Aussies need to pull collective finger out

If we are not to suffer another dreadful season in the hell hole which is the English Third Division, the most likely prospective new owners and I’m assuming it’s the Aussies need to pull their finger out and get on with it.

It’s all very well having a 5 year plan, but assuming that this will be year one unless it drags on for another 12 months, then they are currently in the process of writing off the first year as another year of decline, loss of better players, poor performances ,declining attendances and disintegrating revenues.

The current squad, although it contains some talented players is miles away from being strong or deep enough to make a sustained challenge despite Lee Bowyer’s admirable positivity.

as my Aussie friends often say they need to go hard or go home.

By the way , have you ever heard anything so ridiculous as having a victory parade for England for reaching the Semi Final of the World Cup – what is the matter with our politicians ? – We lost for crying out loud , we didn’t win anything. To his credit, Southgate has rejected the idea , perhaps we should make him Prime Minister , at least his judgement appears to be sound. There are no prizes for losing and nor should there be.

 

Charlton Squad far too small for success

Unless Lee Bowyer knows something we don’t – like the EFL are changing the League to 6 ‘a’ side next year, the current squad is far too small to be successful next year.

In fact, if Magennis, Bauer and Vetokele are added to the outgoings with only a further 2 or 3 coming in which is basically what Lee has said, I would suggest that they make it mandatory for spectators to bring your boots.

You can look all around the team for huge gaps , but centre half is just one example – Konsa and Lennon have already gone, it seems Bauer is likely to follow. That leaves us with just Pearce, who by the nature of  the aggressive way he plays ( which we love) will miss half the season through injury and Sarr, who to put it mildly, wouldn’t be everyone’s favourite. Bearing in mind the aerial assaults encountered in Division 3, we are woefully under resourced now.

Lee has said that he’s happier with a smaller squad where everyone plays – well with the current planning, it looks like they will be playing in two positions at once.

There is still enough time to get reinforcements in, but we need 6 or 7 quality players otherwise it will be a Roland groundhog day season again with the team unable to provide consistent performances because of the lack of players. Every season under Duchatelet has been exactly the same in that respect. We never have enough players to be competitive. Last year, all we needed was one decent striker and this year is set to be even more challenging

Meanwhile, back in Dr Evil’s St Trudien hideaway the takeover saga drags on and on and on and on …………………

Roland should be making people happy not miserable

I went to the funeral today of a dear friend in our village who died from cancer far too early at 51 years old. She was an unbelievable force of nature, a remarkable individual who packed more into one lifetime that most of us would in 3 lifetimes. The church was packed because everyone loved her, she was a giver, an inspiration, she gave her time , her commitment, her talents.She organised our community to achieve great things for local charities, clubs and any good cause that you could imagine. After she was diagnosed 3 years ago, she set about raising money for cancer research and raised hundreds of thousands rather than just hundreds. She was quite simply one of the most remarkable human beings anyone could have ever met. She made hundreds of people happy because that’s what she lived to do.

Her beautiful funeral left us all feeling like we should be trying harder to do good things, love each other and leave a legacy that we made others happy.

Which brings me to Roland. All that money and yet creating all that unhappiness and misery for 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people. What a contrast – I’m not trying to be maudlin but given how much supporting our football club and community means to so many people ,he should take a long hard look at himself, get out now and let someone takeover Charlton who might bring back some happiness to our lives.

 

Lee Bowyer duped by Duchatelet

Lee Bowyer became the latest Charlton manager to be lied to by the owner. Yet again for the 4th /5th/6th or is it the 7th managerial appointment, we get a manager who says he has the support of the owner to improve the team.

Lee, mate , he always says that but he never delivers. We played all last season with one forward even though everyone knew that it would be impossible to be successful like that.

The owner has absolutely no intention of providing you with the resources that are needed to get promoted.

Charlton are stuck in a dreadful cycle of destruction. An owner who couldn’t care less and deliberately starves the club, but is so rich that he doesn’t need to sell.

No one – Aussies or whoever, are prepared to pay what he wants because the club isn’t worth the price of a pint and a packet of crisps. It loses £5 million plus every year and in order to make it successful again, it will need annual losses of £10m.

There are prospective owners who are prepared to give it a go , but quite rightly they don’t want to pay the geriatric Belgian much money for the privilege of losing £5 million quid every year. Consequently the club and its supporters are stuck in Groundhog Day.

 

Konsa signs for who ????

It is a fitting epitaph to the reign of our geriatric Belgian owner that we end up selling one of our better prospects to a smaller ( but much better owned and managed) club who have spent most of my lifetime in the 3rd or 4th division. A transaction like this would have been unimaginable for nearly all of the last 50years. Good luck to Ezri- let’s hope he has a great career.

I don’t think he is a huge loss, he isn’t currently  aggressive enough for the centre half position or quick enough for full back. However, he has played some great games in central midfield, notably the league win away at Shrewsbury. He is also very skilful and calm under pressure and is still young and will surely continue to improve.

Rumours continue to abound that a takeover from the Aussies is imminent. Let us hope it is true and we finally get someone ambitious and sensible running the club.

Whilst I remain firmly in the anyone but Roland camp, I would strike a note of caution – if , as has been reported, the Aussie bid is a consortium of a number of individuals who have presumably all signed up to lose a fair amount of money over the next 5 years – I guess we will have to be prepared for a fairly rocky ride. My experience of consortia in any walk of life is that in any group of strong minded individuals conflict over decision making occurs and that is not easy to resolve.

Deal or No Deal

For heavens sake , are we going to get a new owner in time to make a difference to next season or not. If it goes on much longer, we won’t be able to get the players, notably the strikers that we need to mount a promotion challenge.

We all know that Roland’s understanding of how to run a football club wouldn’t fit on a postage stamp and if he hangs on and completes yet another year of deliberate under investment, we will be playing to try and avoid the drop to the 4th tier of English football next year.

I’m really not sure what we’ve done to deserve two bad owners in succession when all of our London rivals, Palace, Watford, Fulham and even Millwall and Brentford have had sensible and ambitious owners. Anyway, let us hope and pray that it is 3rd time lucky.

But it needs to be sorted quickly otherwise next season could see our worst placing in the football pyramid in the last hundred years.

Give Bow the job and we’ll go up next year

I am a massive fan of Lee Bowyer, he is straightforward, honest, passionate, talented but above all he’s Charlton. He was excellent today in his post match interview – a real credit to the club and himself.

It normally takes us 3 years to get out of this division ( the last 2 occasions) and if we add a couple of goalscorers to this squad even if we lose the loan players and Konsa, we will go up next season.

The reason we aren’t going up this year is because we haven’t really got anyone who can score a goal. We’ve now played the last 270 minutes without scoring which probably tells you everything you needed to know. I like big Josh but he probably isn’t good enough and Ajose definitely isn’t. Mavididi and Kaikai have been very disappointing. Letting KHG go on loan to Crawley was a mistake, but at the time we probably didn’t realise it. Novak and Watt were never going to get us anywhere.

The new owners need to make sure we keep Lee & JJ and then building a team around the core of Page, Dijksteel, Pearce, Baeur, JFC, Aribo, Fosu, Clarke and maybe Reeves and Marshall if they pull their fingers out. It would be great if we could keep Amos too. If you add a couple of proper decent goalscorers plus the recall of KHG, then we will definitely get promoted.

From the fans perspective, probably the best thing to come out of staying in the 3rd division is that our idiotic geriatric useless clueless incompetent owner will disappear back to the provincial backwater of Belgium from whence he came.

The best decision in my mind for the new owners whoever they might be would be to retain Lee Bowyer as the manager.

Let us pray for a quick deal now.

Have a lovely summer everyone and thanks for reading my nonsense and particularly those of you who make comments which I greatly appreciate.

Keep the faith , we will be back.