is, it's all hearsay and speculation as to why the deal hasn't been finalised yet...
Tonight, the away leg and Wembley if we get there are great platforms to make feelings known about the ownership by way of songs and chants, especially as all the games are live on the TV.
Hopefully I will be able to hear some "we want Roland" out chanting on the TV tonight.
#notapennymore
No point singing Roland Out, who's there to hear it?
I won't partake in any protests because it's completely pointless at this point
But wishing for a great result.
COYR!!!!
What if Roland doesn't go? There's been plenty of false dawns over the recent months and talk of a takeover happening imminently, so is there any reason to believe that it is about to happen as soon as promotion/non-promotion is sorted out?
As far as I can see if we win the play offs and get to a decent level in the Championship and hopefully push for promotion, the consensus is that we don't mind if Roland stays or not really. If we win the play offs and end up bottom or the near the bottom of the Championship, it's definitely back to Roland Out. If we don't go up and are near the top of League One next year, Roland can stay. If it reverts back to mid-table and mediocrity, it's back to Roland Out.
In other words, is it just about results? And, now that KM has gone, is there really nothing to moan about because RD says nothing (almost), doesn't show his face and just pays the bills.
Or, is he really definitely going?
If the buyers all pulled out, and Roland said he'd keep the club, then the protests would start up again even if we were promoted
At this stage, the takeover talks are still ongoing and may reach their conclusion once our division for next season is finalised, the vast majority of people for a few weeks would rather concentrate on what's happening on the pitch
If Roland had run the club in proper fashion from Day One, then there never would have been a problem with him owning the club.
We just want the club run sensibly. We just want our Charlton back. We need the old scrote gone.
But, right or wrong, I feel tonight is about the football.
We've got 2 Cup-Finals in quick succession. The carrot of Wembley and promotion awaits us if we get it right.
We need the team to perform 100%. And we need to do the same.
It's up to every single one of us, on the pitch and on the terraces.
God knows, we've waited painfully long enough for moments like this.
I understand your concern, and share it to some extent, but the big caveats in my mind are (just reading this back I hope this doesn't come across as dismissive or condescending, because that's not how I mean it. This is just my thought process and how I am evaluating things):
1) The club is up for sale and in negotiations with buyers and, and I think that feels like we've crossed a threshold, and we have. It's really been in maybe the last 4-6 weeks that we've gone from "next month" to nothing from the club.
2) Even though it feels like an age, and even though it's 256,000 pages on the takeover thread, it's not been very long since things have gone from a sale being rumored to be any day to no news. And in that time we've had a good run of form which leads me to
3) Our run in was both so tense and so promising that it didn't feel like the right time for protests. Not because they'll effect the team, that's nonsense of course, but just, I dunno, I think there's a risk there or it being counterproductive. And if there's one thing CARD has always been really, really good at its reading the mood and understanding timing and how things will play both with the media and with other supporters.
4) *IF* we make it to Wembley don't be surprised to see something planned for that day. Again, CARD are very clever at picking their moments and that would be a good one. And there's also a much longer run up to that than the silly five days we had from the last game of the season.
And hey maybe I'm too complacent, and I try not to be. I think my general feeling is that these things ebb and flow because it's very hard to keep up the same level of outrage every single week for the what, two and a half years it's been now. And again I trust CARD and they seem to be chalk full of marketing and PR and strategy intelligence that I don't have, and even when things are quiet I implicitly trust that they know when to push and when to back off.
I seriously considered boycotting a couple of seasons ago. But to be honest, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let Duchatelet take away something that has been at the core of my life for as long as I remember.
I have no problem with those that are boycotting; I’ve attended every protest - here and in Belgium - and will continue to do so until he is gone. Regardless of the play off results.
I do think we’ll have new owners by the end of the month, but if we don’t, I feel we should take the protests to Duchatelet’s home town. In the meantime let’s enjoy our relative success on the pitch and each of us support the team in whatever way we think is best. COYR.
My personal view is that most fans remain anti-Duchatelet but believe that the club will be sold at the end of the season or, at least, sometime over the summer. Meanwhile, there's some rare excitement going on and it's not surprising that the large majority want to experience some of that.
If the club remains unsold, I doubt that any success we may have on the pitch will be enough to keep the protest movement dormant.
I believe that CARD will provide an update after the last game of the season.