Reading some blogs and social media posts, decrying excessive negativity among CAFC fans, I must say my impression is not that way at all, but hey perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.
Anyway I'm not sure where I sit on this. Is this a maintaining exercise or a substantial improvement on last season? Excited by the number of new signings, most if not all untested in this division of course.
The club are also replacing a large number of outgoing players, many of whom have only been here a season, one in Wiggins only recently signed a new deal, which seems to suggest the lack of a coherent approach.
The number of undisclosed fees just seems a little silly for a club of our stature, really what have we got to hide and from whom? It doesn't inspire trust to be honest.
The money we are spending which seems to be dazzling some is to all appearances net of transfers fees, rather than the proceeds of selling the Network mothership Standard Liege, or so we speculate at least. It's still mainting interest nonetheless, at the same were we really that keen to keep Gomez or was it just business? Seems a bit like the last time we sold a fullback, lets hope so.
Of course the window is not yet shut, nevertheless it would seem we are sticking to a rigid squad policy of similar size to last year which is a concern.
The yearly clear out, and slow start to preseason and injuries to our key front and back men, neither of whom have been covered, combined with a tough start to the season in our opposition teams does seem to put a bit of a dampner on proceedings.
The pedigrees and lengths of deals of the new signings does seem to be a bit different to last year so perhaps the man with the laptop on excel and youtube has upped his game? Although I'd be amazed if we were relegation candidates as some bookies think, we do seem to still have a couple of major holes still unplugged which may give some grounds for concern about starting on the back foot.
Unfortunately I will do my usual late start to the season, holidaying with the kids in Greece this year, but look forward to see how these things pan out, hopefully with a few more players in place.
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Undisclosed? Good. We keep our information secret from our competitors.
Prudent management? Good. We are sustainable.
Small squad size? Not so good, but by now it isn't even that small. We need one or two more signings maximum.
You're the dampner on proceedings
We don't know how many will sink and how many will swim but my gut feeling is that there will be more swimmers than sinkers. It will take a few weeks to get into their stroke but I think it will come.
The real positives though are in that Roland has put the club back on a very firm financial footing that has manifested itself in all areas of the club.
The training ground and academy will be state of the art and give us an edge over our rivals in attracting local talent.
The Valley has been restored to its former glory and the shabbiness is gone.
The squad is unrecognisable in terms of quality to how it was when RD took over.
There is no reason to suppose that the progress made in 18 months will not continue.
We are being run sensibly. We won't sell cheap and we won't pay silly money. The model looks sustainable. Unspectacular but steady.
We fell a long way and were still falling when RD caught us. We are now tangibly rising again.
I don't feel negative about my club at all at the moment.
I don't think it's really possible to be negative about this coming season as we haven't even kicked a ball and we have also made sufficient number of signings. The only scenario it would be excusable to be negative would be if we hadn't signed enough players, but we have. Whether they are good enough to cut it at this level is another story, but it is too early to make that judgement.
Without even playing one competitive game our new players aren't good enough.
The owner hasn't got a clue how to run the club despite investing large sums on the infrastructure and playing staff, however the funds are raised.
There are still a number of players needed, I think we all agree on that, even the manager (and the owner). Hopefully the laptop man can continue to play championship manager and recruit at least a couple more players who we can write off before we've even see them play.
Personally I'm looking forward to this season more than I have for the past couple and who knows we might even win a game or two because of, rather than despite of, the players, manager, owner.
but like everyone else nobody knows how it will pan out yet but I'm confident the 7 signings we've made will do well from what Iv seen of them.
I have warmed to RD, the stadium improvements may, ultimately be 'fluff' but it has surprised me how much better it is to see the place look so good. The training ground talk is excellent news, albeit until something material happens it means nothing.
I even quite like the 'sex tape' and 'sofa', not because I think they themselves are wonderful ideas but because in these days of social media and entertainment choice, coming up with fresh ideas and marketing plans can only be a positive thing for the club IMO.
One final, and in my opinion, huge positive about RD though is that he is a genuine, bone fide businessman. Google him and there he is, with a real business, real cash, made from genuine places. Not a dodgy Russian/Middle Eastern etc owner pumping a load of most likely dodgy, laundered cash through my (MASSIVE?) club. I don't get why he bought us but he is a lot better in that respect than many.
There's definitely potential within the team, but they're going to have to learn to defend in the Championship very quickly if the Bolton game is anything to go by.
I'm looking forward to watching Ceballos regularly - but can't help feeling from a squad perspective we're a bit light. We've really only got 3 centre halves, which presumably means Diarra will slot in there if necessary. Last time we didn't have enough centre halves we got relegated...
Hopefully we are not scrambling for signings in January again to turn our season around.
Roland always does just enough to keep the supporters on side. Remember when he arrived, and there was bemusement in the camp about the Liege signings,who I'll remind you were toilet , but to keep us on side he gave Wiggins a massive contract! Bizarre.
He's done the same thing this year with Cousins IMO. I really hope this summers new recruits turn out to be not as cack as the liege lot...... But I won't be holding my breath!
Well, he has bought players. None of whom I have a clue about, I doubt many others do either. He has held on to a couple of decent players (IMHO) in Vetokele and Gudmundsson, and Watt. There was nothing he could do about Gomez.
In short, I now think we are slightly better off than at this time last year, but it will depend on how the new signings fit in, if they are as good as JBG then we will be top half, if not, bottom half.
The Standard Liege loanees were always players that couldnt get into their First Team (Ajdarevic / Nego etc...) and then we signed players out of favour who proved their worth (Buyens / Bulot).
We've now signed players from superior leagues to the Belgian Pro League (9th) for example (With UEFA League Rankings in brackets):
Patrick Bauer... Maritimo... Portuguese Liga (5th)
El-Hadji Ba... Sunderland / Bastia (Loan Spell)... Premier League (3rd) / Ligue One (6th)
Ahmed Kashi... FC Metz... Ligue One (6th)
Cristian Ceballos... Tottenham Hotpsur (3rd)
Zakarya Bergdich... Real Valladolid / Genoa (Loan Spell)... La Liga (1st) / Serie A (4th)
Naby Sarr... Sporting Lisbon... Portuguese Liga (5th)
Simon Makienok... Palermo... Serie A (4th)
Isn't the more valid comparison with "the end of last season".
We've bought a lot of young players with as yet unfulfilled potential. Ba didn't to it a Sunderland despite coming with a big reputation. Mak didn't do it at Palermo despite a fine scoring record in Denmark, Cellabos didn't break through at Spurs but clearly has something, Sarr lost his place at Lisbon but was well thought of.
All have potential but as yet unfulfilled which is why they were, relatively, cheap and available to a mid-table championship side operating on a budget.
We don't know if they or the others are going to fulfil that potential with Charlton. Will they be a Gudmussen or a Le Point?
We kept Cousins and JBG which were both excellent signings but we had them already. That doesn't strengthen us.
We did lose a lot of players with experience in the Championship. Older players with little or no sell on value but with experience we leant on heavily in the second half of the season.
We lost one of our better players in Gomez. OK, not much we could do to stop that and the money seems to have been spent but in squad terms that is a big loss.
And two key players, Hendo and Igor, are out injured again. it was when we lost them both after Reading away that things went badly wrong.
So to be able to say that we are "better off than the END of last season" we need 5 or 6 of the 7 newbies to hit the ground running and I think that is a lot to ask.
Personally I think we'll be fine over 46 games and we'll be good v QPR but it looks like another bumpy ride
So we will win some games, lose some games and maybe draw some games?
Yes, I agree about that!
;-)
Bumpy ride is more about being top six, then going on a 13 match run without a win, sacking another coach and then finishing 12th : - )
KM hinted that they'd look again at their aims (maybe the squad? (my emphasis)) after there had been some games under the belt,
RD is still losing c£5m? a year for the privilege of course before he's got out of bed, so one assumes it can't go on too long, unless of course we will move on some of the 'discoveries' to make it break even. Our most saleable assets being JBG and Cousins perhaps? The sale of Gomez does seem to have been offset by recent acquisitions, at least until we start getting bonus payments. So that strategy does seem a way off being realised however to me, but would explain the 'investment' in the training ground, and buying upcoming talent on long deals. For even that to work, it seems to me once again that there needs to be more bodies on the conveyor belt.
I believe I said on another thread some time ago that perhaps the strategy is to gradually build a squad step by step rather than gamble on a big investment in players hoping it works. If it works then the gamble pays off - if it doesn't then we risk the club being saddled with even more debt. That isn't a sensible way to run any business.
Do I believe the squad is stronger this season? - yes. Is it strong enough to get promotion? - maybe, maybe not - time will tell. If it ultimately proves not to be strong enough then we can add to the mix until it is.
It seems inconceivable to me that any owner of a Championship club wouldn't want promotion as their objective and I'm sure that's what RD wants. But it may take a few years of gradual strengthening to achieve that.
The RD system still needs to prove they can match or better that, hopefully its this season if we are moving forward.
Think that answered some questions