Smaller budget than Accrington ?

Katrien the incompetent, informed this week’s fans forum that we shouldn’t build our hopes up for next season , but we will have a ‘Top 6’ League One budget.
I have listed next seasons opponents here- apart from Sheffield United ,  who else could possibly have a higher budget ???  Wigan are left out because they are back up now , none of the potential promoted teams from Div 2 are ‘big clubs’.

Barnsley, Bradford, Blackpool , Burton, Bury, Chesterfield, Coventry, Doncaster, Fleetwood, Gillingham, Oldham, Millwall, Peterborough, Port Vale, Rochdale, Scunthorpe, Sheffield United, Shrewsbury , Southend , Swindon ,Walsall .

The thought that we will have a lower playing budget than any of these is both scandalous and scary given the regimes track record for selecting unsuitable inexperienced managers and unsuitable inexperienced players.

In a further comical turn to rival the Sex on the pitch denial, it wasn’t us it was the Royal Mail’s fault, Roland didn’t interfere with player selection,  I spoke to 20 candidates in the 30 minutes before we appointed Guy Luzon, Scotland Yard are investigating all our supporters, – clueless Katrien claimed that  Season Ticket sales are ahead of target.

Honestly , you couldn’t make this stuff up- what was the target – 6. ?? . I still have a lot of respect for Richard Murray and I know I’m in a dwindling band – but for heaven’s sake Richard , do the honourable thing , resign and disassociate yourself from these stupid, useless, destructive people . Its just embarrassing being a Charlton fan with this lot in charge. How can you possibly remain as Chairman ?????

 

Roland – a fool and his money

are easily parted as the saying goes. Richard Murray and Katrien Meire confirmed as much when they told the supporters trust that he was having to put in a million pounds a month to fund the club. I think we are supposed to be grateful or impressed – who knows which ?

Roland’s exaggerated losses are as a direct result of his own scouting methods and the ineptitude of his CEO who has exacerbated the problem by handing out lengthy contracts to players who are obviously not up to Championship standard. Together they have created a perfect storm of downward momentum that will prove difficult to stop.

The combined wages of Loic Nego, Polish Pete, Naby Sarr, Tony Watt, Roger Johnson, Christian Ceballos, Simon Makienok, Reza Goochanjhaad, Zak Bergdich, George Tucadean, Igor Vetokele, El hadji ba , must total £50-100k a week , that’s £200-500k of his monthly losses right there .

There are others such as Diego Poyet, Ahmed Kashi , Yaya Sanogo and Suk Young Yun who might have been good enough , but have also contributed virtually nothing to the cause , that’s probably another , £ 100k a month. I don’t think I would be the only supporter who would swop all 16 of those players to have retained Dale Stephens, Yann Kermogant and Michael Morrison.

If you then combine the low quality of his recruiting with the incompetence of his CEO , who has single handedly lost paying customers, paying sponsors , season ticket holders, refreshment sales , alienated and lost staff with additional recruitment costs and redundancy payments, spent money on stupid advertising campaigns and hordes of additional security,  etc, that’s got to have been worth another say £10 -20k a week , so Up to £100k a month , so by my reckoning that’s a combined total of up to £600k a month just because he’s got absolutely no idea what he is doing.

The FA should be announcing an enquiry into Roland’s sanity !

When Roland met Katrien

Luckily we have been able to obtain a transcript of last weeks hotel meeting between Belgian billionaire owner of Charlton ,Roland Duchatelet and his “CEO”, Katrien Meire.

“Oooooooooooohhhhhhhh, aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh, yessssss, yesssss, yesssss, yes, no, no,no,yes,yessssss, ooooooohhhhh, aaarrrgggghhh, yessssssss, no no not yet , yes, yes, now , no no not yet , remember what I told you it will help , ok, ok, now, now , can I , no, no , ooooooohhhhh, aaaarrrggghhhhh, ok, give it to me now , give it to me ,  it’s time , it’s time , aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh, use the name to hold on, the name oooooooohhhhhh, Roly, we only  bought him just to help you with this problem , aaaaarrrgggghhhhh, oooooohhhhhh, a new 5 year contract , ooooooohhhhhh, yessssss, next years skipper , the beating heart of the team next season, a man to depend on at Stanley Accrington , yes, yes, yes, yessssss, aaarrrgghhhhh, oooooohhhhhhh……he’s hard , Haaraaaaard , very hard ………………………………………………………………………..Yes, yes, yes, hard, hard., hard ……………

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

………………………………………Its harder, harder, yes, yes, yessssss

much harder,…….. it’s coming , it’s coming …………………………….Now , now, now , now , now ,…………..yes, yes, yes, TELL ME NOW……..give me the new skipper Roly …………………………………………

…………………………………………

………………………..

…………………………..Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhh

 

RezAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…Gh…OOOOOOOOOOO…chann EEEEEEEEEE………..JHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD..!!!!!!!!”

 

 

Club statement exclusive ” Incompetent CEO vows to carry on “

You will all be delighted to know that Katrien Meire is unable to obtain another job anywhere in the western world and has therefore decided to continue destroying our football club.

Charlton’ s geriatric owner , Roland Duchatelet commented ” I am delighted that Katrien has decided to stay on , CEO at Charlton is the only management position in the UK where incompetence, deceit , poor judgement , 100 % staff turnover and abject failure are the key ingredients and Katrien has got those in spades .

I am looking forward to the challenge of helping Katrien catapult Charlton through Division 3 into Division 4 , something the club has never achieved in its long and illustrious history. If anyone can really turn the club into a complete and total disaster , it’s Katrien. “

The only Voice from the Valley

I received my VOTV in the post this morning and enjoyed an excellent read .Rick Everitt is due an enormous amount of credit for the quality of his magazine .

I guess it helps that I also agree with his opinions on Charlton , although , to be frank , it is difficult to disagree bearing in mind the facts concerning the club’s current and totally avoidable predicament. The articles on football generally and the historical perspective on Charlton are really interesting and informative and underpinned by Rick’s huge depth of knowledge about the club.

It always strikes me as faintly ridiculous that we have someone like Rick and others commenting sensibly and writing eruditely about Charlton , whilst the senior people who get paid to professionally manage the club either don’t speak to the fans at all , or when they do they can’t string a sentence together without saying something stupid , offensive or just wrong.

 

 

The Charlton Vision

In 1998 , When I purchased my 20 year season tickets to help rebuild the North Stand, I bought into a vision for my football club. We had a sensible plan for a 37,ooo seater stadium and the club was brimming with success , belief and determination. 20 years later, even though the demographic suggest that we should be a Top 4 London club , we are about to return to Division 3. It is truly a shambles , a disaster , something for all of us to feel ashamed about.

By the end of 2016, in the Greenwich Peninsula alone there will be another 15,000 homes built with another 30,000 prospective supporters . There will be 7,00o new homes in Woolwich/ Greenwich , there will be 9,500 new homes in Lewisham. The demographic opportunity is enormous – our history – although checkered – is long and full of unfulfilled potential.

The Valley is a natural and historic amphitheatre.

We can be and should be competing on equal terms with Arsenal , Chelsea , Tottenham and West Ham, not the minnows of Crystal Palace , QPR, Watford, Fulham and Millwall. The Valley should be full with 37,000 people every week because that’s the minimum that should be expected . Target 20k is symptomatic of the small minded , unambitious schemes that have characterised Charlton over the last 10 years since our Premiership years.

Give us Vision , Give us Inspiration. Give us Leadership we can respect and admire .

Above all , give us the Passion and Belief that you understand the scale of opportunity at our club.

Give us hope that now as we approach the darkest point, proper visionary ambition will emerge

 

Referee sponsors robbery in West London

We played well today and somehow lost to a poor Rangers side , although the referee managed to allow a blatantly offside goal.

Despite having all our best forwards playing , none of them was capable of scoring a goal , which does not bode well for next season , although I guess , Makienok , Sanogo & Lookman will all be leavers.

Igor has been transformed into a striker who couldn’t hit the proverbial cow’s arse with a banjo . He never seems to have any confidence whenever he gets to a 1 on 1 with the keeper.

For those of you that monitored from afar , we had 5 or 6 really good chances in the second half ( which we totally dominated) and somehow managed to miss all of them. The most composed ball of the day came from Chris Solly to play Cousins through for the goal. We can only hope that somehow the staff at Charlton manage to persuade young Chris to give his knee another year before retiring , although this seems unlikely.

Division 1 beckons again and it generally takes us 3 seasons to get out of that by which time I will be 61 , heavens where did the time go ? .

Its my 30th wedding anniversary this year and we got married in 1986, 2 days before my 29th birthday , on the day we returned to the Premiership – after a 28 year gap .Robert Lee scored in a 1-1 draw with Sheffield Wednesday and we got sneaky score updates all through my wedding day.

Will I ever see Charlton back in the premiership in my lifetime – I bloody hope so , but it seems unlikely.

Roland is 11 years older than me so you wonder how his long term plan works ?

Roland can stay

Steady on , I don’t want too much abuse , to clarify I am a supporter of CARD , but I really don’t mind if Roland carries on paying all the bills.

He is obviously a class 1 idiot in every aspect of running businesses other than the manufacture of semi conductor widgets , but he is still paying for our ‘ entertainment’. He seems totally incapable of appointing anyone of enough competence to do a proper job or even string an articulate sentence together at CEO or COO level ( Katrien and Tony)

We must have the most expensive squad in the history of the club ( certainly since we left the Premiership) . Just think of all the forwards on the payroll , Vitokele, Makienok, Harriott, Watt, Ahearne-Grant, Pigott ,Reza, Lookman, and then the centre halves, Lennon, Roger the relegator, Bauer, Fanni, Texeira, Sarr , Obileye, Diarra – the lists of professionals is endless.

The problem is not the investment , it is in the day to day management of the club , which is abysmal. The principal reason we are going down was the lack of experienced centre halves at the beginning of the season. I know people are blaming Karel Freye , but all he had to choose from as centre half were Bauer ( mostly injured or suspended ) , Roger the relegator , Rhys Williams ( useless) , Nabi Sarr ( useless) and Harry Lennon ( promising but not ready) . Since Jose was able to buy Texiera and Fanni , we have had a platform to work from – lo and behold we start getting points – football isn’t really very complicated –  getting points starts from the back.

In my non Charlton life , I am a Chairman of various businesses and if I was Roland , I would sack both Katrien and Tony . I would appoint a proper sports franchise experienced CEO , ensuring that they were highly literate ( a current big problem) and able to communicate effectively and with empathy towards supporters.

Much as I admire  Jose Riga as a decent bloke , I would also replace him as manager with someone with successful experience of the lower English Leagues. Finally , we need a proper UK based , experienced , Chief Scout.

Roland could easily have a much more successful club by spending the same amount of money , but with the current management team , he has no chance of success.

He needs to swallow his pride , stop hiring flunkies just because he knows them or likes them and act decisively by replacing the existing failing management team NOW

 

Well played Charlton

We capped off a thoroughly entertaining game yesterday with a deserved win and 93rd minute winner in front of the covered end . I played tennis in the morning and won on a tie break in the 3rd set having been 5-2 down in the final set . It was one of those rare days where everything worked out perfectly.

Diarra was magnificent yesterday – you can really see why he has played 44 times for France – the guy is completely different class . If the management team have any brains at all ( which I know we have established that they haven’t ) they should exercise his option for next year now .

Igor made a difference and with Yoyo , Harriot and Lookman also all available for Tuesday and Saturday , we finally have some decent striking options. Reza’s injury is a relief for all of us. He might be able to speak 17 languages and I’m sure he is nice to his mum , but he’s not very good at football.

Rod Fanni and madman Motta , together with Jorge are all playing well and seem committed to the cause.

I know I’m mad but I still think we could get out of it – Rotherham won at Ipswich so why can’t we . QPR aren’t very good and have nothing to play for , Derby are fading fast , Bolton will already be relegated, Leeds are useless and in turmoil , we will sneak a very lucky last minute winner against Brighton , and on the final day of the season , Burnley will already have been promoted.

So that’s it then , I think we will get 21 points out of the next 7 games .

I don’t know what you were all worried about