CARD deliver 100 bottles of water to Sparrows Lane

HAVE A DRINK ON US, CHARLTON FANS TELL CLUB’S THIRSTY YOUNG PLAYERS!

Just days after Charlton Athletic’s billionaire owner made national headlines by rationing water to academy players during a heatwave, the club’s fans have stepped in to provide their own.

Rationing water and electricity – staff have been told to hold meetings in the dark rather than turn on lights – is the latest cost-saving measure deployed by Belgian Roland Duchatelet, who has forced the club’s youngest players to queue for tap water during the hottest summer for a generation.

He has also taken away free breakfasts from Charlton’s academy players - despite having received more than £15m from the sale of players from the club’s highly rated academy in recent years.

On Thursday morning Charlton’s academy players had something to stave off the heat, however, thanks to the Coalition Against Roland Duchatelet (CARD), which delivered three crates of bottled water to the club’s training ground in New Eltham.

The water bottles are emblazoned with the slogan “We want our water back”, an adaptation of the regular chants against Duchatelet from Charlton fans that “We want our Charlton back”. The specially designed label says the water has been “Provided by Charlton fans for our academy players because our billionaire owner won’t”.

A CARD spokesperson said: “Restricting water for young players while they are doing intensive pre-season training in the recent extraordinary temperatures is not only the latest in a long line of ridiculous decisions by Duchatelet, it’s also dangerous for the players.

“The first-team players are still being supplied with bottled water, so it’s clearly nothing to do with environmental concerns.

“The club says the decision has been taken because it needs to be more cost-conscious, but Duchatelet has been the owner for four years so he has been in charge of all the decisions that have led the club to its current position languishing in League One, and a debt of around £65m – far and away the biggest in the club’s history.”

A dozen first-team players have left the club since the end of last season, with only two new ones recruited by Lee Bowyer, who has been acting as caretaker manager since March. Consequently, the squad is so depleted that Bowyer was only able to name five out of the permitted seven substitutes in last Saturday’s first game of the season – and the five including three youngsters who have never started a league match.

Among the former Charlton academy players to have been sold by Duchatelet in recent years are England international Joe Gomez (Liverpool), Ademola Lookman (Everton), Ezri Konsa (Brentford) and Morgan Fox (Sheffield Wednesday). England World Cup goalkeeper Nick Pope is another young player who was quickly sold on from The Valley.

CARD recently called on fans to boycott The Valley until Duchatelet sells the club and remains committed to exposing and embarrassing his regime, which has been without a chief executive since December and without a chief finance officer since February. The club has no chairman, no functioning board of directors and Duchatelet has not seen the team play live in this country since October 2014.

Notes for editors: This story published by The Independent last week gives the background to some of the cutbacks at Charlton: Charlton Athletic: From Premier League perennial to rationing food and water.

Labelling on the bottles is brilliant, top marks