Whatever our circumstances, whoevers in charge, whos playing for us, our transfer budget I cannot see us having a serious challenge for promotion in the next few seasons.
A bit off topic but I willI start with Pardew, he was rubbish had a disastrous reign as manager and we all think he is a wanker etc, but to be fair to the man, rightly or wrongly he has recoverd very well in hes career since. My point is even though we are all aware of this, it highlights the fact that we have had people coming and going out of this club in recent years that all seem to be better off and more successful somewhere else.
Ambrose
Thomas
Varney
Lisbie
Iwelumo
The list goes on I may have missed a few there...
(The short version of this last bit as my laptop went backwards)
For reasons I dont think many could explain we dont get the best out of people at our club.
Normally id put this down to three things:
1. lack of motivation
2. Poor coaching
3. bad morale/personal problems/no affection for the club or bad rapoar with the fans
I dont know what it is with Charlton at the moment. Just been all downhill since Curbs left...strange
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Unfortunately the way things are at the moment its hard not to write the season off, but that won't stop me coming. I have ordered my ticket and purchased my new shirt, and I have great expectations for next season. I have to say though that if I don't at least see a squad who want to play for the shirt, I think we could have real problems. Loyalty needs to be recognised.
The owners will sell up within 2 years if we dont get out of this league.
What is the answer?
I don't buy the idea that it has anything to do with the expectation of the fans - all clubs' fans have high expectations surely?
This.
As far as I am concerned, this season is over for us. It's just a matter of going through the motions for the remaining games (which shouldn't be too hard for them as that's all they've done so far this season).
I really hope that Slater & Co stump up some cash in the summer for Powell to re-build this team into real challengers next season.
The answer is pretty simple: we need better players, and players who can play together in a system Powell wants to play. We don't have that at the moment. Let's hope we can build it during the summer.
I guess that's a loaded question, because the next one is surely - do we have that sort of money ?
And that would be on top of the 3 to 4 million the club is losing per season in L1.
Hopefully we can retain a few of the current players, so won't need 20 new ones?
I also think this 3 to 4 million a year is overstated
Ambrose - improved after being given a more central role behind the strikers at Palace - also now takes all the set pieces whereas Murphy and Reid were always taking the set pieces at Charlton so he wasn't able to demonstrate his skill at these. Also the one time he did play behind the front 2 for us he had a blinder against Ipswich but then reverted to the wing where he was ineffective
Thomas - was good but inconsistent in Prem but crap in Championship - has improved at WBA after a disastrous spell at Pompey
Varney - I thought he played well for us but was going through a poor spell in front of goal at the time we sold him - did nothing at Derby but scored early on at Blackpool and got his confidence back
Lisbie - only ever played for us in Prem where he clearly wasn't good enough however most of us would have admitted that he was good enough for the lower divisions -after one good season at Colchester he has struggled to hold down a starting place at Ipswich and Millwall and pops up with a goal every now and then from the bench which is pretty much what he did for us as well
Iwelumo - thought he played well for us but suffered from the loss of Reid as the main supply line - - got 10 goals in first half of his one season and was largely redundant after the signing of Gray but it was a big mistake to sell him
Yes, they were great when they booed the team off on Saturday. Proper Support.
Well I assume (hope?) the majority of that will be made up by ticket income, merchandise etc – but that’s just the break even point.
Then you need to replace the 14 players that are out of contract. Now if we say those players leaving are on an average of £2k a week and 10 are released without new contracts that amounts to £1m freed up. I think we will probably need to sign approximately 16 players to make sure our squad is both good and robust enough to gain promotion. Say we pay these new players £3k a week on average (as clearly we need to improve the calibre of players we attract) and pay an average of £200,000 per player (I got that figure by imagining that a good player at this level would cost £400k and half the players coming in would be on free transfers).
That means our budget needs to be and additional £3.1 m (after we’ve reclaimed £1m from players going out). That is a massive budget for a League One manager of any calibre, let alone a novice. Perhaps the board have realised this and that is the reason they’ve brought in a director of football, afterall they wouldn’t invest in someone to oversee recruitment if they were going to invest penuts in the team. However, I would prefer it if we had had an indication of the funds available in January.
We signed BWP but some sources allege that was with the bonus windfall of the Spurs FA Cup game (the transfer fee would certainly be roughly in line with what we should have received from that game). Other than that we’ve only really had youth team loans (Ecclestone, Nouble, Parrot, Etheridge) and I’m unsure of how the wages are structured for those deals. That would suggest that the board said to Powell – “you can have the money from the Spurs game to spend on who you like but no more investment after that, if you can find some loans and bring them in on favourable terms then that’s fine but we wont be shelling out on massive wages”. Hopefully the reasoning behind this was a) having seen that 14 players were out of contract in the summer they wanted to hold onto their resources and see what division we were in so that Powell would be able to spend their money effectively. Spending big in January is very short sighted and hopefully they recognised it. There is, unfortunately, also scenario b) they don’t have any money to spend and the BWP signing was just a smoke screen provided by the Spurs cup money.
I guess time will tell.
HOW MUCH??
Blimey. I wish we had half of that to spend in the 2nd division, let alone the 3rd division!
You don't need anywhere near that. Just a manager who can tell a decent player and build a squad.
Sorry, revised down to £3.1m, total guess work but I really think we'll have to spend big to get out, I honestly can't see us building a team of free transfers capable of getting out of this now, especially as our squad will be completely decimated in the summer.
Not sure about that, there is a lot of evidence that says that post Curbs we have bought a load of rubbish plaers not that we have not got the best out of them. Of the examples given above:
Ambrose - did nothing for us in the Prem/Champ and my Palace mates say he does not do much for them except goals. Granted they are important but he got 9 in one season for us when played out of position so we all knew he could do that
Thomas - looked ok in Prem but Champ did not suit his style/attitude
Varney - does he get many games at Blackpool now - started well but think he has been found out as a try hard.
Lisbie - probably had most of his career highlights with us.
Iwelumo - was good for us in the Champ - still in the Champ
As for how much it will cost for promotion, it all depends, teams at this level have such a huge churn of players each year the division is impossible to predict (see Swindon). If Jenkinson, Solly, Cousins & Harriett all make a full breakthrough next season and we can retain Jackson, BWP& Semedo plus get the best out of the likes of Reid & Elliott, bring in 2-3 real quality season long loans, 3-4 real quality freebeeis and spend £2M on 4x£500K players we should be right up there IMO.
yh thats what i thought especially as there bringing in a new head scout