Monthly Archives for November 2016

Charlton United

Perhaps it’s because I’m a sensitive soul but the absolute worst outcome from our mad owner and his useless sidekick has been the degree of division it has caused amongst the fanbase. If I had to choose  one outcome between continuing the protests or stopping so that the fans come together as one tribe again (as we should )I would choose the one tribe option every time.

Social media is horrible in the degree to which Charlton supporters are prepared to abuse each other. It’s a complete nonsense- heaven knows there are few enough of us without continually upsetting each other.

I am a supporter of CARD and I applaud the efforts of all those who have contributed.

However, I think we should stop protesting for a while, let Robinson get on with it. Unless Meire or Duchatelet do something stupid (which admittedly is highly likely)- we should all concentrate on trying to get promoted. We can only hope that our network of twenty year old Belgian scouts who watch games on tv in their pants have already identified 3 new midfielders for the January window. It’s a very poor division and it wouldn’t take much to go up this year.

My wish for Christmas would be for Charlton fans to be united again.

Heres to you Mr Robinson

Welcome to Karl Robinson. Karl has signed up to work for the maddest owner in English football and the most incompetent CEO.

He is the 8th or 9th manager to sign up to work for the deadly duo in the last 3 years. If you totalled up the various contract lengths of his predecessors, it would have taken us well beyond Roland’s 85th birthday,so perhaps he decided he couldn’t wait that long.  Karl was out of work so you can’t blame him for wanting to get paid again. His record at MK Dons was reasonable and he speaks knowledgeably about the game, so let us all hope that he is successful and above all lucky.

History would suggest that by the start of next season we will be welcoming Charlton’s next and 10th manager.

Karl will get some breathing space from the fans and the atmosphere at Charlton will lift if the excellent recent mini revival continues.

However,there will be no real improvement or proper change at the club until the CEO and owner do the honourable and decent thing and recognise that the Charlton community do not want either of them – and ultimately these people have borrowed the club, it is the community who own the club, not them. The day that either and preferably both of them leave will be a cause for great celebration.

Meanwhile, we all wish Karl the very best of luck.

A nice day at the football

Pre match in xbars was a competition to see which one of us was the most depressed and disinterested. A feeling not helped by the removal of 1664 from the lager tap ( the only one that has any taste). No pies any longer at the food stall, the whole place limps in increasing decline. All activities at Charlton are now outsourced to Roland’s new sponsor ” Death by a thousand cuts”

Anyway, it was nice to see my mates and my son also joined us for a rare father son bonding experience. The football, played in front of a crowd slightly larger than the queue for sausage rolls at Greggs , was really rather good , exciting if you please.

We played some nice stuff, 2 great assists from Morgan Fox , a fabulous header from Magennis and a decent finish from Nicky Ajose. It was all rather fun. The second half was not so good as we did what we often do and retreated 10 yards , surrendered the midfield and watched the opposition play- just like Rochdale, Oldham etc , etc.

Anyway we won which was great and made for a lovely Saturday night afterglow and nice if blowy drive home to rainy Surrey. I felt pretty chilled because the entire row in front of us in the East Stand who normally provide a human shield was empty- as was the row behind us except my son- providing the effect of a Siberian wind tunnel sandwich.

More unintended consequences of Rolands loonies may be the necessity to invest in some thermal undewear to keep my Crown Jewels at the right temperature.

Any non readers of the Sunday Times would have missed Rod Liddle’s descriptions of the Charlton Regime today – ” the club show every indication of being administered by the inmates of a mental institution” – spot on Rod

Charlton under Duchatelet & Meire heading for Non League Football

Some people will think I have gone mad , but the guys (and there were a lot) who backed us for relegation this season will be smirking. We are in perfect storm territory again.

The team is underperforming woefully with no midfield and has just lost two of its three best players to injury. We have no manager because our (completely and utterly mad) owner sacked him because he was upset that his birthday lunch was spoiled by disaffected fans. Any manager that arrives will be inhibited by existing long term contracts for poor or disaffected players and will struggle because of budgetary restraints and an array of weird and wonderful network scouts from  getting decent replacements. Its just like the last Championship season all over again , except we are 3 points off the automatic relegation places in the 3rd division. It is highly likely that the club will exacerbate the position in January by selling Lookman and replacing him with a plethora of lightweight unfit or useless loan players.

Lets hope I am wrong but consider that the unthinkable but highly likely happens and the Belgians lead us into the 4th division for the first time in our 110 year history.  Next year we have a complete defensive unit who will need to be changed because they will either return to home clubs (Rudd , Ulvestadt and Botaka) or they will consider that League 2 is below them – Solly, Fox, Bauer, Pearce , Konza, Texeira, then the midfield & forwards  are either too old – Jackson, Foley, Crofts, Novak – or too good , (Holmes & Magennis)

So next year we need a completely new team plus some of the under 23’s and we know how the cycle works then – we are all ( those few of us who are left) excited in the early season days of Division 4 that we are playing nice football and getting some results – but the squad ( a Top 6 budget hamstrung by the highly paid ones from last year that none wants) is very thin and we run out of legs by December 17 and the team goes on a bad run( like this year , last year and the year before) . Attendances slip to under 3,000 and 2 sides of the ground are mothballed.

Clueless Katrien and Mad Roland decide to sack the underperforming manager and install a new manager who struggles to motivate a ragbag group of kids and old professionals and by March 2018 we slip into the automatic relegation places for the Conference.

All this might seem a little far fetched , but it isn’t. I went to Woking last year when they played Tranmere and I stood with the Tranmere fans, one of whom talked me through their rapid descent from League 1 play offs and Carling Cup Semi Finals to Non League.

It is all entirely plausible and the Tranmere fans were actually quite complimentary about their owners. Whereas we have a CEO whose most insightful football comment during her tenure has been expressing her disappointment about Diego Poyet cutting his hair whilst our geriatric owner continually reasserts that frankly its such a small part of his empire he really couldn’t care less – oh and by the way- I’m really pissed off that those irritating Charlton fans spoiled my birthday lunch so I’m going to sack their English manager – that will show them whose club it is ……..

You really couldn’t imagine these things happening could you ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wanted: Eighth Football Manager to work for mad geriatric & useless incompetent

When Russell Slade was appointed in June I posted this…………

Russell Slade will be surely confirmed as the next Charlton manager to be sacked next week.

Russell’s role will involve interacting with the maddest geriatric owner in the football league, the most incompetent, inexperienced and clueless Chief Executive in the football league, an unbalanced squad totally unsuited to the challenge of the 3rd Division and a completely disheartened, disillusioned and rapidly declining fanbase.

Welcome to Charlton, Russell.

Anyway, now that Russell’s sacking has been confirmed, the next manager to be sacked will inherit the maddest geriatric owner in the football league, the most incompetent, inexperienced and clueless Chief Executive in the football league, an unbalanced squad totally unsuited , …………………………….and so it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Until there is nothing left

Charlton midfield stuck in treacle

Another shockingly awful performance today from the Addicks. Playing against another very poor side, yet again we made the opposition look like title contenders – just like we did against Rochdale and Oldham to name only two.

Obviously we were damaged by the loss of our 3 best players, Magennis , Lookman and Holmes, but our ageing midfield of Foley, Crofts and Jackson looked like they were running in treacle. There is no pace , invention, creativity or energy in the midfield. Ulvestadt shows promise but he can’t do it on his own. The rest of the team, particularly Ajose and Novak just look disinterested.

Johnny Goddard who I watched at Woking ( yes Woking) last year ran the game and showed what we are lacking in our team. Its not complicated, but unless they sort this out in the January window, our slide down the table will continue.

 

Why is Katrien Meire still CEO at Charlton ?

I think I differ from some supporters in that I’m really not that bothered if a very strange old man from Belgium wants to waste £5-7m of his money every year funding an institution that he never visits,  has no understanding about , affinity or connection with. Granted, its an unbelievably weird thing for any vaguely sane person to do.

What I really don’t understand is why any successful entrepreneur would appoint Katrien Meire to run the club when she had no experience of running a football club, no experience of running a business and no understanding of football. In his place, if I had been sifting suitable cv’s, Ms Meire’s would have gone straight to the bottom of the reject pile.

As if to reinforce and compound this glaring lack of credentials, she has gone onto wreck the club, halving revenues, signed innumerable unsuitable players on long term contracts ,driven away corporate sponsors and countless numbers of the club’s loyal customers and destroyed business value.In any normal business, the CEO would have either resigned or been fired given the abject failure.

You really have to ask why she was appointed in the first place and indeed why is she still employed ? It is difficult to escape the conclusion that it was not a rational business decision and continues to be influenced by some other personal agenda, which we can only speculate about.