[cite]Posted By: Mick Collins[/cite] Jeff isn't going to be Director of Football - that part of the story was nonsense.
Keith is already Technical Director, and there is no desire or intention to move Charlton to a model which has a Director of Football.
He was at Villa, and also, obviously, at Newcastle with Tony Jiminez, but he's always kept close links with Charlton since he left. In fact, he's always kept very close links with everywhere. I met him just before Christmas, and we had a coffee. In the space of half an hour I discovered just how many different languages a man can answer a phone in. His scouting net casts wider than most...
He's going to be involved in scouting, and personally, I hope he's given the scope to overhaul the whole system. There is a long term plan from those in charge to rebuild the club, to make it sustainable and to repair some of the damage that's gone on in recent years. Losing a string of games hasn't been fun for anyone, and I genuinely admire those who have paid to watch some of it, especially the away trips which have held the promise of nothing but travel costs and misery.
That said, the club desperately needed someone with a vision, and in Peter Varney it's got that. I'm no building expert, but as an analogy, Charlton is like a house which had a massive, threatening crack running through it. It would have been in administration by the end of January. The takeover has shored it up in the short term, but the people behind it have bigger plans.
They could have stuck some polyfilla in, painted over the cracks and smiled at everyone, but that's storing up troubles. PV has a plan, akin to the one he put in place a decade ago, which was so comprehensively buggered up by the former board deciding to gamble on player purcheses and wages. Some blame them, some say good luck and they would have done the same - I'm not taking sides, other than to say that's clearly where it began to go wrong. Now we have a chance to start again.
Jeff is a very formative part of that plan, and Chris is a more integral part. Nobody is more aware than him of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the squad, nobody knows better what they can and cannot do as individual players and nobody has a clearer vision as to what is needed to turn this squad into a competitive one. He, like Jeff and like Peter is the right man for a long journey, but it's early days with early stumbles.
I don't blame those who complain and boo, because having seen some of those players, their body language and their inability to do even the basics, had I paid for a ticket, I'd want to as well. I don't blame them because I don't pay for my ticket, and people who sit in press boxes shouldn't lecture people who pay to sit elsewhere on what they shout out. As long as it's decent, not overtly abusive and legal, that's what the ticket price allowed you to do. I would ask people, for what my view's worth, as someone who knows everyone involved in this, and who speaks to some of them daily, to give it a chance, even through the frustrations.
This club was on the brink financially. I got abuse and derision for various stories I wrote about finances, and they all turned out to be right. That's not self-justification, but just to say that I was aware, because I was being made aware by people who knew, how desperate the state of the balance sheet was. We could have gone under, and had offers been accepted by certain parties, our future would have been in very serious danger indeed. I know less than I'd like to about the source of the money funding the current takeover, the same as many, but I put my faith in the people the takeover has brought to the table.
Peter Varney has the vision to put this mess straight and re-build it. Chris Powell has the energy and the talent to re-build a squad as bad as any we've seen for a long, long time, and Jeff Vetere, even though he's not going to be Director of Football, has the contacts to help with that re-building. Putting the last coat of paint on after a renovation is done is the easy bit - digging new foundations and sorting out that large crack running through the middle of the building is rarely attractive to watch. But even though, as I say, I'm no builder, if you don't do it, sooner or later, the whole lot comes falling down.
Just to clarify two things -
Firstly, while I think I can identify where it all started to go wrong (and saying goodbye to Curbs, then finding £12m for Iain Dowie's spending spree, plus the lunacy of the Pardew "free-signings" era were both examples of huge errors, surely?) it would be very wrong to blame everything on the last board. They were good people, few of whom emerged with anything other than large losses, who made a few bad decisions. All the good ones they made gave us years of Premiership football a club of our size had no reason to expect. Rather than castigate them, we should refelct on what it tells us about modern football. It's like climbing an ice-face. Loads of good decisions move you up a fraction at a time, and one bad one sends you skidding into oblivion.
Secondly, I'm reverting to silence, because when I'm told things in confidence, people shouldn't fear that they will appear on the internet. This one was different, and the little speech which accompanied it (for which apologies if it sounded like a sermon) should remain very much the exception. There are very good people working at the club, putting in absurd hours to bring the fans the news as swiftly and accurately as they possibly can. They don't need people playing the "guess what I heard?" game.
Ten years before we beat Arsenal at Highbury, around the period when we were beating Chelsea so often we could have put them in our trophy cabinet, when we beat Liverpool with decent regularity and when Manchester City were little more than an irritation, we were being beaten at home by Cambridge United. We didn't make the leap from Cambridge to Arsenal with pots of money, but with intelligent thinking and a carefully-followed plan. It's harder to bridge that gap without a conveniently benevolent billionaire these days, but it's not impossible. Charlton have done lots of things nobody else thought possible over the years, from Simonsen to Selhurst. We've never been a club to bemoan our fate, refusing to cheer as the first rung of the ladder back beckons. I don't think, regardless of a few recent stumbles, we are now, either.
This is a post made by Mick Collins yesterday in the Jeff Vetere thread. I have reprinted it here because, as someone pointed out, he makes some important observations about Charlton's current plight that maybe will be missed by people who had stopped reading that thread before he made his posts.
But also I wanted to take issue when he states..
There are very good people working at the club, putting in absurd hours to bring the fans the news as swiftly and accurately as they possibly can. They don't need people playing the "guess what I heard?" game.
It is my view that the really important snippets of positive and reassuring information about things like the great improvement in the morale at the club and the implementation of Peter Varney's long term plans (based on the plans that led to one of the most successful decades in Charlton's history) have only appeared on here, from posters such as Airman Brown and Mick Collins, as opposed to on the OS or in the press. I would say this site is read by a very small percentage of Charlton fans. Perhaps this information has been discussed at various supporter meetings but again what percentage of fans attend these meetings?
During a period of poor results I think the new owners could be doing more to communicate the positive behind the scenes developments, how it contrasts with what was happining before the takeover and more detail and substance about their long term plans on the OS and in the local and national press. The posts from Airmen Brown and Mick Collins have been well received by people on Charlton Life who are grateful for real 'news' about what is happening inside the club. If this news was communicated to the whole fan base it can only have a positive impact and help reduce the increasing rumblings of discontent with the new owners amongst that fan base.
Comments
It has certainly got me thinking and as I said on another thread feeling somewhat guilty about my comments on Powell etc.
I'm now prepared to give them the benefit and see what happens during the summer and next season.
I even bought 2 new Charlton T-shirts on-line today!
Yes, I know I'm fickle!!
One point though - how does the current squad feel about the "worst in a long time" label - can't be good for morale. Yes, wholesale changes must be made but there are probably only a handful of players at best that can feel confident that they'll be playing any part in this hopefully bright, shining future. Motivating the rest must be tough for Powell.
Putting a happy spin on unhappy events and passng it off as the full picture is what PR people do. From Martin Christensen to the extent of the debt and the nature of the takeover, I don't think I could be accused of an addiction to good news. In the last few years, I would imagine I've written far more critical than celebratory articles about the club, much like the ones I've highlighted, but sadly that reflects how things have been.
I'm not paid by Charlton, I haven't been for years - almost a decade now, so there's a very clear distinction between Rick and myself there. He is an employee of the club and I have no links to them at all. I speak to people at all levels, though, and get told things. Some become stories, lots don't. Sadly, in the grand scheme of things, Charlton, as a League One club, are currently very small news indeed. National newspapers don't even routinely send reporters to games beneath Championship level.
My points are, like anyone else's, obviously based around my own views. They're not based exclusively around them, though, because they're also influenced by things I'm told, information I'm given and comments made to me. Some of these are made in the unspoken hope they'll be anonymously repeated in a story, clearly, but they're fairly easy to spot.
I hope that clarifies matters a bit. I wasn't asked to write what I did, but I do believe in it very strongly. And now, I'm reverting to silence (once) again!
Not a very meaningful distinction, as anyone who has worked in (sports) journalism knows. Confidences come from relationships and to get them relationships have to be maintained. At the least, you tend to see issues from the perspectives of your confidants because it's their side of the story that you hear.
Thats for you to decide.......
:-)
I'll ask the clique, they'll know...
Thats for you to decide.......
:-)[/quote]
He spent several words telling us his newspaper was spouting bollocks and several hundred spouting the bleeding obvious...
I'll ask the clique, they'll know...[/quote]
They are all in Bromley with Murray
Not all ;0)
"It's like climbing an ice-face. Loads of good decisions move you up a fraction at a time, and one bad one sends you skidding into oblivion."
By the gods I know how that one feels...
Let us also remember that a few years ago the communications team where about 7 or 8 people now they are 5 and with additional responsiblities of Twitter, websites, video etc. And no press officer so a lot less imformation is put out in a formalised way.
No, you got abuse for working for the Daily Mail.
Mick Collins appears to be feeling a little sorry for himself in this article.
http://www.charltonlife.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=22556&page=1
Anybody fair minded enough to look at the content of his articles rather than the publication (s) they appear in can hardly fail to acknowledge that he has been fully vindicated in my opinion.