An interesting thing I’ve just noticed, it seems (if her twitter account is correct and up to date) that Sophie Ashcroft is back in the same role at a Sunderland backed charity
When they do eventually get it right you could see Sunderland doing a Brighton, Norwich or Sheffield United and within a short time getting to the PL. Potentially, they could have 40,000 every week turning up and that support coupled with a good manager on a decent budget could be enough.
Cant believe how desperate they were to get grigg.
Then again they put themselves in that situation with the Maja situation. I didnt want them to cave in to the greedy agent but in hindsight Maja would have probably won them promotion if they just kept him to the end of the season and took a hit on the fee they received from Bordeaux.
An interesting thing I’ve just noticed, it seems (if her twitter account is correct and up to date) that Sophie Ashcroft is back in the same role at a Sunderland backed charity
Yeah, looks like she simply moved over to the Mackem equivalent of CACT, the Foundation of Light. Good on her - hopefully she's had the last laugh on Charlie-boy. But pretty poor for the film-makers to imply that she walked/got the boot from the whole set-up without any clarification.
I guess this was always going to be a bit of a disappointment - "football club adapts to relegation from Premier League" is an easier story for outsiders to get into than "football club fucks it up again and is now in League One", and I don't think Jack Ross allowed them the access to the team they had in the first series. If Charlie Methven wasn't such a tosser they might have ended up binning the whole series. While there are stories left untold in this, I guess the full, excruciating saga of how Stewart Donald wasted a pile of cash on Will Grigg made up for it to an extent. Donald seems a good man but should never have left non-league.
And as others have pointed out, the sloppier bits of editing/production jarred - we started out as "Charlton Athletic" and ended up as "Charlton", c'mon, the Netflix money should have paid for someone to pick that up.
Watching our day at Wembley through their eyes was surprisingly difficult. Brought home how big our achievement then was - and the whole series brought home how big Chris Powell's achievement in 2011/12 was.
What Sunderland fans should accept is that Parkinson is a slow burner manager. I wouldn't employ him for instant results but seeing as he has been there a while he will get them up and build the club. If they try to push him out they won't benefit.
Just finished it, thought the first series was better (apart from the end).
My favourite bit until the last episode was Donald losing the plot on transfer deadline day and going from £1.25M to £3M rising to £4M on Will Grigg in a matter of minutes. Bet Wigan couldn’t accept that one fast enough!
I’m kind of confused by the Maja situation, how did he sign for Bordeaux without them knowing? He was still under contract with Sunderland at the time, did I miss the bit where they actually accepted an offer for him?
What I thought happened was that the club found out from the media that Maja had refused a contract extension and were understandably a bit peeved that they heard the news from Sky rather than from the player or his agent. When you have six months or less on your contract you are free to talk
to other clubs, his agent deliberately ran the clock down in the run-up the transfer
window opening and was then free to start negotiating.
Right, you can talk to other clubs with six months left on your deal, you can’t bloody sign for them without your current club accepting an offer. They seemed to make out that they woke up one day and Maja had signed for Bordeaux without them knowing - that can’t possibly be true.
Under the Bosman ruling you can both talk to and sign a pre-contract agreement to join another club for the following season regardless of the wishes of your club as long as its within six months of your current contract ending. Maja's agent, Elite Project Group, know how the game is played (they also represent Ademola Lookman and Jadon Sancho amongst others) and were pretty cynical about playing it too their advantage. They drove the transfer probably in the knowledge that Maja will be on the move again soon and so they'll collect another payday fror brokering that transfer. Being a cheap transfer Maja's wages and signing on fee would be a bit better than a negotiated transfer deal and doubtless they stood to make a bit more from that. So Sunderland took some money while they could and presumably gambled on getting a replacement in for about the same money they sold Maja for, in hindsight of course they should have kept him, and if he'd stayed fit then that would have been automatic promotion tied up. However Maja only played a few games for Bordeaux before getting injured and then missed the end of the season, if he'd stayed at SAFC would he have still got injured? There's all manner of sliding door stuff to debate there.
Maja doesn't come out of this well - his evasiveness about contractual negotiations suggest that he was under a lot of pressure to play the agent's game, from his body language he didn't look happy being put on the spot, but you also contrast that with the defender who was out of contract and sweating on a new deal being signed. As the graphic stated at the beginning of the programme wages at L1 level are not as great as some people think. You can go from earning a decent but not earth shatering wage to nothing in a moment.
Just watched ep 5. Cant believe how gutted they were to lose the checkatrade. God knows how they are going to feel in episode 6 with 6 seconds to go. I feel sorry for them already.
Just binged watched it today . The series felt more rushed than the last one but my overriding thoughts at the end was how I like the Sunderland fans . Proper fans. I actually felt gutted for them despite it being one of the best days of my life .
Just finished it, thought the first series was better (apart from the end).
My favourite bit until the last episode was Donald losing the plot on transfer deadline day and going from £1.25M to £3M rising to £4M on Will Grigg in a matter of minutes. Bet Wigan couldn’t accept that one fast enough!
I’m kind of confused by the Maja situation, how did he sign for Bordeaux without them knowing? He was still under contract with Sunderland at the time, did I miss the bit where they actually accepted an offer for him?
What I thought happened was that the club found out from the media that Maja had refused a contract extension and were understandably a bit peeved that they heard the news from Sky rather than from the player or his agent. When you have six months or less on your contract you are free to talk
to other clubs, his agent deliberately ran the clock down in the run-up the transfer
window opening and was then free to start negotiating.
Right, you can talk to other clubs with six months left on your deal, you can’t bloody sign for them without your current club accepting an offer. They seemed to make out that they woke up one day and Maja had signed for Bordeaux without them knowing - that can’t possibly be true.
Under the Bosman ruling you can both talk to and sign a pre-contract agreement to join another club for the following season regardless of the wishes of your club as long as its within six months of your current contract ending. Maja's agent, Elite Project Group, know how the game is played (they also represent Ademola Lookman and Jadon Sancho amongst others) and were pretty cynical about playing it too their advantage. They drove the transfer probably in the knowledge that Maja will be on the move again soon and so they'll collect another payday fror brokering that transfer. Being a cheap transfer Maja's wages and signing on fee would be a bit better than a negotiated transfer deal and doubtless they stood to make a bit more from that. So Sunderland took some money while they could and presumably gambled on getting a replacement in for about the same money they sold Maja for, in hindsight of course they should have kept him, and if he'd stayed fit then that would have been automatic promotion tied up. However Maja only played a few games for Bordeaux before getting injured and then missed the end of the season, if he'd stayed at SAFC would he have still got injured? There's all manner of sliding door stuff to debate there.
Maja doesn't come out of this well - his evasiveness about contractual negotiations suggest that he was under a lot of pressure to play the agent's game, from his body language he didn't look happy being put on the spot, but you also contrast that with the defender who was out of contract and sweating on a new deal being signed. As the graphic stated at the beginning of the programme wages at L1 level are not as great as some people think. You can go from earning a decent but not earth shatering wage to nothing in a moment.
Just watched ep 5. Cant believe how gutted they were to lose the checkatrade. God knows how they are going to feel in episode 6 with 6 seconds to go. I feel sorry for them already.
Looking forward to watching ep 6 tonight.
Too much attention on checkatrade. They didn’t expect to beat us in play off final
Just watched ep 5. Cant believe how gutted they were to lose the checkatrade. God knows how they are going to feel in episode 6 with 6 seconds to go. I feel sorry for them already.
Looking forward to watching ep 6 tonight.
Too much attention on checkatrade. They didn’t expect to beat us in play off final
They were completely shot when it came to playing us . I don’t think we realised it at the time.
Didn't think it was anywhere near as good as season 1. There was too much focus on the owner and CEO. I can only think that was the narrative they wanted to pedal??? If so, for me it backfired as they both came out of it looking like a couple of clueless chancers who had no real financial clout. This series just went some way to confirming the media stories that have surfaced about them. So many of the scenes were clearly staged and scripted.
For a club that size they (the owners/management) were a complete embarrassment. And for that, I feel for their fans, but not for the pain of losing at Wembley - that's just football and all clubs (unless plastic ones at the very very top) experience that.
I wanted to see more insight from the players and staff - maybe they all (sensibly) refused to participate in much detail?
Really wanted to see Methven's face when the winner went in so was disappointing to see all the focus was on the fans (whom I felt sorry for). Donald seems a nice guy, heart in the right place but out of his depth. Enjoyed it but not as much as the first.
In terms of the editing, Christmas trees in November seemed a bit weird. Mind you, I knew somebody (a mate's girlfriend) who put hers up in August. I went round to his place one August or September as we were going on to a car show. I looked around their living room with Christmas tree with wrapped presents under it, decorations and the Orville Christmas show on the TV. I was speechless. He said it all really " She likes Christmas".
I quite like Stewart Donaldson. I think we would take someone like him at the helm of Charlton right now, eh?
He came off as a nice guy, but was ridiculously clueless about the business of football. The deadline day scene of buying Grigg is something he must hate to have to watch back now.
I'm half way through and will skip to the last episode. For a behind the scenes football show to have absolutely no dressing room access is a killer. Obviously the manager knocked that on the head. As others have said, the editing is so careless. In one of the games, end of November or sometime, we cut to the crowd all in t shirts. Just really careless. Some of the transfer stuff looks fake, especially the stuff early on deadline day or a day or two before. Lots of green outside and summer sunshine coming through the window.
And the theme song is terrible. My god, what a dirge.
I'm half way through and will skip to the last episode. For a behind the scenes football show to have absolutely no dressing room access is a killer. Obviously the manager knocked that on the head. As others have said, the editing is so careless. In one of the games, end of November or sometime, we cut to the crowd all in t shirts. Just really careless. Some of the transfer stuff looks fake, especially the stuff early on deadline day or a day or two before. Lots of green outside and summer sunshine coming through the window.
And the theme song is terrible. My god, what a dirge.
Do you mind. I'm just about to settle down and watch the last episode with the family.
We had enormous fun watching the fake Grand National and now you throw this out there.
I'm half way through and will skip to the last episode. For a behind the scenes football show to have absolutely no dressing room access is a killer. Obviously the manager knocked that on the head. As others have said, the editing is so careless. In one of the games, end of November or sometime, we cut to the crowd all in t shirts. Just really careless. Some of the transfer stuff looks fake, especially the stuff early on deadline day or a day or two before. Lots of green outside and summer sunshine coming through the window.
And the theme song is terrible. My god, what a dirge.
It’s a badly made tv doc. Don’t read too much into it. The coverage of Wembley was poor, but that’s because it didn’t go the way the programme makers wanted. Watch the last ep as it’s a bit of fun for us Charlton fans, but generally it’s not all that !
Why did they give an entire episode to the Checkatrade but then squeeze in the end of the season and the playoffs into one? Seems an odd match to focus on so much.
Why did they give an entire episode to the Checkatrade but then squeeze in the end of the season and the playoffs into one? Seems an odd match to focus on so much.
I think they wanted to highlight just how desperate they are to win a trophy, they make so many references to the 1973 FA Cup winning team.
As others have said, the nonsensical focus on the Checkatrade Trophy was another key factor in killing their season.
When they played us at Wembley you could see that after 30 mins they were out on their feet - they had no edge whatsoever to their game and were very heavy legged.
Why play another six games you don't need to play to win a tinpot trophy? Sure, you might make 1 million quid, but you'd make a lot more if you get automatic promotion!
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Then again they put themselves in that situation with the Maja situation. I didnt want them to cave in to the greedy agent but in hindsight Maja would have probably won them promotion if they just kept him to the end of the season and took a hit on the fee they received from Bordeaux.
I guess this was always going to be a bit of a disappointment - "football club adapts to relegation from Premier League" is an easier story for outsiders to get into than "football club fucks it up again and is now in League One", and I don't think Jack Ross allowed them the access to the team they had in the first series. If Charlie Methven wasn't such a tosser they might have ended up binning the whole series. While there are stories left untold in this, I guess the full, excruciating saga of how Stewart Donald wasted a pile of cash on Will Grigg made up for it to an extent. Donald seems a good man but should never have left non-league.
And as others have pointed out, the sloppier bits of editing/production jarred - we started out as "Charlton Athletic" and ended up as "Charlton", c'mon, the Netflix money should have paid for someone to pick that up.
Watching our day at Wembley through their eyes was surprisingly difficult. Brought home how big our achievement then was - and the whole series brought home how big Chris Powell's achievement in 2011/12 was.
Looking forward to watching ep 6 tonight.
For a club that size they (the owners/management) were a complete embarrassment. And for that, I feel for their fans, but not for the pain of losing at Wembley - that's just football and all clubs (unless plastic ones at the very very top) experience that.
I wanted to see more insight from the players and staff - maybe they all (sensibly) refused to participate in much detail?
Anyway, up the BFG you legend.
Donald seems a nice guy, heart in the right place but out of his depth.
Enjoyed it but not as much as the first.
And the theme song is terrible. My god, what a dirge.
I'm just about to settle down and watch the last episode with the family.
We had enormous fun watching the fake Grand National and now you throw this out there.
I'm starting to think my whole life is a fraud!
"Sunderland are one of the worst teams I've supported."
That is all.
”people in London just think the northeast is full of poor, stupid people that voted for Brexit...” then he kinda trails off!
When they played us at Wembley you could see that after 30 mins they were out on their feet - they had no edge whatsoever to their game and were very heavy legged.
Why play another six games you don't need to play to win a tinpot trophy? Sure, you might make 1 million quid, but you'd make a lot more if you get automatic promotion!
Honestly spared no thought for them on the day, the days after or even watching Netflix doc.
Wouldn't wish any harm on them obviously but we've had enough dissapointment ourselves to let another teams feelings get in my head
Is what it is.