Pretty much along the lines with "No.1". I don't for one minute think that CP isn't the manager and will pick his team. But what's wrong with a manager saying "i need a left winger to play to this style....blah, blah" and then the scouting network come back to him with a shortlist of possible and realistic targets, and together they sit and decide on who to approach. That way, CP's time is focused on the coaching side of the job. You don't expect a scout to be a good manager so why do we expect it to work the other way? Just like the players on the pitch, the backroom/coaching staff need to be also working as a team in order for the whole thing to work. (CP is just the star player who gets the glory when it all goes right).
Tango, nothing wrong IMHO at all IF Powell makes the final call on Smith or Jones within the budget set by the board. Personally that's what I think the situation is. Vetere and Chapple and the other new regional coaches spot them but CP Has the final word.
However that's not what NYA and others are saying is the case or is speculating is the case(its not clear which).
What is damaging is that as Len says the rumour is undermining. Any successful signings will be the boards and any defeats will be down to Powells poor coaching. He can't win.
I don’t think for one minute that Chris Powell is anyone's puppet and for anyone to suggest that's the case is ludicrous. And i definitely don't think he's been duped into a situation he's not happy with.
Yes Henry, Powell would definitely have the final say in who he signs as most managers would. What would be the point in the club signing a player the manager doesn't want? The manager would be reluctant to play him, causing possible disharmony amongst the squad, and we're not exactly in the financial position to be able to sign players who won't play.
With all the rebuilding of the squad that needs to be done this summer, CP is going to need all the help he can get...................................
Transfer targets are identified by Powell ,Vetere, Chappel etc.
Jiminez & Slater have final say as it is their money (or they are looking after the money).
If Powell had no say in transfer targets, why was he discussing with me Leicester players that he was interested in & other players that he'd had his eye on for some time?
There is no doubt in my mind that Powell also picks the team.
Finally, it may well be that the board had a preferred Manager to Powell & that man is likely to be Poyet as he is well known to Jiminez & lives next door to Dennis Wise. However, probably the vast majority of all managerial appointments don't go to the 1st choice. Look at Villa right now.
If Powell is successful he will surely stay & if not he will be replaced. How is that different to anywhere else ?
The only difference (which perhaps is a good thing), is that we have a replacement in mind if Powell fails.
As long as Powell is given a fair chance, then there is no issue.
I thought the blog was interesting but no more than that. There seems to be a kernel of an idea which may be correct, namely that TJ/MS are looking to sign/develop players who are low priced relative to what they may be able to sell for, add value via the coaching/mentoring system at the club and sell them on at an enhanced value that is greater than the costs of developing them.
The involvement of Hart and Vetere fits into this model. The signing of BWP may also fit this. Here was a player who, partly due to the Plymouth's circumstances and partly due to his injuries, was on offer for less than perhaps his true worth.
I am pretty sure that there is "an investor" in the background who is providing funds in addition to any that TJ and MS have available.
I am prepared to believe that the "investor" has bought into a vision of a club itself undervalued, on its uppers, which has the infra-structure and potential to get back to the big time.
All of this is totally logical if the underlying truth of a large "investor" is a sound proposition.
My overall view though is so what else is new? Unearthing player nuggets, adding value and then selling them for big transfers is what many clubs do, be they Div Two or Premier League. If TJ has an ability to do this more effectively than many others then we are in for a decent time over the next few years in my view. If he is no better at it than the average Chairman we still may be in for a decent run.
To me, and I said it weeks ago both when Vetere was reportedly back and when Hart was signed, their signings are huge statements of intent and a case of actually putting the money where the Board's mouth is.
As for the stuff about Powell, I don't believe that he will not have any more or less control over the signings that any manager has at this level on limited resources.
"Chris, here is the budget, go away and come up with a list of players you think you'd like to bring in that fits your assessment of the weaknesses of the current squad. Speak to the scouting team as they will give you an idea of who may be available within the budget parameters. As you know our strategy is to look at players who you feel can at least make the next level and who's value will likely increase if we go up. There will need to be Board approval to sign them off. Clear?"
He will work on an agreed list of several choices for the same positions required to be filled. Then MS/TJ etc will try to secure them.
This is no different to any similar club to us. The added value for the "investor" is in those who are in key positions being better at delivering results than the average at this level.
No I don't think Chris will not be in charge of team affairs. As for the "gamble" on Chris, well it is one, of course as it is with all managers. If though, your scouting youth development and recruitment is soundly based, then managers can be replaced in the medium term if things don't go right.
My gut feeling is as I said at the start, that there is kernel of an idea in this blog that is correct. I think though that its narrative is rather over sold.
If the fundamentals of the blog are right, (which I suspect they are) that makes me more, not less content.
Many of the comments here seem to suppose that the answers are either “black or white” or that there is a “right or wrong”, but little is ever that simple.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
When Iain Dowie was hired, he was appointed Head Coach. There was also a Director of Football, Andrew Mills, and a first team coach who had been appointed before Dowie arrived. Dowie was clearly not in charge in the way that most managers are.
Of course, this didn’t work and when Alan Pardew was appointed he was called “Manager”. Mills left the scene and I seem to recall that Pardew appointed his own head scout, but I may be wrong about that. Unlike Dowie, Pardew was clearly in charge. This didn’t work either and the previous Board clearly regretted giving him such a free rein.
I have no doubt that the reason Richard Murray liked Phil Parkinson was that whilst he had the Pardew job description, not the one handed to Dowie, he was reasonable and much easier to deal with.
It seems obvious to me that we are now back to an arrangement which is closer to the model which Murray [and Varney] attempted to implement when they appointed Iain Dowie. We can only speculate how that will work in practice; it might work well or it might not. To be clear, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Chris Powell appointed Jeff Vetere are they? Did he have any say? I doubt it. However, there is no reason to believe they won’t get on or that the arrangement won’t work. Who is likely to have more influence if there is a conflict though? Who appointed Paul Hart? I doubt that was Powell either.
There is not necessarily anything wrong here. I doubt Alex Ferguson would tolerate any interference whatsoever, but at Chelsea it was Roman Abramovich not Carlo Ancelotti who fired Ray Wilkins. We’re clearly more Chelsea than Man U in this context, but so what? As for Chris Powell not picking the team, I’ve re-read the Blog and I really can’t see where that idea has come from. It’s clearly absurd; that kind of nonsense always ends in tears.
Here’s another way of looking at this. Whatever the reason for a wealthy individual choosing to invest in football, i.e. for fun [Abramovic, Lerner], because they think they can make money [Glaziers, Henry] or both [Jimenez’s motivation I assume], there are two options in terms of the management of the venture. The first is to delegate to a top Manager and then to empower him, e.g. the Glaziers and Henry. In this model the owners manage the purse strings, but they don’t interfere. The alternative is “to have a plan and get involved in its execution”. Unfortunately, I can’t really think of a successful example of this second option, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work. Anyway, it is clearly what we seem to be doing. This may be no great insight, but what’s the fuss?
One wonders why this information is a. being leaked out b. being leaked by a little read overseas blog and why they are c. bothering to withold the name of the, pause for effect, 'funder' if they have leaked this much info d bothering to withold the name of their preferred manager (and why he wasnt appointed in place of PP, whose departure could have been delayed if contracts were a problem.)
a. It's not being leaked out, NYA has done all the research himself and is only now about to disclose what he has found out
b. Because he was the one (along with the other chap he mentions) that did all the research - incidently he has been back in the UK for many months
This ''research'' you mention. Care to expand on it? Is it coincidental with arriving in the UK and meeting a well connected lifer with an agenda?
The only really new slant from NYA is that there is only one backer rather than the 4 or so commonly thought to be the case.
What's not clear if NYA knows for sure if there is only one backer or has discovered who one of the four backers is (Kevin Cash's name has been touted from day one) and has assumed that he is on his own.
Firstly thank you to everyone for taking the time to read my lengthy blog post, and I'm grateful for the substantial amounts of comments both here and on the blog itself.
I haven't taken any of the criticism personally although I'm surprised that an article that is ostensibly quite positive/optimistic about the club's prospects could inspire some vitriol - as a non-Charlton supporting friend put it when he read the blog: "How can that article upset anyone?"
I'm aware judging from some of the comments that many Lifers don't read my blog regularly which is of course fine, but I'd like to reiterate that this was my 898th blog post and I've been writing regularly since 2004 (only Wyn Grant and Chicago Addick could claim to have written any more posts).
It's not as if I've just crawled out of the woodwork to potentially antagonise some people. Those that do read my blog will know that I will 'call a spade a spade', but try to do so if not with some humour, then at least with some reasoned argument.
I wrote my latest post because it would have been difficult to continue writing on a regular basis if I could only refer to what I had discovered in some form of code.
The background to the post was quite simple meanwhile. As soon as the takeover was confirmed, it simply didn't make any sense to me: how could two fairly small-time players (Slater and Jimenez) end up owning 51% of CAFC Holdings and yet be feted as 'our saviours' by some club insiders? Who was backing them and in what form might that backing take?
And then having bought the club, the decision to appoint Powell seemed extremely odd and illogical - again those that do read my blog will know that I thought the decision was ludicrous at the time, not in light of the terrible results that followed. I was keen to try to rationalise this decision and 'complete the circle' with regard to the way the deal seemed to have been structured.
It wasn't enough for me just to confirm that there is 'a funder' involved, I wanted to understand better the relationships between 'the funder' and the Board, and all of their mutual incentives, goals and alignment of interests. The answers in my view (as I described in the post) have more to do with personal relationships than football or finance.
So I did some digging around in conjunction with a fellow supporter, and the post is the result of what we found. With the greatest respect, our sources are not anyone else's business and as some Lifers have noted, the post requires some 'reading between the lines'.
As I noted, there is degree of speculation in the post but then that is inevitable given we are dealing with the future and unpredictable events. By definition 'the plan' as I suggest it will pan out is a dynamic process and may need to be tweaked (or even require wholesale adjustment) - for example, if Powell's second set of 23 games also accumulate only 24 points, then the goal of simply avoiding relegation will be catapulted to the top of the club's priority list.
Finally, just to respond specifically to a couple of points raised on this forum. Firstly, I did not suggest that Powell was not responsible for picking the team nor even allude to this possiblity - this would clearly be ridiculous and the post should not be interpreted as such.
Second, whilst I believe profitable transfer wheeling and dealing will play a key role, I should also have made it clearer that this would also include the most important aspect of all ie. the identification of underrated players with potential (even non-League ones as we've seen already), and then ensuring the coaching staff fulfil that potential for the benefit of both the team and eventually the club bank account. Seen in this context, maybe the role of Powell (and Dyer, Peacock etc.) is not so stooge-like after all.
Sorry, one more related point - just a personal view, but I would consider it to be extremely sensible and desirable for the recruitment of players to be managed by experts (someone in football circles described Vetere as a 'genius').
Given the average tenure of a manager is probably 1.5 seasons, it seems crazy to have to rebuild/restructure the squad that regularly to appease a new manager. It also gives that manager too many potential excuses for failure straight off the bat.
Indeed given that both Dowie then Pardew wrecked the club through their transfer dealings, it seems wiser to me to leave the role of manager to a purely consultative one in this regard. In short their personal interests are not aligned with the club's (spend money wildly and get success, they get the glory; spend money wildly and fail, they walk away and the club picks up the pieces).
The key obviously is how skilful Jimenez/Vetere are in this regard - I'm hopeful they could quite possibly be very skilled.
And then having bought the club, the decision to appoint Powell seemed extremely odd and illogical
I don't think that it was odd or illogical.
CP knows the club well and as Varney is back on the scene he knows CP and be aware of his credentials. Bear in mind that the job was first offered to Eddie Howe who as we know turned it down and there appear to have been few other realistic candidates. A club in Charlton's position was not going to attract a strong, ambitious candidate with experience - anyone with ambition would be looking at CCC level and higher and not at a club mired in League One who don't necessarily have that much money to spend. Powell is also out of the same cloth as Curbs - experienced former player, knows the club well, ambitious, and could grow with the club and that is why, although he was second choice, he was given the job. Sure we are taking a punt on him, but it's one that might pay off. If it doesn't then it's best that this experiment can be tried before things get too serious. From what I can remember of the other choices (at least those who were at reasonably short odds with the bookies) there wasn't anyone who the rumour mill was strongly being linked with the club. Powell's arrival also suggests to me that S&J were determined to run a tight ship with Charlton and not throw cash at it to buy success. If that is their strategy then a mid-long term perspective on developing the infrastructure makes sense - hence Paul Hart's recruitment to oversee the youth teams and Powell as a trainee manager under Peacock's guidance.
So I don't see that Powell is keeping the seat warm for another candidate, certainly not Poyet. I'm sure that Slater and Jimenez would have loved him to stick his CV in the post, or rather through the letterbox, since they are neighbours, but that was never going to happen. With Brighton odds on for promotion and with his managerial credentials looking good, going to Charlton, even if we offered him a vast increase on his salary at Brighton would have been a step or maybe two steps backward. GP knows that consolidating Brighton in the CCC is the best he can do, and in a year or two a Prem team will come calling, and in two/three years he'll be at a decent Prem team earning far more than he ever will at Charlton.
As for the ownership structure I don't think you need to be a genius to appreciate that the money being put up is not wholly Slater's and Jimenez's. Let's say Kevin Cash is our mystery backer - I would interpret this as him lending a couple of mates some money to buy a club and they will if the club gets promoted and perhaps even gets back into the Prem receive payments and fees based around some kind of buy in deal. I doubt that he's pulling that many strings in the background though - he's probably happy to get back what he puts in plus a bit for his trouble. He's an astute businessman and will know that ego comes before a fall when it comes to investing in football clubs. Quite what the deal is, or how it's structured is anyone's guess.
The wheeling and dealing and identifying young cheap talent to tain up and sell on is hardly revolutionary stuff either. I see it as a sideline to the main business - which is developing a successful football club with a squad of good players who can stick around and grow as a team. If things happen on the pitch then that team will get promoted and be worth more - that is where the real value lies. If some of these players can be bought and traded on at a profit then good. But bear in mind, most clubs run their academies at a loss, some at substantial losses, so the odd player who gets sold having joined as a youth/reserve teamer protects and covers that investment and minimises those losses.
Good post BFR and thank you to NYA for posting further. Thing is BFR I'm not sure your analogy of choosing Powell and Curbishley because they were both ex players with ambition and would grow with the club are pricularly valid now. I think the agenda, style and set up at Charlton are now something completely different and the influence of Varney and Murray IMHO is much less than many believe.
NYA why do you believe that CP is only keeping the seat warm to allow an exit strategy that saves face for both parties,
the rest of your blog I can understand your view point but this part shows a total lack of forward or progressive thinking on behalf of the current board, where as vetere and hart show this ambition.
If powelly was the only candidate that was looked upon I may have understood, but Howe turned us down, poyet never got past mates chatting and Andy Scott was interviewd and seriously considered.
I just don't see why they would've bothered when you could've put Dennis wise in knowing the truth and working to the remit
Yep, SHG things are different in terms of ownership and culture now, I doubt that S&J are likely to be quite as forgiving or understanding of failure as perhaps the board was when Curbs and Gritt took over. But I do see some similarities, so the comparison has some validity. Their first choice after all was Eddie Howe, an up and coming manager learning his trade, and Powelly fitted into that mould, albeit with less managerial experience.
I doubt that S&J are going to buy success, the conspiracy theory suggests that our backers are keeping a low profile to keep transfer fees and wage demands low, but I think it's more likely that the club has and will (barring an FA Cup run) see us running at a loss for the next two/three seasons or more and that these two have a strict budget to spend. Last year the club was scheduled to lose £4m and I'll assume it'll be around that this coming season. So the investment is going in to develop the youth team/scouting system and to grow the club organically and as I say above the odd one will get sold on here and there to reduce the losses.
Have to say well done NYA for responding on here, would have been much easier to just sit back and let everyone criticise. Like I said in my original post there wasn't a lot on there that hasn't been strongly suggested on here or on other sites and it was probably useful to those who don't use the message boards.
However I still don't understand your comments about a 3-4 year plan to get out of League 1. Is this your/you and your friend's opinion(s)? If so then I really can't understand the logic and if it is some inside knowledge then again I can't see the logic? Surely it makes more sense for all involved to get out of this division as quickly as possible and then start the rebuilding. They can't be confident enough of attracting the right player in this league to be able to get promotion and then challenge in the Championship.
My theory on Powell is as follows: upon buying the club, Parkinson was told how things would work from now on and he didn't like it - his position became untenable and the Swindon result gave the new Board the chance to 'save face' (there's that phrase again!) and sack him.
They knew what the long-term 'plan' was and decided to immediately go for the type of dynamic exciting manager who would be the final piece of the jigsaw (eg Howe). Indeed I'm aware of a manager they approached who would completely have divided opinion, but had he taken the job, my theory as espoused on my blog would have made perfect sense.
However, these types of managers had other options by virtue of their reputation, and presumably Jimenez couldn't quite 'sell' what was then only a proposal and moreover as we know, the exisiting squad was threadbare.
Seen in this context (although it took me a while to work it out), Powell's appointment was genius. The natives were restless after four years of dire football and managerial turnover, and the new Board needed to get them 'on side' whilst they put the foundations in place for the club's restructuring. Moreover I believe Powell was willing to operate in this way (he had no experience after all) and fancied a shot at management - it was 'win/win' all round, and he might just turn out to be a great manager (Powell presumably had enough self-belief to think this might be the case too). However importantly if he didn't (which the evidence suggests he won't) then the fans would still be supportive because after all, it's 'Sir' Chris Powell! Indeed just imagine the venom that would have poured down from the stands if any other manager had taken a team from 5th to 13th with better players than his predecessor? Instead he still has fairly broad support.
With regard to the point about it taking 3-4 seasons, they hope this is a 'worst case' but the relationship between Jimenez and 'the funder' in my view is such that gradual positive progress is preferable to spending say £10m now to try to guarantee instant promotion (with massive implications for that relationship if it fails). As discussed on my blog, it's my view that Jimenez has sold a vision to his pal 'the Funder', and he can't afford to lose his trust.
There are a lot of moving parts here, which is why I said it was about personal relationships as much as finance or football.
The key in short was that the Board needed to buy themselves some time, and Powell would allow them to do that. This is a very different view from the one usually put forward to explain his appointment ie. "He's well-respected and loves the club, so let's give him a shot - he might just be the next Curbs"
The word "plan" keeps popping up, but I'm yet to hear or see a clear plan... No surprise that we're getting more threads like this.... More supposition than fact ... The open ended statements coming from Slater, and the secrecy surrounding the club have left me bewildered so far?
My theory on Powell is as follows: upon buying the club, Parkinson was told how things would work from now on and he didn't like it - his position became untenable and the Swindon result gave the new Board the chance to 'save face' (there's that phrase again!) and sack him.
..........
I'm not sure I agree, it was clear that Parky had lost the ability to coax anything other than mediocrity out of the squad, he tried and worked hard but even those occasions when we actually won matches the whole thing looked laboured and joyless. The home defeat to Swindon though was an appalling result made all the worse for it coming against a team that was in the relegation zone and who were recording their only away win all season and just to make things worse it came after we took the lead, we should have added a second and won that game comfortably, instead we folded and were embarrassingly outplayed. That wasn't an isolated performance either, the previous two matches saw us struggle to draw matches when our opponents were down to ten men and it was clear that while he came across as a good bloke he wasn't the guy to take the club forward and articulate the mid-long term vision, it had nothing to do with his face fitting or whether he bought into the new way of doing things or not. Sacking him was a mercy killing not about saving face.
Indeed I'm aware of a manager they approached who would completely have divided opinion
You big tease...
Seen in this context (although it took me a while to work it out), Powell's appointment was genius
No it wasn't, to me it was consistent with what they have done since buying the club. Their first choice seems to have been Eddie Howe. I'd conclude from that they wanted a certain type in as manager - someone young, not particularly experienced but with talent who could grow with the club, but that wasn't to be. Powell ticked a number of the same boxes and being #2 at Leicester was relatively easy to entice away, especially as time was ticking as a bonus it meant re-joining a club where he was held in affection by management and fans. As NLA pointed out if they wanted a temporary manager Dennis Wise would fit the bill, he could easily have done the job until the end of the season. Or Curbs could have done the job for six months.
I agree with you regarding the vision aspect, there are a number of reasons why Charlton are a good club to buy - good fan base, the ground doesn't need any money being spent on it (if you want to retain a 27K capacity) there are great training facilities and proximity to a large catchment area of potential supporters. Get it right and you can add 5K and then another 5K after in a season or so to the gate and once in the EPL then the taps start to flow. On paper the club is great to buy and a bargain if things pan out as expected.
Jimenez is rich, but not that rich that he can lay out the money to buy the club and run it at a loss for several season so he needs to borrow to buy it, so Cash (I presume) loans him the money and promises to fund him a bit more to cover the losses, but he wants someone in who can look after the business side of things while Jimenez looks after the footballing side, hence the Rick Astlety look-a-like Slater, another mate of Cash, gets the job. Add in Peter Varney and Richard Murray agrees to stay on and they both know the club inside out and you have your ideal team.
What I think is that combined these guys have a very limited amount of money to play with. As above I doubt they are hiding their wealth in order to negotiate better deals in the transfer market. The goal is to get promoted and then get into the Premier league. Cash, if he is the mystery money man, doesn't appear to me to be shy and retiring type unless he has a reason to be so. I'm guessing that he's loaned the money on the grounds that he's not going to get involved, and doesn't want to be associated with the club, hence the secretive structure and company based in the BVI. That also helps him avoid tax when it comes to it, but since the club is loss making he no doubt has more to gain from being upfront and registering it in the UK as the nice tax loss can be offset against earnings here, it might be (irony here) that by using an offshore tax haven it's costing him money, I'm sure his UK tax bill be reduced if he could offset Charlton's losses against it. But let's say he's not bothered, doesn't want this publicity and he's helping a couple of mates out, as far as I know he's not a fan, indeed I don't know if he even likes football. So this is a Slater-Jimenez gig and woe betide them and us if they screw up.
Meanwhile Powelly has his budget, not a massive one, but enough if used wisely to build a squad that should at this level be bigger than most other teams. Separate;ly Vetere and Hart are going to re-build the youth and reserve teams in the hope of finding another Scott Parker/Lee Bowyer who might just pay for the whole lot if he turns out to be good enough.
The key in short was that the Board needed to buy themselves some time, and Powell would allow them to do that. This is a very different view from the one usually put forward to explain his appointment ie. "He's well-respected and loves the club, so let's give him a shot - he might just be the next Curbs"
I just don't buy that. There are plenty of managers out there that they could have parachuted in, I doubt very much that they employed Powell to keep the North Stand happy. We are dealing with Machiavellian characters here, but not that Machiavellian. Your hypothesis in your blog post was that they were bringing in CP to keep the seat warm for Gus Poyet, at least that is who I presume you meant. You seem to be moving away from this theory, or do you still stand by it? Upthread I wonder why a manager who is clearly on his way up and out of our league will be interested in managing at the club when it means taking a reverse career step, you haven't done anything to support your suggestion or refute mine.
Comments
Has the final word.
However that's not what NYA and others are saying is the case or is speculating is the case(its not clear which).
What is damaging is that as Len says the rumour is undermining. Any successful signings will be the boards and any defeats will be down to Powells poor coaching. He can't win.
I don’t
think for one minute that Chris Powell is anyone's puppet and for anyone to
suggest that's the case is ludicrous. And i definitely don't think he's been
duped into a situation he's not happy with.
Yes Henry, Powell would definitely have the final say in who he signs as most
managers would. What would be the point in the club signing a player the
manager doesn't want? The manager would be reluctant to play him, causing
possible disharmony amongst the squad, and we're not exactly in the financial
position to be able to sign players who won't play.
With all
the rebuilding of the squad that needs to be done this summer, CP is going to
need all the help he can get...................................
I believe the situation is as we would expect.
Transfer targets are identified by Powell ,Vetere, Chappel etc.
Jiminez & Slater have final say as it is their money (or they are looking after the money).
If Powell had no say in transfer targets, why was he discussing with me Leicester players that he was interested in & other players that he'd had his eye on for some time?
There is no doubt in my mind that Powell also picks the team.
Finally, it may well be that the board had a preferred Manager to Powell & that man is likely to be Poyet as he is well known to Jiminez & lives next door to Dennis Wise. However, probably the vast majority of all managerial appointments don't go to the 1st choice. Look at Villa right now.
If Powell is successful he will surely stay & if not he will be replaced. How is that different to anywhere else ?
The only difference (which perhaps is a good thing), is that we have a replacement in mind if Powell fails.
As long as Powell is given a fair chance, then there is no issue.
Many of the comments here seem to suppose that the answers are either “black or white” or that there is a “right or wrong”, but little is ever that simple.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
When Iain Dowie was hired, he was appointed Head Coach. There was also a Director of Football, Andrew Mills, and a first team coach who had been appointed before Dowie arrived. Dowie was clearly not in charge in the way that most managers are.
Of course, this didn’t work and when Alan Pardew was appointed he was called “Manager”. Mills left the scene and I seem to recall that Pardew appointed his own head scout, but I may be wrong about that. Unlike Dowie, Pardew was clearly in charge. This didn’t work either and the previous Board clearly regretted giving him such a free rein.
I have no doubt that the reason Richard Murray liked Phil Parkinson was that whilst he had the Pardew job description, not the one handed to Dowie, he was reasonable and much easier to deal with.
It seems obvious to me that we are now back to an arrangement which is closer to the model which Murray [and Varney] attempted to implement when they appointed Iain Dowie. We can only speculate how that will work in practice; it might work well or it might not. To be clear, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that Chris Powell appointed Jeff Vetere are they? Did he have any say? I doubt it. However, there is no reason to believe they won’t get on or that the arrangement won’t work. Who is likely to have more influence if there is a conflict though? Who appointed Paul Hart? I doubt that was Powell either.
There is not necessarily anything wrong here. I doubt Alex Ferguson would tolerate any interference whatsoever, but at Chelsea it was Roman Abramovich not Carlo Ancelotti who fired Ray Wilkins. We’re clearly more Chelsea than Man U in this context, but so what? As for Chris Powell not picking the team, I’ve re-read the Blog and I really can’t see where that idea has come from. It’s clearly absurd; that kind of nonsense always ends in tears.
Here’s another way of looking at this. Whatever the reason for a wealthy individual choosing to invest in football, i.e. for fun [Abramovic, Lerner], because they think they can make money [Glaziers, Henry] or both [Jimenez’s motivation I assume], there are two options in terms of the management of the venture. The first is to delegate to a top Manager and then to empower him, e.g. the Glaziers and Henry. In this model the owners manage the purse strings, but they don’t interfere. The alternative is “to have a plan and get involved in its execution”. Unfortunately, I can’t really think of a successful example of this second option, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work. Anyway, it is clearly what we seem to be doing. This may be no great insight, but what’s the fuss?
I have no desire to expand, no. I don't understand your second question. Who is this well connected lifer with an agenda supposed to be?
NYA is a member of CL but doesn't post very often on here. He has read some of this thread though.
The only really new slant from NYA is that there is only one backer rather than the 4 or so commonly thought to be the case.
What's not clear if NYA knows for sure if there is only one backer or has discovered who one of the four backers is (Kevin Cash's name has been touted from day one) and has assumed that he is on his own.
I haven't taken any of the criticism personally although I'm surprised that an article that is ostensibly quite positive/optimistic about the club's prospects could inspire some vitriol - as a non-Charlton supporting friend put it when he read the blog: "How can that article upset anyone?"
I'm aware judging from some of the comments that many Lifers don't read my blog regularly which is of course fine, but I'd like to reiterate that this was my 898th blog post and I've been writing regularly since 2004 (only Wyn Grant and Chicago Addick could claim to have written any more posts).
It's not as if I've just crawled out of the woodwork to potentially antagonise some people. Those that do read my blog will know that I will 'call a spade a spade', but try to do so if not with some humour, then at least with some reasoned argument.
I wrote my latest post because it would have been difficult to continue writing on a regular basis if I could only refer to what I had discovered in some form of code.
The background to the post was quite simple meanwhile. As soon as the takeover was confirmed, it simply didn't make any sense to me: how could two fairly small-time players (Slater and Jimenez) end up owning 51% of CAFC Holdings and yet be feted as 'our saviours' by some club insiders? Who was backing them and in what form might that backing take?
And then having bought the club, the decision to appoint Powell seemed extremely odd and illogical - again those that do read my blog will know that I thought the decision was ludicrous at the time, not in light of the terrible results that followed. I was keen to try to rationalise this decision and 'complete the circle' with regard to the way the deal seemed to have been structured.
It wasn't enough for me just to confirm that there is 'a funder' involved, I wanted to understand better the relationships between 'the funder' and the Board, and all of their mutual incentives, goals and alignment of interests. The answers in my view (as I described in the post) have more to do with personal relationships than football or finance.
So I did some digging around in conjunction with a fellow supporter, and the post is the result of what we found. With the greatest respect, our sources are not anyone else's business and as some Lifers have noted, the post requires some 'reading between the lines'.
As I noted, there is degree of speculation in the post but then that is inevitable given we are dealing with the future and unpredictable events. By definition 'the plan' as I suggest it will pan out is a dynamic process and may need to be tweaked (or even require wholesale adjustment) - for example, if Powell's second set of 23 games also accumulate only 24 points, then the goal of simply avoiding relegation will be catapulted to the top of the club's priority list.
Finally, just to respond specifically to a couple of points raised on this forum. Firstly, I did not suggest that Powell was not responsible for picking the team nor even allude to this possiblity - this would clearly be ridiculous and the post should not be interpreted as such.
Second, whilst I believe profitable transfer wheeling and dealing will play a key role, I should also have made it clearer that this would also include the most important aspect of all ie. the identification of underrated players with potential (even non-League ones as we've seen already), and then ensuring the coaching staff fulfil that potential for the benefit of both the team and eventually the club bank account. Seen in this context, maybe the role of Powell (and Dyer, Peacock etc.) is not so stooge-like after all.
Given the average tenure of a manager is probably 1.5 seasons, it seems crazy to have to rebuild/restructure the squad that regularly to appease a new manager. It also gives that manager too many potential excuses for failure straight off the bat.
Indeed given that both Dowie then Pardew wrecked the club through their transfer dealings, it seems wiser to me to leave the role of manager to a purely consultative one in this regard. In short their personal interests are not aligned with the club's (spend money wildly and get success, they get the glory; spend money wildly and fail, they walk away and the club picks up the pieces).
The key obviously is how skilful Jimenez/Vetere are in this regard - I'm hopeful they could quite possibly be very skilled.
I don't think that it was odd or illogical.
CP knows the club well and as Varney is back on the scene he knows CP and be aware of his credentials. Bear in mind that the job was first offered to Eddie Howe who as we know turned it down and there appear to have been few other realistic candidates. A club in Charlton's position was not going to attract a strong, ambitious candidate with experience - anyone with ambition would be looking at CCC level and higher and not at a club mired in League One who don't necessarily have that much money to spend. Powell is also out of the same cloth as Curbs - experienced former player, knows the club well, ambitious, and could grow with the club and that is why, although he was second choice, he was given the job. Sure we are taking a punt on him, but it's one that might pay off. If it doesn't then it's best that this experiment can be tried before things get too serious. From what I can remember of the other choices (at least those who were at reasonably short odds with the bookies) there wasn't anyone who the rumour mill was strongly being linked with the club. Powell's arrival also suggests to me that S&J were determined to run a tight ship with Charlton and not throw cash at it to buy success. If that is their strategy then a mid-long term perspective on developing the infrastructure makes sense - hence Paul Hart's recruitment to oversee the youth teams and Powell as a trainee manager under Peacock's guidance.
So I don't see that Powell is keeping the seat warm for another candidate, certainly not Poyet. I'm sure that Slater and Jimenez would have loved him to stick his CV in the post, or rather through the letterbox, since they are neighbours, but that was never going to happen. With Brighton odds on for promotion and with his managerial credentials looking good, going to Charlton, even if we offered him a vast increase on his salary at Brighton would have been a step or maybe two steps backward. GP knows that consolidating Brighton in the CCC is the best he can do, and in a year or two a Prem team will come calling, and in two/three years he'll be at a decent Prem team earning far more than he ever will at Charlton.
As for the ownership structure I don't think you need to be a genius to appreciate that the money being put up is not wholly Slater's and Jimenez's. Let's say Kevin Cash is our mystery backer - I would interpret this as him lending a couple of mates some money to buy a club and they will if the club gets promoted and perhaps even gets back into the Prem receive payments and fees based around some kind of buy in deal. I doubt that he's pulling that many strings in the background though - he's probably happy to get back what he puts in plus a bit for his trouble. He's an astute businessman and will know that ego comes before a fall when it comes to investing in football clubs. Quite what the deal is, or how it's structured is anyone's guess.
The wheeling and dealing and identifying young cheap talent to tain up and sell on is hardly revolutionary stuff either. I see it as a sideline to the main business - which is developing a successful football club with a squad of good players who can stick around and grow as a team. If things happen on the pitch then that team will get promoted and be worth more - that is where the real value lies. If some of these players can be bought and traded on at a profit then good. But bear in mind, most clubs run their academies at a loss, some at substantial losses, so the odd player who gets sold having joined as a youth/reserve teamer protects and covers that investment and minimises those losses.
the rest of your blog I can understand your view point but this part shows a total lack of forward or progressive thinking on behalf of the current board, where as vetere and hart show this ambition.
If powelly was the only candidate that was looked upon I may have understood, but Howe turned us down, poyet never got past mates chatting and Andy Scott was interviewd and seriously considered.
I just don't see why they would've bothered when you could've put Dennis wise in knowing the truth and working to the remit
Yep, SHG things are different in terms of ownership and culture now, I doubt that S&J are likely to be quite as forgiving or understanding of failure as perhaps the board was when Curbs and Gritt took over. But I do see some similarities, so the comparison has some validity. Their first choice after all was Eddie Howe, an up and coming manager learning his trade, and Powelly fitted into that mould, albeit with less managerial experience.
I doubt that S&J are going to buy success, the conspiracy theory suggests that our backers are keeping a low profile to keep transfer fees and wage demands low, but I think it's more likely that the club has and will (barring an FA Cup run) see us running at a loss for the next two/three seasons or more and that these two have a strict budget to spend. Last year the club was scheduled to lose £4m and I'll assume it'll be around that this coming season. So the investment is going in to develop the youth team/scouting system and to grow the club organically and as I say above the odd one will get sold on here and there to reduce the losses.
They knew what the long-term 'plan' was and decided to immediately go for the type of dynamic exciting manager who would be the final piece of the jigsaw (eg Howe). Indeed I'm aware of a manager they approached who would completely have divided opinion, but had he taken the job, my theory as espoused on my blog would have made perfect sense.
However, these types of managers had other options by virtue of their reputation, and presumably Jimenez couldn't quite 'sell' what was then only a proposal and moreover as we know, the exisiting squad was threadbare.
Seen in this context (although it took me a while to work it out), Powell's appointment was genius. The natives were restless after four years of dire football and managerial turnover, and the new Board needed to get them 'on side' whilst they put the foundations in place for the club's restructuring. Moreover I believe Powell was willing to operate in this way (he had no experience after all) and fancied a shot at management - it was 'win/win' all round, and he might just turn out to be a great manager (Powell presumably had enough self-belief to think this might be the case too). However importantly if he didn't (which the evidence suggests he won't) then the fans would still be supportive because after all, it's 'Sir' Chris Powell! Indeed just imagine the venom that would have poured down from the stands if any other manager had taken a team from 5th to 13th with better players than his predecessor?
Instead he still has fairly broad support.
With regard to the point about it taking 3-4 seasons, they hope this is a 'worst case' but the relationship between Jimenez and 'the funder' in my view is such that gradual positive progress is preferable to spending say £10m now to try to guarantee instant promotion (with massive implications for that relationship if it fails). As discussed on my blog, it's my view that Jimenez has sold a vision to his pal 'the Funder', and he can't afford to lose his trust.
There are a lot of moving parts here, which is why I said it was about personal relationships as much as finance or football.
Interesting stuff, NYA.
Thanks.
My theory on Powell is as follows: upon buying the club, Parkinson was told how things would work from now on and he didn't like it - his position became untenable and the Swindon result gave the new Board the chance to 'save face' (there's that phrase again!) and sack him.
..........
I'm not sure I agree, it was clear that Parky had lost the ability to coax anything other than mediocrity out of the squad, he tried and worked hard but even those occasions when we actually won matches the whole thing looked laboured and joyless. The home defeat to Swindon though was an appalling result made all the worse for it coming against a team that was in the relegation zone and who were recording their only away win all season and just to make things worse it came after we took the lead, we should have added a second and won that game comfortably, instead we folded and were embarrassingly outplayed. That wasn't an isolated performance either, the previous two matches saw us struggle to draw matches when our opponents were down to ten men and it was clear that while he came across as a good bloke he wasn't the guy to take the club forward and articulate the mid-long term vision, it had nothing to do with his face fitting or whether he bought into the new way of doing things or not. Sacking him was a mercy killing not about saving face.
Indeed I'm aware of a manager they approached who would completely have divided opinion
You big tease...
Seen in this context (although it took me a while to work it out), Powell's appointment was genius
No it wasn't, to me it was consistent with what they have done since buying the club. Their first choice seems to have been Eddie Howe. I'd conclude from that they wanted a certain type in as manager - someone young, not particularly experienced but with talent who could grow with the club, but that wasn't to be. Powell ticked a number of the same boxes and being #2 at Leicester was relatively easy to entice away, especially as time was ticking as a bonus it meant re-joining a club where he was held in affection by management and fans. As NLA pointed out if they wanted a temporary manager Dennis Wise would fit the bill, he could easily have done the job until the end of the season. Or Curbs could have done the job for six months.
I agree with you regarding the vision aspect, there are a number of reasons why Charlton are a good club to buy - good fan base, the ground doesn't need any money being spent on it (if you want to retain a 27K capacity) there are great training facilities and proximity to a large catchment area of potential supporters. Get it right and you can add 5K and then another 5K after in a season or so to the gate and once in the EPL then the taps start to flow. On paper the club is great to buy and a bargain if things pan out as expected.
Jimenez is rich, but not that rich that he can lay out the money to buy the club and run it at a loss for several season so he needs to borrow to buy it, so Cash (I presume) loans him the money and promises to fund him a bit more to cover the losses, but he wants someone in who can look after the business side of things while Jimenez looks after the footballing side, hence the Rick Astlety look-a-like Slater, another mate of Cash, gets the job. Add in Peter Varney and Richard Murray agrees to stay on and they both know the club inside out and you have your ideal team.
What I think is that combined these guys have a very limited amount of money to play with. As above I doubt they are hiding their wealth in order to negotiate better deals in the transfer market. The goal is to get promoted and then get into the Premier league. Cash, if he is the mystery money man, doesn't appear to me to be shy and retiring type unless he has a reason to be so. I'm guessing that he's loaned the money on the grounds that he's not going to get involved, and doesn't want to be associated with the club, hence the secretive structure and company based in the BVI. That also helps him avoid tax when it comes to it, but since the club is loss making he no doubt has more to gain from being upfront and registering it in the UK as the nice tax loss can be offset against earnings here, it might be (irony here) that by using an offshore tax haven it's costing him money, I'm sure his UK tax bill be reduced if he could offset Charlton's losses against it. But let's say he's not bothered, doesn't want this publicity and he's helping a couple of mates out, as far as I know he's not a fan, indeed I don't know if he even likes football. So this is a Slater-Jimenez gig and woe betide them and us if they screw up.
Meanwhile Powelly has his budget, not a massive one, but enough if used wisely to build a squad that should at this level be bigger than most other teams. Separate;ly Vetere and Hart are going to re-build the youth and reserve teams in the hope of finding another Scott Parker/Lee Bowyer who might just pay for the whole lot if he turns out to be good enough.
I just don't buy that. There are plenty of managers out there that they could have parachuted in, I doubt very much that they employed Powell to keep the North Stand happy. We are dealing with Machiavellian characters here, but not that Machiavellian. Your hypothesis in your blog post was that they were bringing in CP to keep the seat warm for Gus Poyet, at least that is who I presume you meant. You seem to be moving away from this theory, or do you still stand by it? Upthread I wonder why a manager who is clearly on his way up and out of our league will be interested in managing at the club when it means taking a reverse career step, you haven't done anything to support your suggestion or refute mine.