I posed in another thread the main questions I personally would like to ask RD. I tried to emphasise that i could fully imagine a positive answer to my questions, but some posters chose to assume that just posting my questions was some kind of hostile act. To try and demonstrate that this was not my intention, here I try to imagine how he might answer, in a way which would give me comfort that there is a plan we could believe in and support. "Angel's advocate" ? Certainly I think these answers are perfectly plausible. But at this time they remain questions he has never addressed in any details.
I hope this will be of interest to those who just want to try and make intelligent guesses at what the business objectives and strategy are, without any assumed personal "agendas"
1. I have read that your main goal is to show that football clubs can be run at break even? Is this your business goal?
No, of course not. I became interested in how football is a bigger and bigger social phenomenon, more and more money comes into football, and yet clubs run up bigger and bigger losses. I want to demonstrate that such losses are absurd and can be eliminated
2. What should break even? Each individual club P&L, or Staprix NV?
It’s all my money, so of course I evaluate my total return. But each club needs its own P&L so that I can inspect how it is doing on both the revenue and cost sides.
3. When do you expect break even? This season or over a longer period?
It’s unusual for a new business to turn a profit or break even in the first year, so yes a longer period. I’d rather not specify how long
4. Do you accept that break even in the Championship seems almost impossible, in which case, promotion is the most likely route to CAFC break even?
Certainly I’m disappointed by the failure to stick to FFP rules. And by the way, I’m puzzled that you fans don’t get more angry with those who govern football, rather than with me. Clearly there are huge new revenues available if Charlton get to the FAPL. However I have also noticed a lot of Championship club owners gambling recklessly to get those revenues. This is absurd, and I will not do it. We are finding smarter ways to build a competitive team. In the medium term they include more young players from the Academies at Charlton and throughout the network.
5.If each club is to break even, then how does the network valuation of players work in a way which is transparent? After all, we've apparently "paid" a lot of money for some players who did not give value for money. That is the most puzzling aspect of the network model for me, if indeed each club is expected to stand on its own feet.
We have a software package which calculates sensible player values, based on rational statistical information .
There are a lot of transfer fees which are not sensible. Look at some of the very high fees I have managed to get for Standard players I sold. And of course many of these fees are inflated by the need for agents to get their cut. Our software is far more sophisticated than Transfermarkt. However if you look at Transfermarkt, there is not a great deal of difference between the fees for Tucudean and for Tony Watt, in the context of European fees for strikers . So there may be some that work out better than others, but it is based on data, and I believe will overall deliver better players to Charlton for less than the open market can do.
You also need to understand that the other clubs are our business competitors. When Charlton get players from the network, it means we are not giving money to our competitors for players.
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Comments
Next in our series:
Henry Irving interviews Princess Diana
Do you really see us as a feeder club for Standard Liege?
Huh?
Do you feel your scouting network has underestimated the Championship?
Huh?
Do you interfere with team selection?
Huh?
Can you hear me?
Huh?
I agree on the whole (apart from 5) that these would be encouraging answers.
Me: Hi Rachel, you're looking very nice today.
RR: Thanks, you scrub up alright too!
Me: Really? I mean, yes, of course. Fancy going for a drink?
RR: Sure. Let's go now, we can do some sums on the way.
I think this is perfectly plausible.
PA: "here you go"
The majority of posters (so far): "oh yeah in your dreams he's going to answer them like that. Deluded, etc"
I will explain what I mean, but it is going to be long (and, for many, boring) so please ignore if you are not interested. In no particular order at all:
1, It seems to me that most of these questions have been answered, in high-level terms, so, for example, the idea of the club being a social good was set out as one of the fundamental reasons for the takeover and the management has been at great pains to say that the club is now financially secure.
2, Whenever the club gives answers, then it tends to be told that either it is lying, or that it is being political, or that ‘those were not the real questions anyway, the real questions were’ – it is like a many-headed hydra where you keep trying to chop down arguments and 10 more keep popping up.
3, This had led to a level of questioning of strategy and plan that is just not normal for football clubs and did not happen under the last regime here. How many football fans know anything more about their club’s strategy than ‘we want to win the league’, which might be true but is pure fantasy for most. It seems that some people would be happier if the club did lie to them on this and give them bland, la-la land promises.
4, I think this is because many of the ‘anti’ arguments are just not purely ‘logical’ in this way (which certainly does not make them wrong) but it is very hard to argue against “I feel like I have lost my Charlton” or “I do not believe that the owner cares for the club”. Indeed when KM has tried to tackle some of these arguments (for example trying to say that obviously RD does care about the club because he is spending so much money on players) then she just gets accused of boasting about the money he is spending.
5, If there are serious questions (and, even for me, there are) I see no evidence of anybody actually asking them. That does not mean that nobody has, but if so, I do not know about it. What I do see is at least two meetings where KM has sat there and answered all the fans questions, and yet still we are told that there is no communication. If there are questions, then ask them in a good structured way.
6, The club appears to have been pretty clear that their preferred route of communication is through KM and RM – they have the right and responsibility to understand and explain RD’s vision for CAFC. The constant desire to go straight over their heads is so disrespectful because it simply suggests that they are incapable of doing their jobs of understanding and explaining this vision.
7, I, for one, am not at all clear as to what communication already goes on between the club and the Trust. When this started, it seemed to be suggested (or, at least, I understood) that the club had completed snubbed the Trust and had refused to speak to it at any level. Then I read that RM does talk to the Trust regularly, and that it is part of his job to do so and that KM merely passed on a communications about how the Trust could help promote a game to the business development manager, which does not seem unreasonable to me. So now I am confused and do think it would be helpful if the Trust would make a clear statement, firstly, of what communication does take place and, secondly, what efforts the Trust has made to work within the communications channels that the club wants – if that communications channel is RM, have questions been put to him that he has refused to answer? If he says that a certain question if not for him to answer, has he been asked to pass it on to the right person? If so, what has he said?
8, I have a general feeling that ‘lack of communication’ is being used as the ‘bright Summer’s day argument’ – the 'virtuous, winning argument' because who could possibly be against it? When, in fact it is pretty much the only thing that pretty much everyone else who is oppositional to the ownership agree on. When in fact it is more a mixture of worries and fears, some of which are more informed than others and some of which are more operational queries than reasons for a revolution.
9, You now have a situation whereby there were 25,000 people at the Football For A Fiver game and then an organisation with about 1000 members is coming to you saying ‘you have to talk to us on our own because we are the voice of the fans’, I think there is some justice in saying ‘no you are not’.
Please do not misunderstand me on this, I am a member of the Trust and a huge supporter of it and admirer of the people who lead it, but when it starts throwing round words like ‘season-ticket strikes’ and ‘bringing RD to the table’, when it runs surveys where everyone has to answer that getting rid of RD is at least on their priority list, and when it makes a special effort to publicise the views of the former, and now opposition, manager on the club’s big game of the season (and, as a journalist myself, I do completely sympathise with the quandary that the Trust found itself on that), then I think the club can be forgiven for a little wariness.
Again, I am not saying that the Trust has done wrong, rather that it has an opportunity to show leadership to gather together the fans’ questions and calmly put them to the club in the way that the club wants to be communicated with. For me, that is the way that trust it rebuilt on all sides and so it is the way forward.
Very, very we'll put.
A very well structured reasoned and eloquent set of points, Stevie.
I doff my hat to you, sir.
To be fair, whilst it is not usual for fans to want this information, or rather be given this information I recall Prague asking for business plans from the club numerous times during the Curbishley years, so it's not just s new owner phenomenon.
I'm on the train to Cardiff and I don't find it easy to post on my mobile, but the highlighted text is 1) a year old, 2) not something put out by the trust and 3) something that specifically relates to the circumstances surrounding the sacking of Chris Powell. So I suggest its inclusion as something the trust has done or is doing and a basis for comment about the trust is unreasonable, to say the least.
I'll leave it at that for now ...
However, the public meeting, organised by the Trust, had Airman as the most passionate speaker & Steve Dixon as wanting RD out.
This of course, to most fans, who don't follow events with a fine tooth comb, like it or not, muddies the water, with what the Trust are saying/wanting.
I was at the meeting and am far from confident overall (I hope I'm wrong), but as a way forward, I think StevieK has made a valid point.
Not much to add really. good post @Stevie K . Just to be clear, as Airman says the Trust has never supported the idea of a season ticket strike. We think it's in the best interests of everyone that the club maximizes its revenue, and certainly we are are interested to help with plans that increase that revenue.
Actually Stevie K why don't you come and have a chat with one of the Trust people at one of the games. You're a member, you believe we ve been sounding the wrong notes at times, we want to hear from people like you, you can help to shape our message and action.
No idea what @Kap10 refers to. I don't think a discussion on Glynnes mailing list, which he was part of, constitutes a "demand" . Anyway on the other thread which I was chased off I was told that I used to have "cozy chats" with the chairman in those days.
And @greenie ...Every cloud, eh?
Personally I believe there are pertinent questions that the club aren't asking themselves, and the Supporters' Trust is persisting because they still need asking. Questioning is not a negative: the answer might either satisfy the question or highlight a problem. Both allow progression. Both allow learning.
There is quite some evidence that the club are drawing assumptions rather than understanding the truth of a lot of things. I've heard it said that the Trust is negative, that it's too close to ex-employees, that its board want to recreate old glories, that we want a fight. None of those things are true - what we want is what we were told by 400 people other supporters wanted. A board that is prepared to engage supporters at a senior level to understand who we are, what's helpful about our culture, what might need to be changed, how change might be received and how best to manage it.
An example. A fair number of season ticket holders said they weren't going to attend again this season, and there was indeed a fair number of empty seats in home areas. If people who committed their money for a full season aren't attending, the club needs to understand why.
For me the answer lies in 30 years of history, tradition and a matured culture of supporter involvement in the club's development. Whether it was buying Ronnie Moore, keeping the club alive at Selhurst, maintaining the vision of returning to the Valley, raising the £1m to push it over the line, committing time and effort to Target 10k, 20k, 40k - and so on - this is our culture. An owner who appears to be here for the long term but is uninterested in those thousands of people who have been so intrinsic to our club - vitally not just the Valley Party few - is leaving people feeling so disenfranchised they're not coming back.
Now, some aspects of that culture may not be helpful. After all, football moves on year by year and the club has to as well. Yet there is a possibility that trusting the supporters a little more and involving them at a senior level - even if that's in a constrained way as the VIP Director was - may actually be of mutual benefit.
I applaud Prague's attempts to illustrate how constructive asking questions can be. It's not all negative, it's about what RD is actually about himself - challenging the status quo, seeing how things might creatively work better. And Charlton supporters have demonstrated their ability to create and effect positive change over a long period of time - why wouldn't they be the people you go to when you're trying something new? In fact, it seems almost incredulous that they're not, other than with severe constraints and solely on their own terms.