Of course we will keep supporting the club but it is impossible to believe anything Roland Duchatelet or any of his lackies say any more. I am not even sure they can tell the truth from their own lies. I have got behind both the appointments since Powell was fired but not this time. I am now genuinely worried over the short-term future under this owner let alone the medium-term.
The bottom line ladies and gentlemen is the man is here to do a job. He has conducted a media interview in what is probably his 3rd language. I suggest the majority of the people on this message board would have a problem conducting the same interview in their first.
The manner of his recruitment, appointment & introduction barely 12hrs into the job are all valid matters for debate. In reality they have precious little do with him. This guilt by association thing is really being overplayed.
I have absolutely no idea of his capabilities to do the job he has been brought in to do. That he has had some measure of success and failure elsewhere is what it is. For all those wishing to focus on the latter there is the maxim people learn more from their failures than their successes.
He is pursuing a career as a football coach and been offered an opportunity to contribute to our club.
I am not overly concerned about his popularity with supporters, the media or even the playing staff as long he enables the players to perform to the best of their ability in delivering a decent measure of the success in terms of results. Within the terms of reference I suspect he is working to it will be no easy task.
He may or may not have the skill set to deliver a successful team. We are about to find out. I wish him well in his endeavours.
Managers change in different circumstances, but the selection of a new man should surely bring with it at least the promise of a new dawn; a sense of hope and ambition, yet I'm left with the feeling that little has really changed. Luzon will have my support because he's now leading CAFC - I was going to use the term "managing" but that's where things start to feel wrong.
Clearly the team needs an injection of quality. Will the new man be allowed to juggle his limited resources and use his knowledge and contacts to attract players he feels will significantly improve his squad? I doubt it - instead he's likely to be offered more heads from within the owner's network, and, like his predecessors from RD's little harem of coaches, told to get blood out of a stone within six months.
I've tried to be patient and give RD's plans a chance - he doesn't appear to be fleecing us financially for short-term gain, and has made the much-trumpeted structural changes. I'm not storming off in a sulk or tearing up my season ticket, just as I don't boo and slam my seat up every time a result doesn't quite match my hopes. But it definitely leaves me feeling more detached from my club when we're left with a revolving door of "head coaches" who'll have little chance to leave any legacy, and who are rendered almost irrelevant figureheads for a distant dispassionate owner.
I used to laugh at clubs run like this. Now I support one.
I'd question that Colin. As stated, I'm still prepared to see how RD's project develops but each hurried change of manager goes down as a debit for now. Let's support the new man for now and see where it takes us.
Because they appoint managers from outside the network, that manager is also allowed a say on transfers, they also sign players from outside their network. Oh, and the manager is allowed to pick the team as well.
I don’t post much on here anymore, mainly because I tend to air my views on the radio and would only be repeating myself on here, which would mean two lots of old twaddle you’d have to put up with.
But also, as I volunteer my services to the club, I have somewhat of an inside seat at the Valley now and I believe, rightly or wrongly that other fans perception of me may have changed to the point where I am seen as a club spokesperson. I personally don’t believe that to be the case, I may have mellowed over the last few years but that isn’t down to the joyous position I now find myself in up in the press gantry.
But having read with interest, delight and sadness of fans views and ideas on our current situation, especially those that feel they will now stop coming to the Valley, I just felt that I needed to add my two penneth, not least perhaps because it will make me feel better!!
I apologise for the length of this post and if it's not posted on the right thread. This may come back to haunt me, but here goes…
I remember standing on the terrace in Sept 1985, not really caring about what was happening on the pitch. Partial disbelief transformed into anger, both at the clubs owners and at the 3,000 or so mercenaries that had come to watch us die that day. I was actually screaming irrationally at people as they dug bits up and ripped bits off, I just couldn’t help it, where the bloody hell had they been for the last few years whilst I had been trudging to the Valley and all corners of the country every week?
The only reason I mention this again is because I am beginning to see the same anger in fans but specifically also in my Children. The same indignance and mis-trust at the owners of our club that I had felt back then. I am doing my best to try to calm the waters, but generally it is only a temporary measure, before some other nugget of information hits us from SE7 to set them off again.
What is bizzarley great is that we are poles apart in what we perceive to be happening. Back in 1985 and beyond, my perception was that we had owners who refused or were unable to invest in the ground or the team. We had been up and down from the 2nd and 3rd divisions and had partially survived on the occasional shrewd/lucky usually cheap buy and some good kids coming through, (European players of the year aside). Bankruptcy, insolvency, crisis, closure were all words that tended to follow the name Charlton Athletic when any news broke and for the most part I felt absolutely oblivious as to how an 18 to 24 year old know nothing from Dartford could make any difference to proceedings. In truth the answer was NONE!
Fortunately much further down the line there were others with clout, know-how and cash to step in. All I felt then and all I feel now is that all I can do is support MY team, MY club in the only way I know how, by turning up as I had always done from 1967 to this very day.
My children at the moment believe as others do, that amongst other things, our current owners are running this club into the ground, that we are merely a plaything for an owner who has not the slightest idea how to run a football club and even possibly that there is some Belgium conspiracy to turn us into a feeder club just to make a once great club in Liege, great again.
Are they right, I actually have no real idea? But I point to the fact that the current owner dug into his pockets to buy us which arguably if he had not done so, our fate could now be much worse. I argue that investment in the team, the ground and our youth system has taken place and is promised to continue, I explain that we have had a few managerial merry go rounds in the past so the stuff that is happening now is nothing new. I try to theorise that on balance the influx of network players have probably left us about even, (some good some bad) and I even point to our league position, (not withstanding current form) and try to show them that things are not that bad compared to previous years.
So far that has made little difference to their general feeling of malaise, usually because something else happens to kick them in the teeth, but as I continually explain, I actually just don’t see the catastrophe that awaits us according to some fans, I’m sorry I just don’t.
Am I happy with what’s transpired over the past two seasons, no of course not, just as I haven’t been entirely happy, (CP’s appointment and promotion aside), with what has been happening in the years following our relegation from the Premiership. Am I happy with our current managerial ‘excuse me’, no of course not, what fan would be, but what am I supposed to do?
Join a ‘Fan revolt’, to what end and for what conceivable positive objective?
I remember being absolutely furious at Michael Gliksten and his so called ‘puppet’ Andy Nelson for many years and when the Mike Bailey’s dismissal happened. I was inconsolable for ages and unfairly absolutely despised Alan Mullery because of it. As with others I turned up every week, I booed, I shouted, I protested and what happened, bugger all. Well except for the small and I am sure unrelated matter of Gliksten bailing out and leaving us in the mess that others thought could only be resolved by leaving the Valley!!
And now I guess to my point, I’m sorry that it has taken this long to get to.
As with me in 1985, when I looked at the club that was playing Stoke City and compared it to the one that my Dad introduced me to on a freezing November night back in 1967. My Children now do not see the same club that I introduced them to back in the mid 90’s and that disillusionment is real, however much I feel that they may be over exaggerating matters, however much I don’t see the same looming disaster, their feelings as with others are real and therefore cannot and should not be dismissed, by me, other fans or the board.
But I sincerely hope that as with me, they will still travel week in week out. Them by singing, shouting, complaining, even protesting and no doubt drinking, me for now still fulfilling a long held dream of commentating on CAFC. Both of which I hope will go some small way to ensure that those who may now choose to vote with their feet, still have a club to come back to when the dust settles.
At the time I didn’t see it, but over the years I have realised that the few hundred, maybe even the few thousand that stayed away from the club both prior to 1985 and for the years after, helped shape our destiny and along with the many that kept going (and the few heroes), turned us into the force we were for the next 14 years.
I may be wrong but I suspect that this is the Charlton that fans want back, just please don’t forget the decades of turmoil that led us there.
I am not saying that fans should just put up and shut up, quite the contrary, if it is your desire and belief that turning up and voicing your displeasure is the way to go, then fill yer boots. If you have a spare 40 squillion down the back of the sofa and want to buy the club, then be my guest and if you have a genius idea that can some way allow us mere mortals to help put this club back to whatever part of our history suits us best, then share it now. And if it is your decision that enough is enough and you do decide that you just cannot watch your club anymore at the moment, then so be it. But don’t be too surprised if there are a few angry fans to greet you when you come back, at least for a while.
That is of course unless the Valley has been hydraulically lifted and moved on the back of a low loader to a town just outside Aachen. Apologies for the flippancy at the end , couldn’t help myself!!
I hope that is Cathartic for you Killersbeard,and can really empathize as i have said on another thread the only time it didn't feel we were being shafted was the Alwen/Murray(the earlier years).
So even thou it's not good at the moment,we have had it worse.
Killer's Beard ...... thanks for putting your thoughts into writing.
Like you, I've come to realise that there's nothing new under the sun - and in one form or other, we've seen it all before following Charlton.
People may stamp their feet, shout and throw their toys out of the pram; perhaps some would rather go shopping with their missus on a Saturday afternoon - but maybe the best way forward at the moment is just to wait and see what happens next?
Good balanced piece Killer. Silly for anyone to pretend that everything's rosy, and yet it really could be a lot worse had we been sold to someone looking purely for short term gain. Looking at the 40 years I've been on board, we probably sit somewhere close to our realistic place in the football hierarchy; it just feels worse after the halcyon top flight years. And what made those years extra special was the feeling that it was a CLUB, with everyone pulling in the same direction, even during the numerous Premiership defeats.
Each generation of fans will miss things from their early years, when a lack of cynicism made it all so enjoyable, but as long as results on the pitch see us to an entertaining top half finish I don't feel too many realists would complain. Nevertheless, a little more sense of inclusion from Belgium might just go a long way towards recapturing the hearts of those who still support the club.
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
LOL oh dear
The plot thickens. Poirot is being jetted in to investigate
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Erm, I want to believe that they turned on as many sources of lighting available on whichever day it was for the photo, and the Brighton score simply hadn't been deleted.
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Wow. I feel like Guy Luzon will pop in the conspiracy theories thread soon. I wonder.
Great post Killers Beard, don't agree with it all, but empathise with it nonetheless.
One common theme behind everything that ebbs and flows in the wider debate is actually bums on seats. It may not be apparent in every thread, but one is never more than a couple of steps away from the question about attending matches.
Of course I may be wrong about that, maybe the income from ticket sales is so marginal that crowd numbers are no biggie to owners. Football could continue at an empty Valley if funded some other way.
Which brings me to why people go at all. The answer is of course pretty varied and complex, but my problem at the moment with the current owners is they don't seem to want to engage with the question, or not in any depth. Perhaps it doesn't matter.
However I believe that if every part of Charlton Athletic wanted to find the answer to what gets people to turn up, and then acted upon it, the result would be unifying and not divisive.
At the moment it is not so much about whether I want to be there, but whether Charlton Athletic want me there.
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Hard to tell - but could be a Photoshopped picture. Bit too light to be late Saturday afternoon/evening.
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Hard to tell - but could be a Photoshopped picture. Bit too light to be late Saturday afternoon/evening.
I'm pretty sure it was taken on Wednesday. Reckon they just hadn't taken down the score board for some reason.
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Hard to tell - but could be a Photoshopped picture. Bit too light to be late Saturday afternoon/evening.
I'm pretty sure it was taken on Wednesday. Reckon they just hadn't taken down the score board for some reason.
Think you're right. Shame, that would have been a hilarious twist to the plot!
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Hard to tell - but could be a Photoshopped picture. Bit too light to be late Saturday afternoon/evening.
I'm pretty sure it was taken on Wednesday. Reckon they just hadn't taken down the score board for some reason.
Think you're right. Shame, that would have been a hilarious twist to the plot!
It did make me chuckle. They've really done some damage re: lying about how Luzon has been appointed IMO. Should've just said that they didn't think Peeters was right for the job, we have the contact with Luzon re: his time at SL, this is what we've decided.
Someone just posted this on the FB group. If you look at this and the one above they have Saturday's score line on the big screen. Were these photos taken after Saturday's game?????
Hard to tell - but could be a Photoshopped picture. Bit too light to be late Saturday afternoon/evening.
I'm pretty sure it was taken on Wednesday. Reckon they just hadn't taken down the score board for some reason.
I read somewhere that they leave it on all the time, as apparently the supplier went bust and they can't get spare parts, and turning it on and off causes more stress on it. Something like that.
Comments
The manner of his recruitment, appointment & introduction barely 12hrs into the job are all valid matters for debate. In reality they have precious little do with him. This guilt by association thing is really being overplayed.
I have absolutely no idea of his capabilities to do the job he has been brought in to do. That he has had some measure of success and failure elsewhere is what it is. For all those wishing to focus on the latter there is the maxim people learn more from their failures than their successes.
He is pursuing a career as a football coach and been offered an opportunity to contribute to our club.
I am not overly concerned about his popularity with supporters, the media or even the playing staff as long he enables the players to perform to the best of their ability in delivering a decent measure of the success in terms of results. Within the terms of reference I suspect he is working to it will be no easy task.
He may or may not have the skill set to deliver a successful team. We are about to find out. I wish him well in his endeavours.
Clearly the team needs an injection of quality. Will the new man be allowed to juggle his limited resources and use his knowledge and contacts to attract players he feels will significantly improve his squad? I doubt it - instead he's likely to be offered more heads from within the owner's network, and, like his predecessors from RD's little harem of coaches, told to get blood out of a stone within six months.
I've tried to be patient and give RD's plans a chance - he doesn't appear to be fleecing us financially for short-term gain, and has made the much-trumpeted structural changes. I'm not storming off in a sulk or tearing up my season ticket, just as I don't boo and slam my seat up every time a result doesn't quite match my hopes. But it definitely leaves me feeling more detached from my club when we're left with a revolving door of "head coaches" who'll have little chance to leave any legacy, and who are rendered almost irrelevant figureheads for a distant dispassionate owner.
I used to laugh at clubs run like this. Now I support one.
Who is attending from the club ?
But also, as I volunteer my services to the club, I have somewhat of an inside seat at the Valley now and I believe, rightly or wrongly that other fans perception of me may have changed to the point where I am seen as a club spokesperson. I personally don’t believe that to be the case, I may have mellowed over the last few years but that isn’t down to the joyous position I now find myself in up in the press gantry.
But having read with interest, delight and sadness of fans views and ideas on our current situation, especially those that feel they will now stop coming to the Valley, I just felt that I needed to add my two penneth, not least perhaps because it will make me feel better!!
I apologise for the length of this post and if it's not posted on the right thread. This may come back to haunt me, but here goes…
I remember standing on the terrace in Sept 1985, not really caring about what was happening on the pitch. Partial disbelief transformed into anger, both at the clubs owners and at the 3,000 or so mercenaries that had come to watch us die that day. I was actually screaming irrationally at people as they dug bits up and ripped bits off, I just couldn’t help it, where the bloody hell had they been for the last few years whilst I had been trudging to the Valley and all corners of the country every week?
The only reason I mention this again is because I am beginning to see the same anger in fans but specifically also in my Children. The same indignance and mis-trust at the owners of our club that I had felt back then. I am doing my best to try to calm the waters, but generally it is only a temporary measure, before some other nugget of information hits us from SE7 to set them off again.
What is bizzarley great is that we are poles apart in what we perceive to be happening. Back in 1985 and beyond, my perception was that we had owners who refused or were unable to invest in the ground or the team. We had been up and down from the 2nd and 3rd divisions and had partially survived on the occasional shrewd/lucky usually cheap buy and some good kids coming through, (European players of the year aside). Bankruptcy, insolvency, crisis, closure were all words that tended to follow the name Charlton Athletic when any news broke and for the most part I felt absolutely oblivious as to how an 18 to 24 year old know nothing from Dartford could make any difference to proceedings. In truth the answer was NONE!
Fortunately much further down the line there were others with clout, know-how and cash to step in. All I felt then and all I feel now is that all I can do is support MY team, MY club in the only way I know how, by turning up as I had always done from 1967 to this very day.
My children at the moment believe as others do, that amongst other things, our current owners are running this club into the ground, that we are merely a plaything for an owner who has not the slightest idea how to run a football club and even possibly that there is some Belgium conspiracy to turn us into a feeder club just to make a once great club in Liege, great again.
Are they right, I actually have no real idea? But I point to the fact that the current owner dug into his pockets to buy us which arguably if he had not done so, our fate could now be much worse. I argue that investment in the team, the ground and our youth system has taken place and is promised to continue, I explain that we have had a few managerial merry go rounds in the past so the stuff that is happening now is nothing new. I try to theorise that on balance the influx of network players have probably left us about even, (some good some bad) and I even point to our league position, (not withstanding current form) and try to show them that things are not that bad compared to previous years.
So far that has made little difference to their general feeling of malaise, usually because something else happens to kick them in the teeth, but as I continually explain, I actually just don’t see the catastrophe that awaits us according to some fans, I’m sorry I just don’t.
Am I happy with what’s transpired over the past two seasons, no of course not, just as I haven’t been entirely happy, (CP’s appointment and promotion aside), with what has been happening in the years following our relegation from the Premiership. Am I happy with our current managerial ‘excuse me’, no of course not, what fan would be, but what am I supposed to do?
Join a ‘Fan revolt’, to what end and for what conceivable positive objective?
I remember being absolutely furious at Michael Gliksten and his so called ‘puppet’ Andy Nelson for many years and when the Mike Bailey’s dismissal happened. I was inconsolable for ages and unfairly absolutely despised Alan Mullery because of it. As with others I turned up every week, I booed, I shouted, I protested and what happened, bugger all. Well except for the small and I am sure unrelated matter of Gliksten bailing out and leaving us in the mess that others thought could only be resolved by leaving the Valley!!
And now I guess to my point, I’m sorry that it has taken this long to get to.
As with me in 1985, when I looked at the club that was playing Stoke City and compared it to the one that my Dad introduced me to on a freezing November night back in 1967. My Children now do not see the same club that I introduced them to back in the mid 90’s and that disillusionment is real, however much I feel that they may be over exaggerating matters, however much I don’t see the same looming disaster, their feelings as with others are real and therefore cannot and should not be dismissed, by me, other fans or the board.
But I sincerely hope that as with me, they will still travel week in week out. Them by singing, shouting, complaining, even protesting and no doubt drinking, me for now still fulfilling a long held dream of commentating on CAFC. Both of which I hope will go some small way to ensure that those who may now choose to vote with their feet, still have a club to come back to when the dust settles.
At the time I didn’t see it, but over the years I have realised that the few hundred, maybe even the few thousand that stayed away from the club both prior to 1985 and for the years after, helped shape our destiny and along with the many that kept going (and the few heroes), turned us into the force we were for the next 14 years.
I may be wrong but I suspect that this is the Charlton that fans want back, just please don’t forget the decades of turmoil that led us there.
I am not saying that fans should just put up and shut up, quite the contrary, if it is your desire and belief that turning up and voicing your displeasure is the way to go, then fill yer boots. If you have a spare 40 squillion down the back of the sofa and want to buy the club, then be my guest and if you have a genius idea that can some way allow us mere mortals to help put this club back to whatever part of our history suits us best, then share it now. And if it is your decision that enough is enough and you do decide that you just cannot watch your club anymore at the moment, then so be it. But don’t be too surprised if there are a few angry fans to greet you when you come back, at least for a while.
That is of course unless the Valley has been hydraulically lifted and moved on the back of a low loader to a town just outside Aachen.
Apologies for the flippancy at the end , couldn’t help myself!!
the only time it didn't feel we were being shafted was the Alwen/Murray(the earlier years).
So even thou it's not good at the moment,we have had it worse.
Like you, I've come to realise that there's nothing new under the sun - and in one form or other, we've seen it all before following Charlton.
People may stamp their feet, shout and throw their toys out of the pram; perhaps some would rather go shopping with their missus on a Saturday afternoon - but maybe the best way forward at the moment is just to wait and see what happens next?
Each generation of fans will miss things from their early years, when a lack of cynicism made it all so enjoyable, but as long as results on the pitch see us to an entertaining top half finish I don't feel too many realists would complain. Nevertheless, a little more sense of inclusion from Belgium might just go a long way towards recapturing the hearts of those who still support the club.
One common theme behind everything that ebbs and flows in the wider debate is actually bums on seats. It may not be apparent in every thread, but one is never more than a couple of steps away from the question about attending matches.
Of course I may be wrong about that, maybe the income from ticket sales is so marginal that crowd numbers are no biggie to owners. Football could continue at an empty Valley if funded some other way.
Which brings me to why people go at all. The answer is of course pretty varied and complex, but my problem at the moment with the current owners is they don't seem to want to engage with the question, or not in any depth. Perhaps it doesn't matter.
However I believe that if every part of Charlton Athletic wanted to find the answer to what gets people to turn up, and then acted upon it, the result would be unifying and not divisive.
At the moment it is not so much about whether I want to be there, but whether Charlton Athletic want me there.