We've won a game now. Frankly that is worth more to me than anything that has happened this week.Leuth said:Trying to think about this is trickier than I thought it'd be.
The narrative is that Fraeye has come from the Belgian equivalent of Northwich Victoria and has no management experience, only here because he is cheap and known to Roland. The narrative is that we are clowntown. The narrative is enraged.
My argument is that of course this happened - in fact, it would have been surprising if anything else did.
Fraeye is indeed cheap and known to Roland. His cheapness is the whole point - he is a tenured employee on call rather than a new man with a golden handshake. Do you really think he was at Hamme to further his career? I'd be perfectly willing to believe that during their recent losing run he was concentrating more on Charlton than his own side. It was a holding pen, nothing more.
Furthermore, Fraeye knows The Valley and many of these players. He has more than just experience at this level; he has experience with us. I wonder if Jackson thinks this is the worst appointment we could have made. I bet he doesn't.
I am not saying that there is nothing disappointing about this - Roland has lived down to budgeted expectations. But this leads me to my second point - concerning the club's ownership.
By now it is clear that Roland's little scheme of egalitarian football revolution requires a tweak or two. His ideas about a society powered by social dividends and the partial redistribution of wealth strike a chord, but football is not the common good - it is a fundamentally conservative, meritocratic, spiteful, ruthless and cruel institution. It is every club jack for itself. While I somewhat admire his trial run for a kindlier, gentler EU, it uses football clubs as its playing pieces. It uses our football club. If he'd picked, say, Brighton, I'd be following their story quite assiduously. I'd be wishing them luck in their little tryst with Ujpest and St Truiden. I'd throw my hands up and say "Oy, but this would always be!" when it ran into the teeth of this brutal league. Poor little Brighton! Sundered by a visionary eccentric whose ideas I like but whose aptness for football is limited.
And indeed, I would wish Roland well were he to go into politics. I think the world needs more like him, who look for the common good and the fairest incorporation of a society and its people.
But he owns Charlton, and while he owns Charlton, we will be rinsed - not directly by Roland, but by the other clubs in this league, who won't play ball with his League of Nations. For while we are led by a Corbyn, they are all led by Hitler himself. Charlton would need to be relegated two or three times before finding other clubs with comparably docile ownership models. The irony of people abandoning us for Welling etc is that at this point we are the closest we have ever been to a non-league model. The cry of "We want our Charlton back" goes up, but in this commercialised sport, no longer my village against yours but my benefactor's chequebook against yours' oilfield, ownership at this level is increasingly distanced from fan revenues. In actual fact I think the opposite is now true of Charlton. Would we have our club back with a sheikh in charge and a regular 11th-place Premiership finish? Don't make me laugh. We are running a model that looks to preserve, not expand.
If you don't mind where Charlton are in the pyramid, this is fine.
But you do, and Roland is dimly aware of this, so he is trying to keep us up, somewhat - a few good signings should do it - plus a coach who knows the players, knows European football, shows a few book smarts. Until another coach who buys into the revolution turns up - if one does. Brian Clough was a socialist, don't forget!
It might work. I genuinely think we will stay up this season. I do not think it is sustainable for this tier, however, and so the cry of Roland Out becomes inevitable for those wanting a bash at the Premiership.
I say fuck the Premiership. But it would be nice to win a few games.
Comments
:-)
These questions addressed especially to those who'd get a season ticket no matter who's in charge or what division we're in (provided we're not being openly Becchetti'd or forced away from our ground). What are we doing? Are we anachronisms who should keep shtum, appeasers who should be shot, or do we play an important role in this story?
Aah hell, time for bed Zebedee