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New Article - Mr Duchatelet: Leicester's success shows why you have failed.

Dear Mr Duchatelet,

It occurred to me today that you might be taking comfort or even refuge in Leicester's success. You may argue that it shows you don't have to spend big to succeed. That is true. Unfortunately if you look beneath the "bonnet" of the two clubs, everything is completely different.

1. Objectives. Clearly neither owner sees their club as primarily a money making venture. Both of you have tried to do things differently. However it is clear that Leicester's owners primarily seek "success" on the pitch, just not at any price, and believe everything else positive flows from that. As far as anyone can tell, you seek to show that it is possible to run football clubs at break-even. As an objective, this has nothing to do with sport, the human pastime your customers and the wider audience are "buying"

2. Both of you have sought to over-achieve compared with the playing budget. Leicester have succeeded. You have failed. We have the third lowest playing budget in the league. We may, if we are lucky, finish in third lowest position. This is logical, is it not? How did Leicester apparently defy logic?

3. They did this by:

- maintaining the excellent tradition of sports science by retaining the team that delivered it; thus producing a team that is fitter and more injury free than their rivals
- they bought players who were not just cheap but fitted and bought into the ethos of the club
- when changing the coach, keeping in place all the background staff which had over-achieved in the previous years

4. By contrast you:

- allowed to leave all the professional backroom staff with any expertise in 'backroom' areas.
- thought on-field overachievement would be provided (only) by the network model
- put the club in the hands of a 29 year old junior lawyer, with no experience of running a company of any kind, no experience of leading a large unit of people, and no experience whatsoever that would allow her to identify excellence in sports science or player recruitment
- have shown contempt for and destroyed the ethos of the club that had previously brought success

5. The two owners' stewardship of the club is markedly different:

- they delegate to qualified management. You micro-manage.
- they maintained and developed the relationship with the Foxes Trust. You shunned all dialogue with organised fan groups
- they were visible around the ground on match days, were snapped in fan selfies. You do not attend matches.
- when they changed the coach, they asked the fans to trust them. When you changed the coach five times, we were told through your emissary that "we just have to accept it"

Furthermore much the same situation can be discerned at all the other clubs you own. Not one of them has exceeded reasonable expectation this season. Fans continue to loudly express their discontent at most of them. If any are delivering any profit to Staprix, this still cannot balance the losses you incur at Charlton.

The rational, business based evidence therefore is that your strategy for success in football is a complete failure, on any normal measure, and without exception. Leicester simply helps to highlight your key mistakes.

The sensible conclusion is that you do not as a businessman possess the necessary skill set to make a success of football. There is no shame in this (in the eyes of your peers) if you move swiftly to acknowledge it. Successful businessmen often fail when moving outside sectors where they have learnt what brings success (ask Richard Branson). Accept it, and sell without doing further damage. You may even redeem yourself if you sell to owners who properly understand the learnings from Leicester.

Comments

  • You can only say he's failed if his aim was/is to do what Leicester has done. If, however, for instance his aim is to create a small feeder club then I'd say he's on track to succeed
  • OK but compared to Blackpool he hasn't failed.




















    Yet.........
  • well said
  • You can only say he's failed if his aim was/is to do what Leicester has done. If, however, for instance his aim is to create a small feeder club then I'd say he's on track to succeed

    They failed because they stated we were aiming to be a Championship club with Premier League ambitions. We are now a League One club with Championship ambitions.
  • You can only say he's failed if his aim was/is to do what Leicester has done. If, however, for instance his aim is to create a small feeder club then I'd say he's on track to succeed

    They failed because they stated we were aiming to be a Championship club with Premier League ambitions. We are now a League One club with Championship ambitions.
    I wish. Aren't we now a L1 club with L2 ambitions?
  • I wonder what inspired you to make such a comparison between Charlton and Leicester.

    ...

    :wink:
  • edited May 2016

    You can only say he's failed if his aim was/is to do what Leicester has done. If, however, for instance his aim is to create a small feeder club then I'd say he's on track to succeed

    They failed because they stated we were aiming to be a Championship club with Premier League ambitions. We are now a League One club with Championship ambitions.
    surely if they said they were 'aiming' to be a championship club with premier league ambitions as you say then doesn't that suggest they we're expecting to be outside the championship ?
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  • You can only say he's failed if his aim was/is to do what Leicester has done. If, however, for instance his aim is to create a small feeder club then I'd say he's on track to succeed

    Really? Which club are we feeding? The only player we fed to another network club is Dmitrovic, and he was fed to us by Ujpest.

    Failure. Every parameter. Everywhere you look.
  • Fiiish said:

    I wonder what inspired you to make such a comparison between Charlton and Leicester.

    ...

    :wink:

    Cold fury. Nothing else.

    I tried to find an EU angle, but try as I might...
    I'm sure the pro Brexiters will make one up... :wink:
  • That's all very well - but Leicester haven't got a pitch side sofa have they !

    And their protests aren't a patch on ours...
  • Could this be released as a Trust statement / open letter @PragueAddick so we can all share it?
  • Could this be released as a Trust statement / open letter @PragueAddick so we can all share it?

    I will ask the others. I expect it can be improved upon.
  • I wouldn't compare us to Leicester - what says more about Duchatelet's failure is that Rotherham and Burton will be a league above us next season!
  • Good article but do you think the idiot is going to read it. The man only listens to the voices in his head ....
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  • edited May 2016

    Fiiish said:

    I wonder what inspired you to make such a comparison between Charlton and Leicester.

    ...

    :wink:

    Cold fury. Nothing else.

    I tried to find an EU angle, but try as I might...
    Duchatelet is Juncker http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10967168/Jean-Claude-Junckers-most-outrageous-political-quotations.html with no belief whatsoever in the will of the people.

    The programme will grind inexorably forward regardless of dissenting Member States 2%, 200 or rather more!

    Found you an EU angle :smile:
  • Following Duchatelet's model, we would have sold Vardy and Mahrez, at the end of August for £5M, each, just to break even

    This is a great point. I dread to think what RD would've done in charge of such rapidly rising assets. Of course you could make the argument that Mahrez was picked up from French 2nd div side Le Harve, a place I forever associated with my French GCSE, and Vardy came from non league, but we get the worst of both worlds. We get the foreign crap that should stay in whatever local league it came from, and anything we do unearth is quickly sold on.

  • Fiiish said:

    I wonder what inspired you to make such a comparison between Charlton and Leicester.

    ...

    :wink:

    Cold fury. Nothing else.

    I tried to find an EU angle, but try as I might...
    Easy. Leicester will play for the first time in the Europa Champions League next season and we will compete in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy, once again.
  • @PragueAddick - What an excellent summary of what is wrong at cafc. That backroom and infrastructure is an absolute shambles. It needs full scale ripping out and replacing before we even begin to pull in the right direction.

    Next season we could add a good player here or there, even potentially a talented young British coach - but without root and branch changes it would just be built on a foundation of fermenting cow pats.
  • Fermenting cow pats? I dream of foundations of fermenting cow pats.

    We are talking here a proper large industrial cow farm slurry pit as a foundation, one which the environment agency (or FA) should have banned well before it took on its current huge size, detriment to the locals and a huge negative impact on the environment generally.
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