If we could turn back time

Mega wealthy Belgian businessman, Roland Duchatelet arrives at The Valley in January 2014 . His first action is to spend several hours discussing football and what resources are needed to drive Charlton back up the league, given that the club, although bottom of the Championship, having played all season on an unsuitable quagmire pitch are in the Quarter Finals of the FA Cup with 4 games in hand.

After the meeting with ex England international and successful,experienced manager, Powell, he immediately extends the contracts of Charlton’s best players, Kermogant , Stephens,Morrison, Solly and Hamer and rehires Peter Varney, the experienced and successful previous CEO to drive the club forward. At the same time, he commits to invest in a new pitch and a complete renovation of the clubs Sparrows Lane Training facility.

Duchatelet comments that with the nucleus of an excellent team already in place together with the talented youngsters coming through, Harriot, Cousins, Poyet and Gomez, further sensible investment in the team of around £10m should see the club challenging for promotion to the Premier League within 2 seasons.

In Season 2014/15, Charlton are promoted back to the Premier League led by Captain Kermogant and Duchatelet  reaps the reward of £100-£150million in TV revenues per annum. Capacity crowds of 27,000 fill the Valley every week and Duchatelet authorises Peter Varney to progress the extension of the ground to a capacity of 35,000.

It wasn’t really very difficult was it ?

It would have been much cheaper than losing £8m a year for a decade which will be his outcome.

Charlton make Oldham look like Barcelona

Charlton were completely outplayed last night by Oldham who really should have won by 2 or 3 clear goals. No disrespect is meant to Oldham, but I suspect at the end of the season they will still be near the relegation zone. That doesn’t augur well for us , does it ? For the last 20 minutes last night, Oldham had all the possession, pinned us back in our half and created numerous chances.

Comparisons between seasons and teams is always very difficult, but I am struggling to recall a worse Charlton team in the last 50 years. It is true that we have some talented players. Last night, for example young Konza demonstrated why he and Lookman will both will be leaving soon.

Bauer , Holmes & Magennis look OK. The biggest problem that anyone can see is that the central midfield of Jackson, Crofts, Foley , Ulvestadt is completely lacking in creativity, power, pace and energy. Lookman excepted , the goal threat up top is also almost non existent.

So with no goals from midfield, not much of a goal threat up front, virtually no link up play, we resort to kicking it long to the big man who has no support.

I don’t know who is responsible for this mess. I like Slade, he seems to be honest and straightforward and at least he doesn’t speak in riddles like Luzon/Riga/Fraeye. I hope that he stays and turns it around, but with the midfield playing staff currently available to him , it seems unlikely. The club knew that we were going to lose Cousins and Gudmundson and in the event we also lost Diarra and Harriot. Kashi is injured and Ba is out of favour which means that our midfield picks itself with 3 or 4 guys , none of whom will be playing for us next season.

Since we cannot get players in until January, it looks like a very bleak Autumn is in store unless a Regan Charles Cook or someone else from the Under 23s steps up like Poyet did a couple of years ago.

Target 20k a big success

There can be no doubt that having achieved season ticket sales of c6,500 this year that Target 20k has pretty much achieved its goal of having lost, alienated and disaffected around 20,000 fans

As we speak , Katrien and her fabled SMT team are working closely with a tiny quisling band of helpers to see if they can target 25k next year so that we will only have c 1,500 season ticket holders .The signs are promising.

Honestly, I guess there must be some members of this target 20k focus group who actually think they are doing something useful by collaborating with the ownership, but it is not helpful at all. The owner couldn’t care less , the CEO can’t tie her own shoelaces without help, the meetings are subject to some kind of ridiculous masonic level of secrecy  – the club cannot progress in any shape or form until the owner and his useless bunch of puppets and sycophants are gone.

Any kind of support to the current regime is pointless and misguided.

We will only make progress when we are rid of them.