Feature on us in the Guardian, with quotes from a couple of Lifers and a dodgy new name for the Fans Forum
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/mar/18/charlton-athletic-relegation-championship-football
Bright lights are fading fast in The Valley of gloom
Charlton Athletic were once hailed as the 'perfect' little Premier League club – then they over-achieved
When Alan Curbishley was asked recently to reflect on the fall of Charlton Athletic, he could only suppress a shudder and offer pained disbelief at a plummet from top flight to the brink of the third tier. "In 2½ years, they've gone from a mid-table Premier League side to a team bottom of the Championship," he said. "So many people put such a lot of effort into getting the club where they were. I find it quite difficult to understand what has happened."
Those supporters who have witnessed the descent at first hand have stopped trying to comprehend. There is a sense of resignation at The Valley these days, an acceptance that their team, now 14 points adrift of safety at the foot of the table, are destined for League One after 28 years in the top two divisions. Their seven-year spell in the Premier League, which ended two years ago, already feels like a distant memory after only two wins in their last 28 league games. The talk is of calls for unity, and of a return to the spirit that saw this club reborn in the 1990s. Yet the end of the current campaign cannot come soon enough.
Charlton's tale will ring horribly familiar at Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday, even Leeds United. This is a club that finished seventh among the elite as recently as 2004, and enjoyed comfortable mid-table placings in the two subsequent years. Then came unfamiliar managerial upheaval, an ambitious and poorly executed challenge for Europe, and a departure from their comfort zone. The combination of mistakes – many of which are privately acknowledged in retrospect – at managerial and board levels has contrived to condemn a club long held up as a role model to the lower reaches. "Everyone involved has to take some responsibility," said the midfielder Matt Holland. "We have to look at it and admit we haven't been good enough."
The players are not alone in having proved inadequate. What makes this club's recent toils all the more mystifying is the reality that, in terms of infrastructure, they boast so much in their favour.The club owns The Valley, an impressive 26,500-seater stadium geographically close to the 2012 Olympics site, and their 37-acre training ground in New Eltham. They are not under pressure from major creditors with their debts largely defined as "friendly" and taking the form of loans from directors. Some £6m is owed to the construction firm Lombard, who undertook the extension of the stadium, but the annual payments of about £1m are manageable. Suggestions that Charlton are on the verge of administration have been dismissed by the football club chairman, Richard Murray. Indeed, so attractive are the Addicks off the pitch that the Dubai-based investment firm Zabeel were within 24 hours of a takeover deal last October only for the credit crunch to flatten their interest at the last minute. That, in itself, proved horribly unsettling. The board have instructed Rothschild & Co to continue that search for potential new owners but, at first glance, this club would offer more as an investment than many others currently up for sale.
"The irony is that it's only on the field where we have a problem," said Dave Rudd, a representative of the Charlton Fans Forum (Caff) who met Murray and the plc chairman, Derek Chappell, last month. "Look at the set-up. It's in marvellous shape. As an investment, we are extremely attractive. Sadly, the only piece of the jigsaw we don't have is the one everybody sees on a weekly basis." The slump on the pitch can be charted from the latter days of Curbishley's 15-year reign. There were only five wins in his last 20 league games in charge and, aware that the manager would not be renewing his contract, the club had tried to plan for life after Curbishley. The idea put forward by the then chief executive, Peter Varney, and Murray was designed to build on the platform laid down by years of stability to reflect the growth in expectation. Yet the reality was that they had relied too long on their manager's nous in the market and, perhaps, his nous in the market and, perhaps, his recognition of what could be deemed realistic ambitions.
"People were actually moaning at the time that we 'only' finished in mid-table," said the former Charlton midfielder Danny Murphy. "It's only now that people realise how much of an achievement that was."
The board had become unaccustomed to choosing new management. Iain Dowie offered charisma and flamboyance, interviewing impressively and infuriating local rivals Crystal Palace with his defection, and the board believed they had recruited a successor capable of delivering Europe, the clamor for which had been growing steadily among a support that had swelled to fill the stadium. Some £11m was spent on players, signings earmarked by Dowie and secured by the newly-appointed General Manager – Football, Andrew Mills. The squad's cumulative salary did not actually rise markedly in the summer of 2006 – Deloitte's annual report into football finance that year revealed a wage bill of £34,297,000, up by £75,000 – but, tellingly, wages accounted for 95% of turnover, the second highest ratio in the top flight. Most of those contracts carried over into the Championship.
With relegation not an option, the sloppy start to Dowie's reign sent shockwaves through the boardroom. The management structure that had been carefully mapped out was jettisoned after 12 league games, with Les Reed lasting only 40 days in the job as his successor. Patience gave way to panic. This was unfamiliar upheaval, a succession of knee-jerk reactions as the fear gripped that the security of top-flight status was in jeopardy. There was a desperation in the return to a more traditional framework with the recruitment of Alan Pardew, – a popular choice among the fans – though the "impact manager" ultimately could not arrest the decline. Even so, the quality that remained in their squad suggested last season could provide an immediate return to the elite, only for players and staff alike to fail utterly to adjust to life outside the Premier League. A tally of three wins in their last 15 games wrecked those hopes, though even that return contrasts favourably with the ineptitude of this term.
Phil Parkinson was appointed caretaker in succession to Pardew in November with Chappell stating that he would be "judged on results". The temporary manager did not win any of his first eight games – part of a club-record 18-match winless league sequence – before being handed the job full-time. His body language at Molineux on Saturday, despite the bullish rhetoric, betrayed an increasingly hopeless position at the foot with a sense of instability persisting. Off the pitch, the dynamics of the boardroom had shifted with Varney's departure. On it, Charlton have used 36 players, including 11 loanees. Burnley, currently in a play-off position, have relied on 23. A number of the Addicks' higher earners – Holland, Darren Ambrose, Zheng Zhi, Nicky Weaver – are out of contract in the summer and will move on. The board's desperation to return to the stability of old is likely to see Parkinson retained to be offered the opportunity to mount a promotion challenge next year.
It is a cycle of chaos and calamity to leave the locals pining for the safety of the Curbishley era. "We were put on a pedestal as the 'perfect football club', but this is what happens to small clubs who over-achieve in the Premier League," said Sacha Zarb of the Caff. "One bad season and it can take five to 10 years to recover. Mentally, I'm already prepared for life in League One, but people should always remember that Charlton have come back from far, far worse than this." The homeless days of 1985-92 should offer context even to current miseries. Come the end of May, the recovery must commence.
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Comments
"It is a cycle of chaos and calamity to leave the locals pining for the safety of the Curbishley era." That rather got to me.
I hope you are right, Bing. Good point about the fans and good to see the Fans' Forum getting itself mentioned.
I bet Sacha was happy being quoted in the Guardian : - )
;-)
22 points from 20 games ... what a mare!!
And fair play to Dominic who wrote the piece, he additted the piece was about explaining to the wider footballing world, rather then something indepth.
I should have said 'overreach' rather then overachieve.
A few expected both.
I wanted both, still do, but didn't see either as something we had a automatic right to expect.
There's not much to disagree with, is there? Pains me to admit that anything Danny Murphy says is worth listening to, but even his quote is largely true.
''Cycle of chaos and calamity'' - I physically winced when I read that because it hit the nerve...
Then when you've finished reading and the the article has had time to sink in, you start to get angry thinking about the various points at which the cycle of calamity could have been broken if a dfferent course had been followed...
See this is the point i'm at at the moment Nigel. We need to all try and make a conscious effort not to keep revisiting the past because there is zero we can do about it now, and all it does is spread feelings of anger, disappointment and reluctance.
We need to draw a line under this all this summer and come back a fresh beast, almost a new club, in August.
With that in mind, i am at present seriously reconsidering my stance that i'm prepared to give Parkinson a bit of time to rebuild.
Makes a very nice change to see someone's who's actually bothered to do their research and look at what happened in the last season under Curbs rather than spout the usual ignorant armchair fan's line - Curbs left and it went downhill...
What Richard hunt said on the FF forum a few days ago
"Not often I agree with Henry but i would like to echo his words of praise for the Fans Forum. It doesn't change anything about our descent into oblivion, yet I am glad this exercise went through, and am somewhat reassured by feedback - more on the financial side than on the managerial side, where I'm not convinced by the answers."
Seems he wanted the journo to talk to some fans who did stuff in 1990 but who now live in Prague rather than the Fans Forum who had a meeting with the board this month.
We need to draw a line under this all this summer and come back a fresh beast, almost a new club, in August.
With that in mind, i am at present seriously reconsidering my stance that i'm prepared to give Parkinson a bit of time to rebuild.''
I agree about givng Parkinson time to rebuild and think he can realistically target the play-offs next season, at the very least - but only if the correct lessons are learned.
That's why I can't agree with your suggestion of closing the book yet on what has happened. The board and management need to sit down at the end of the season and spend as much time as it takes on a serious post-mortem on the last two seasons. It's only when they have systematcally worked out why we never, ever came to terms with the demands of championship football over two seasons that they can even begin to devise a strategy for recovery.
Not only more detail but he wanted it to be his agenda as well.
As you say we need to draw a line under this whole sorry episode that is the last two seasons and move on. The problem is if Parky remains we won't be able to do that. It is going to take a hell of a lot for him to win some of us over, can we afford to give him that chance. I'd rather a line was drawn and a new man appointed who can take us forward with renewed optimism and hope. If Parky remains I will go into next season with trepedation and I don't want that. I want to go through the close season looking forward to a (hopefully) promotion campaign with my passion revitalised not dreading what is coming next. Is that fair on Parky ? Maybe not, his hands have been tied, we have seen some improvement but equally we have not seen improved results or any new ideas.
Agree with you 100% re Murphy.