all confirmed by the sun 2day
IAIN DOWIE was sacked by Charlton following a series of astonishing incidents — which included his team getting lost on a run in Newcastle.
Addicks dismissed Dowie for gross misconduct just 15 games into the season, and, after Les Reed’s doomed spell, are now on their third boss in six weeks in Alan Pardew.
SunSport can today reveal some of the reasons why the London club fired Dowie — a move which stunned football and infuriated many fans at The Valley.
Dowie has yet to sue for wrongful dismissal but it is likely he will attempt to bring legal proceedings against a club who remain in deep trouble next to bottom in the Premiership and face Aston Villa this lunchtime.
Other incidents included Dowie involving his brother Bob against the club’s wishes, the manager’s decision to stage a game of cricket during training and, before one away match, he spent the night with his family rather than prepare with the team at their hotel.
But the most bizarre moment of Dowie’s reign was when Charlton’s players were in the North East for their match against Newcastle on October 28.
On the morning of the game, which was a 5.15pm kick-off, Dowie took his players out for a run.
Yet the entire squad got lost and the players — just hours before an important Premier League game — were seen running across a busy dual carriageway, dodging lorries in the process.
One Charlton star, who asked not to be named, said: “It was quite funny at the time but it was hardly good preparation. I was knackered.”
Eventually, the players discovered where they were — but they had wandered so far away from their hotel they had to contact the club kitman who hailed a fleet of taxi cabs to rescue them.
Following Dowie’s controversial arrival from Crystal Palace in the summer, Charlton chairman Richard Murray insisted that his brother Bob should not be involved at any stage.
Murray then hit the roof when he discovered Bob Dowie had been in the dressing room, speaking to the players, ahead of Charlton’s 2-1 defeat at Fulham at October 16.
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Just a few days later, 24 hours before a game against Watford, Dowie skipped training, insisting it would be a good idea for someone else to be in charge.
Afterwards, he joked he had spent the day hanging up pictures in his London flat.
On another day, Dowie decided that the team should miss part of a training session . . . to play a game of cricket.
The player added: “Most of the lads really enjoyed — but it was a bit difficult for the foreign ones.”
Matters came to a head before the visit to Wigan on November 11.
The day before the game, with the team coach travelling to their Lancashire hotel, Dowie asked the coach driver to drop him off near his Bolton home — and the former Northern Ireland international striker was not seen again until three hours before kick-off the next day.
This was a surprise for the players and the club’s directors were both baffled and angry.
Dowie remained in the North West after the 3-2 defeat and then, on the Sunday, the club decided the manager should be relieved of his duties.
The club left themselves open to criticism by informing Dowie of their decision by phone, rather than meeting with him on his return to Charlton.
After the dismissal, Charlton also told Dowie they would not be continuing their financial support in his court case with Simon Jordan.
The Palace chairman is suing for fraudulent misrepresentation, claiming he only released Dowie from his contract after Dowie said he wanted to return home to Bolton.
Charlton last night refused to comment about Dowie and his time at the club.
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Comments
I can imagine Jordan's instructions "make sure you blow his cash on dross like Faye & Hasselbaink......."
Will be interesting to see if the lawsuit still goes ahead!!
I was NEVER in favor of giving him the job for the following reasons, all of which I said to anyone who would listen at the time;
1) No relevant experience in the Premiership.
2) The circumstances were wrong and most un-Charlton like. He HAD said one of his main reasons for leaving Sainsburys was to go back north, so Jordan released him. For him to turn up at our place two days later simply stunk and is not the way Charlton Athletic have ever nor should ever conduct its business.
3) He would not relocate his family from Bolton. This should have been a major red flag to the board that something was not quite right. In the corporate world, which is what football obviously is these days, any major firm would expect you to relocate your family to where you work to ensure a stable home/work balance.
Dowie was having a bet each way by keeping his family in Bolton and Charlton should have had their suspicions raised by his insistence on keeping his family 200 miles from his new job - how long was he planning to stay with us?
4) He already had a very suspect transfer record at Palace and had brought in a lot of crap, including our friend Sorondo, during his time there.
I knew all this beforehand, despite living in bloody Queensland, so why the board did not take this into account I just do not know. Maybe Murray was doing it partly to piss of Jordan, who knows?
I think more likely he was the best of a bad bunch and time was pressing on to find a replacement so they took the risk and it blew up in their faces.
I would LOVE to know which player had been squawking to Charlie Wyett, the club will be furious at the leak because it might prejudice any future court case.
Who's the leaker? My money would be on Marcus Bent because he would probably be the player most badly mistreated by Dowie and probably has more press contacts than most because of his nomadic career.
The Palace fan at work is still banging on about what a great job "Agent Dowie" did on us....
I still go home every year to see five or six games and shall be going back in March to witness our great escape. Here's hoping anyway!
If this was Bolton and Big Sam was involved, it'd be a back-hander! parp!
I'll just be gettin' me coat, shall I?
But I also heard reliably that a lot of the players really liked Dowie.....
Would account for a lot of confusion and a bit of internal turmoil.
But in the end, it's in the past, at least as far as what happens on the pitch for now, and that is probably all that matters at the moment.
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Just on the above point, I am pretty familiar with the UK libel laws via my job and I seriously doubt that The Sun would have run that story without knowing that it was true via a well-placed and double-checked confirmation.
If it was untrue then it is quite clearly MASSIVELY defamatory because it basically accuses Dowie of professional incompetence and misconduct and would seriously jeopardise his chances of ever working again at the top level.
The Sun has made some cock-ups in the past (Elton John, Hillsbrough) but their legal team would have been all over a story like this (knowing that there is a court case in the offing) and they would just not put their balls on the line for such a relatively small story.
There is a leak in the Charlton playing camp, that much is for sure, and it needs to be plugged because it is not doing us any favors.
I don't know why they did not just "leak" it at the time via one of the players and have it over and done with.
The Sun story, which I think is probably 99% true, finally puts the final pieces into place.
I don't think the fans would have been as pissed off with the Reed debacle if they had known the kind of circus that Dowie was running down there.
Hmmmm, don't agree with that. Not sure the board would appreciate having several of their major, multi-million pound assets running across a dual carriageway!!
Well, I know the libel laws too, and it's unlikely Dowie's in a position where he could actually raise a case against the Sun, it being a rich man's tort and all that. They can publish without much risk of being damned.
That said, the story's probably at least half-way there. But it doesn't "confirm" anything - it is probably a leak, but I bet it ain't the full story. It looks like only one side of what could be a very interesting story.
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Erm, I don't think Dowie would have any problem paying the legal fees seeing as we just paid him off to the tune of at least £1 million for the remainder of his contract.
Mate, if someone accuses you of gross professional misconduct and seeks to completely undermine your reputation and future earning capacity in a national newspaper with untrue allegations then that is a stonewall libel case.
Beefy Botham won a case against the Daily Mail in 1991 when they accused him of being unprofessional by turning up to a tour of New Zealand overweight. He claimed that the story was untrue (even though it was clearly true by his massive beer belly) and that it maliciously damaged his professional reputation and the court agreed and he won a tidy sum.
That's why The Sun would have to have been 100% accurate in this story because it was not a "comment" piece saying why they thought he was a crap manager (which would be fine under the "fair comment" legal provisions) but they have actually cited specific events which can be disproved in court.
From Sun online
BOB DOWIE insists people are telling lies about his influence at Charlton while brother Iain was manager.
Dowie has denied claims he went into the dressing room to speak to the players before the Addicks’ defeat at Fulham in October.
He said: “When Iain moved to Charlton, there was a structure that didn’t allow me to join him. That didn’t matter because I had a job as director of football at Crystal Palace.
“I went to the Fulham game but I never went into the dressing room to talk to the players. It is blatant lies.”
However crap the structure was, it did a Bl**dy good job keeping Bob out of the frame!
One Dowie is enough thank you.
"That didn’t matter because I had a job as director of football at Crystal Palace"
Covering his backside me thinks, in case the Tangoman gets his briefs on the case.....