Andy Scott talking nonsense

https://www.charltonafc.com/news/andy-scott-reflects-transfer-window

Andy Scott seems like a knowledgeable, articulate nice guy but in this interview he talks a fair bit of nonsense.

So we got rid of lots of fringe players who weren’t playing or good enough – no argument with that, its sensible.

Apparently, we “improved”the squad with Bonne ( maybe) Penney ( not on the basis of his debut), Todd Kane ( injured on debut), Michael Hector ( 8 games played in the last 2.5 years) and Gavin Kilkenny ( 18 games in the last 2 seasons). If Kilkenny or Hector are fit enough to play, then maybe they will be an improvement.

But basically, we spent no money, reduced the wage bill significantly and probably haven’t improved the team.

If Ness, Inniss, Leaburn or Bonne get injured in the 2nd half of the season, there is no cover now and we will be in big trouble.

We limp along from one crap owner to the next with potentially yet another waiting in the wings. The team will need very heavy invesment in the summer and history suggests it won’t happen and we will remain disappointed and marooned in Div 3 or worse ……….. HELP !!!

Charlton won’t cost cut their way to success

On the positive side, I don’t think any of the players that left yesterday would be players who could get us promoted out of this division. I include O’Connell in that who we acquired from a relegated Rochdale and is a bit slow and not dominant in the air.

The obvious problem is that firstly we have to accumulate enough points to actually stay in this division, which has just become more challenging, given that any injury now to Inniss or Ness, Leaburn or Bonne will be catastrophic.

Over the years I have run bigger businesses than Sandgaard and maybe someone needs to tell him or indeed whoever he is trying to clear the decks to sell to that you don’t cost cut your way to success.

If this is genuinely a clear out and prelude to a summer of player and club investment ( The Valley is generally falling apart), then they need to tell us that, although Sandgaard has told us so many lies it will be difficult to believe anything he says.

Andy Scott for one should be hanging his head in embarrassment this morning having claimed that he had money to spend in the window and we spent nothing. I like Dean Holden, he has stopped the tippy tappy nonsense of Garner and plays 2 up front, but I hope he doesn’t come out and feel like he has to lie to us today to truly join the Charlton management team.

Does anyone know what is going on at Charlton ?

What is it about football clubs and particularly Charlton that the people who actually matter, for whom the club exists and was originally formed for. ie the paying customers or fans as they are traditionally known , have absolutely no sensible information about their football club’s ownership or future.

It is scandalous and wrong.

Is Thomas Sandgaard selling the club or not ? Charlie Methven, who has a reputation in business and football clubs as an aggressive bully says he isn’t buying the club and hasn’t got any money but has appeared at every game for the last 2 months.Who on earth is he representing ? Have they got any money,- why buy Charlton when it’s a money pit – maybe it’s a property play, but Roland owns all the property so that would be very long term and probably impossible.

The club is selling or giving away a lot of the senior players, JFC, Gilbey, Stockley, Kirk, Macgillivray and replacing them with a few short term loans. Andy Scott was supposedly on a 6 week contract to get us players, presumably his main job was to get rid rather than acquire, is he even still in the building ? As an aside Fleetwood have now acquired a decent strike pairing for this division with Stockley and Marriott- how can they afford that on crowds of 3,000. Its a mystery.

Why is the whole situation so opaque. Thomas and whoever, you might own the football club’s shares but all of you are just temporary, we are the real owners- the fans and we want to know what is going on NOW !!!!

Being a Charlton fan

Wasn’t last night just fantastic ? Its really special when we get a gathering like that together. It makes you proud and its tribal and awe inspiring.

Our end was a wall of noise from start to finish. How many rounds of Valley Floyd Road is it possible to sing in 90 minutes- plenty is the answer. I absolutely loved it and if you were there, I’m sure you did too. What we need is more nights like that. Who knows what is going on with the ownership and potential transfers but the support is there if we can improve the performances on the pitch.

I thought we played really well particularly in the 2nd half and had enough chances to get an equaliser before the 90th minute.

Dean Holden has steadied the ship and he is playing the right formation with the players he has available. Getting the ball forward quicker makes a big difference.

We need to protect The Valley

No one seems to know what exactly is going on with the ‘takeover’ bid at Charlton. However we do know that Charlie Methven and his team have signed an exclusivity clause with Sandgaard to get a deal done. This doesnt mean they will get a deal done but probably gives them until the end of Jan to complete the transaction. We know that Duchatelet wont accept anything less than £50m for The Valley and Sparrows Lane so you can be pretty sure that Methven & Co are not going to buy those.

Most of the potential buyers of Charlton including Southall before and probably Methven & Co now see it as a property play in some way to make money. Maybe they think we could ground share or build a smaller ground somewhere else. Maybe they want to plough lots of money in to get us into the Premier League – BUT I THINK THAT OPTION IS VERY UNLIKELY.

Even if a richer ‘white knight’ like Andrew Barclay arrives and acquires the Valley, when he gets fed up, he would pull the same property card as Glikstein and Duchatelet have before him.

The news this week that Rishi Sunak has signed off on the new Football Regulator role, one of whose principal jobs is to safeguard the stadia for clubs presents a fantastic new opportunity for us to lobby to render The Valley in particular of no value for development for 100 years or in perpetuity if you prefer. How this is done whether through strengthening of existing Community Value Asset rules or new legislation doesn’t matter, but until we resolve this ground separated from club issue, the future of our club will always be under threat.

We aren’t the only club where this presents a problem and it will be a populist policy to safeguard stadia in our national sport. It has the added advantage of buggering up Duchatelet and other potential scavengers and would be property developers all around the UK

This should become a Lobbying issue for CAST and all of us. Now is the time.

Is Dean Holden an idiot ?

What on earth was that starting line up ? The minute I saw the line up, I posted on Charlton Life that it was the worst I’d ever seen. The result was a forgone conclusion. I could have saved Sandgaard 2 managers salaries this season. Firstly Garner insisted on playing tippy tappy football playing across the back 4 without having the talent to do it successfully. He also played Stockley up front on his own while he waited for the ball to appear which it never did.

Now we have a bloke who realises you have to play 2 up front but plays Kanu who is not ready and Stockley who is presumably leaving and disillusioned. In the middle he plays Henry who is not good enough or not ready yet. Chin is not good enough or not ready yet. Lavelle is not good enough and has to be partnered with someone experienced, ie not Thomas returning from injury or Ness who also may not be good enough or ready yet.. Payne and Henry are not strong enough to support Dobbo.

It’s a shambles and if Holden didn’t realise that before kick off – presumably he does now.

Fantastic night at The Valley

Isn’t football great ? If I’m honest, I’ve been so fed up with Charlton recently that I only went last night because Peter Varney told us to !! What a reward I got, it was a buzzing atmosphere. Only football can take you to the (many) lows and then the highest high. Brighton are obviously a class side and the differential in class was there for all to see, but we found a way to win. Who would have thought that was possible. Wonderful stuff.

The team put in a lung busting shift and great credit must go to Anthony Hayes and Pearcey for the way they set the team up. Hayes has had great success with the younger age teams at Charlton and I think he has every chance of becoming an excellent 1st team manager in time. Obviously tippy tappy football wasnt going to work against this lot so Inniss, Lavelle and Ness defended properly and when necessary launched it into Row Z. Everyone played well but special mention goes to the youngsters. Maynard Brewer who will soon become 1st choice goalie, Ness and Chin , who defended heroically and of course Captain Fantastic, George Dobson.

They need to find a way to translate this to League form and ending tippy tappy, telling the back 4 to clear it quicker and going direct with both Leaburn and Stockley would get my vote. We are in the 3rd division not the Premier League. One sour note was the sight of Aneke limping off with what looked like a hamstring pull.What is it with him ? When the warm ups take place he hardly does a stroke either in the running or passing drills. Only the club will know his full medical issues but if ever there was a case for a static bicycle warm up on the sideline, its him.

I cant claim to be ‘in the know’ on the club’s future but I think there are some grounds for optimism. I understand there are definitely 2 parties interested and that some investment has already been made hence the appointments of Andy Scott and the COO ad CFO. Aopparently, Dean Holden was Sandgaard’s choice but he has a good reputation . Lets hope we get lucky on a new owner ( for a change)

Thomas declares its Panto season at Charlton

Does anyone know what’s really going on ?

On the football side, we appear to have the latest fresh faced managerial victim and Ben Garner lookalike in Dean Holden , i.e young, relatively well regarded and Andy Scott as Director of Football who has done reasonable job at Brentford, Watford and Notts Forest- so nothing inspiring but probably progress given the state we are in.

On the business side we have Jim Rodwell as COO who whilst sporting a very natty barnet appears to have had a pretty chequered career with a variety of short stay appointments, mostly unsuccessful and hated by the fans at Scunthorpe, Boston, Notts County, Peterborough and Sunderland.

Finally, we have a guy called Ed Warrick, who has been appointed CFO even though he has no accounting qualifications and has no experience as a Finance Director ( unless his Linkedin page is wrong) . Ed is a one man business called Applegate Partners, see https://applegarthpartners.com/. So he is effectively a consultant who advises property investors.To cap it all he looks about 12 years old.

Finally, Ed has set up a company with Charlie Methven ( idiot star of Sunderland till I die laughing) called SE7 Partners. This is the same Charlie who Sandgaard has never met but who has been coming to matches recently and suddenly became a Charlton fan having abandoned his lifelong love for Oxford United and more recent love Sunderland.

So who knows what is going on ? Sandgaard has obviously accepted some investment from Methven and whoever is backing him. Methven isnt really wealthy so its somoene else’s money.

If I am a pessimist, I would say that they are all in it to profit from some kind of property deal involving the sale of The Valley, which would mean some kind of agreement has been struck with Duchatelet.

If I’m an optimist, I would say Sandgaard has accepted a limited investment from Methven in order to stay home in Colorado forever now and Methven’s team, ie Rodwell and Warrick’s job is to flip the football club to new owners and make a profit on the deal for all of them.

Only time will tell and in the meantime, despite Peter Varney’s call for a passionate non protesting night tomorrow, if I was Thomas I’d stay in my hotel.

I am a Charlton fan

It’s a bit like admitting you are an alcoholic at one of those meetings. However, I’m never going to be a fan of any other club. It’s tribal, I know I was born with it, as were my kids and their kids too. But its very hard at the moment – as hard as its ever been. We’ve had almost 15 years now of bad decisions and bad owners and Thomas Sandgaard is just the latest.

I don’t doubt his intentions, but he underestimated the scale of financial investment involved and made a succession of bad decisions – and frankly anyone who puts his son and partner ( neither of whom had any experience of either sports management or running UK businesses) to run an English football club is just arrogant and stupid. A continuation of the Sandgaard ownership will see us dropping to the 4th division for the first time in our 117 year history.

I didn’t go on Saturday because I am fed up with watching a very poor team. The club will have recorded my 3 season tickets as part of the 12,000 plus crowd even though none of us went. Ive bought 5 tickets for the Brighton game because Peter Varney made a direct appeal and I trust him and if there is any chance that my support will make a difference I want to help – but I can only persuade my son to come.

I am a Charlton fan and I will always be a Charlton fan but its never been this difficult in my 55 years of going.

I have no idea why clubs like Palace, Watford, Fulham, QPR, Brentford and even Millwall have been luckier with owners but surely we all deserve a break.

Sandgaard is definitely looking for an escape route …maybe this time we will be lucky too !

Don’t tell Thomas your name.. Pike

It seems the one certainty about working for Thomas Sandgaard at Charlton is that you aren’t going to be working for him for very long before you get fired. We’ve had managers galore, Bowyer, Adkins, JJ and now poor Ben. We’ve had Chris Parkes, Ged Roddy, Brian Jokat, Wayne Mumford, Olly Groome, Nathan Chapman, etc, etc the list is almost endless. You just about get introduced at the training ground and before anyone really knows your name you are reading your own compromise agreement. He sacked Rich Cawley before he realised that he didn’t work for the club.

What next ? The job spec is for a manager who plays attractive possession football and scores lots of goals with a squad of players to work with who play a combination of hot potato kamikaze possession football and who forgot to play our striker.

The transfer budget is zilch, the owner is batshit crazy, his son picks the new players from the League 2 free transfer list on his laptop, while the owners partner is experimenting with catapulting hot dogs into the Covered End. What’s not to like ?

I am sure there will be the usual flood of out of work managers declaring undying love for the club and kissing the badge in the folorn hope that they get a decent pay off before the Spanish Archer arrives……..

It’s a shambles yet again……………..Welcome to being a Charlton fan.