Is Gareth Bonkers ?

On the last few England games, I end up shouting at the TV, the current centre half pairing of Maguire and Keane is rubbish

I assume that Gomez is not playing because Matip is keeping him out of the Liverpool 1st team. However, Gomez should be playing alongside someone ( probably Maguire)

Was I mistaken or didn’t Gomez completely wrap up Neymar when England played Brazil at Wembley. This whole nonsense about not playing for your club team has been consistently debunked as cobblers by successions of Wales, N Ireland, Eire teams not to mention most of the other European teams.

Gareth – for heavens sake – pick Joe Gomez NOW

Mont-serrat, -serrat -whatever will be will be, will be …….

”We were going to Wemberlee , mont-serrat, -serrat. ”- All together now you know the chorus

I’ve had a couple of run ins with Montserrat now what with our Lyle’s injury and the fact that I took the family on our first ( and last) boating experience around the island the week its Volcano exploded. We didn’t see the sun because we spent the week covered in ash. I’m really beginning to think the island’s got it in for me.

Now I’m certainly not keen to upset any of my Montserrattian readership ( and certainly not our hero, Lyle) , but am I the only one who kind of feels that our Lyle ought not to be spending his time playing for a country with a population of 5,215 people.

I think if I was Uncle Roland, our much loved, benevolent and slightly quirky owner – I might be asking a few questions of the wisdom and value of Lyle’s jaunts to a lovely part of the Eastern Caribbean

now once again ………..mont-serrat – serrat …………………………..

 

Nothing to moan about ?

When I started this blog 7 years ago, there was plenty to moan about and lots since but I’ve got to admit that as far as I can see on the Charlton front – it all seems to be going swimmingly well. We’ve assembled a good squad of players, the results are impressive, frankly the defending on Saturday was absolutely heroic, the support is constant, loud , passionate and returning.

Generally the people running the club on a day to day basis seem to be very competent. The club’s marketing and comms team and its social media activity is really excellent and has improved immeasurably over the last couple of years- particularly since that idiot Katrien left.

When you compare and contrast with Bolton and Bury, for the first time in a few years, it feels like we are a bit lucky.

That’s not to say that I wouldn’t prefer a more engaged, ambitious and sane owner !

mind you the difficulty in getting a simple cup of tea in the fans lounge after matches – now there’s a topic to get me going again ………………………………………………………….

Roland had a good window ?

I’m conscious that I won’t be popular for this, but anyone who reads my blog will know how consistently critical I have been of Roland. Our relegation and subsequent decline were a direct result of his bad management. Our resurgence has been achieved by Lee Bowyer, JJ and Steve Gallen.

However, I think he had a good transfer window – we signed some excellent players, admittedly mostly on loan and we sold Dijksteel which was disappointing , but apparently sanctioned by the management team, we actually tried to spend the £2m fee on Ivan Toney and the owner rejected a bid of £4.5m for Lyle Taylor.

Give the bloke some credit for these actions – he continues to pay the bills and provided the financial support to be competitive in the league.

We all know his asking price for the club is too high, but if he consistently acted more sensibly as he did in this window and supports Lee in the January window, I for one would give him a bit of a break……………………….. for now !!!

Charlton valuation just too high

Another Talksport interview with Roland – another load of contradictory jibberish from Roland Duchatelet and so it goes on and on and on …………..

A lot of what he says about the EFL is correct and allowing significant annual losses without implementing more sensible Financial Fair Play rules is as he correctly points out a stupid way to run the sport. 

Any ‘asset’ is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. In Roland’s deluded mind, the price of buying the club is a separate issue from the annual running costs. This premise is obviously utter nonsense and would be nonsense in any walk of life or business scenario.

Based on a ridiculous valuation of the physical assets at The Valley and Sparrow Lane, Roland has set a price of £40m, which no sane buyer is prepared to pay because they know that the underlying value of a football club is basically zero since property development is impossible.

If Roland reduces his asking price to nil or even £10m, he would be able to sell the club tomorrow so his argument that he can’t sell the club because of the annual Operating Losses is just wrong, disingenuous and an outright lie.

The problem is and has been for the last 2 years or more is that the price he is asking for the club is far too much.

You won’t beat Solly

Over the last 10 years , I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve shouted that as a term of friendly abuse to opposing wingers.

I remember a Championship away game at Reading where we won 1-0 after a rare headed goal from Vetokele from a superb Solly cross ( think the same shape as the cross against Plymouth away last year). Heaven knows who the Reading winger was that day, but he might as well have not bothered coming out after the warm up such was the imperious and dominant nature of Chris Solly’s defending.

He has been a great servant to the club and an absolute joy to watch. I can’t go today but I bought 2 tickets anyway just to support Chris because it seemed like the right thing to do.

As an aside, I understand that Chris is a big ‘Only Fools and Horses’ fan . We went to see the stage show at the Haymarket last night. If you come from South East London – it just has to be seen. If I’m honest I went with relatively low expectations because transferring a classic TV show to the Stage or Film is notoriously difficult.

However, it really is very good, Paul Whitehouse is an absolute genius ( anyone who has seen his fishing programme with Vic Reeves will agree)

The audience absolutely loved it and so did I – standing ovations all around.

I hope Chris Solly gets his standing ovation today because he thoroughly deserves it.

Thank you Chris.

Billionaire Roland Duchatelet

If I’m honest I don’t know many billionaires, but I knew one a little and I feel like I know Roland a lot. The thing is they are both mean and are going to die enormously rich. It is really difficult to understand why you would choose to leave all your money to your wastrel grandkids who will become lazy and alcohol or drug addicted Now I might be wrong and our aged owner might have pledged his wealth to the Belgian Red Cross upon his demise but I suspect he hasn’t.

Bearing in mind that none of our prospective owners are anywhere near as rich as our existing owner you do wonder why he doesn’t waste £10- £15m of his money every year on Charlton rather than £5-7m – it’s always been rather a mystery to me because he’s so rich the bigger number won’t make a dent either.

If I was a billionaire, I would be thinking about the unbridled joy, pleasure and passion that I gave to the 38,000 individuals at Wembley and I could so easily give to them again rather than comprehensively wrecking the lives of my future generations

Strange isn’t it.