Some question whether this was aimed at the press or the supporters. I don’t think the club can win this battle by getting the press onside at the expense of alienating the supporters further. Ultimately there is no club without supporters. So, I’m judging the statement from the point of view of how suitable it is as a statement to supporters.
I think if you’re going to do it in the form of a Q&A, then for it to be persuasive at all to fans it must (1) ask the difficult questions and not skirt round them; (2) it must answer with an appropriate balance between acknowledging mistakes and arguing in a credible way for the club’s views. I think it’s pretty difficult for a piece from RM to achieve (2) without seriously undermining KM. Therefore (unless it’s been decided to dump KM) I would say it should be written as though from KM.
I’ve had a go at including some of the difficult questions and I’ve tried to answer them (from RM) in a way that might do more good than harm to relations with supporters. I imagine many people will still be unimpressed, because it really is hard to get this right at this stage of relationship-breakdown, but I offer it as some food for thought. I found it useful to try to put myself in the club’s shoes.
Q: Supporters were very unimpressed at being described as the equivalent of customers of a restaurant. Is this the way supporters are viewed by the club?
A: Most certainly not. The point that Katrien was trying to make was the exact opposite: supporters are not like customers in a restaurant. That is why they can get so angry at club actions with which they disagree. I should also clarify that Katrien did not say supporters are weird; she said that the phenomenon of being a supporter was weird. To be fair it is weird how that lifelong, deep commitment to a single club comes about – weird, but also a football club’s most important asset and we accept fully that it is our responsibility to look after that asset in a way that recognises its value.
Q: In the same interview Katrien said that the club sees the academy as a source of revenue, realised by selling our best players to the premier league. There was seemingly no interest in the value, and pleasure, these young players could add to the club through our keeping them for as long as possible. Doesn’t that imply a fundamental mismatch between the club’s objectives and the whole concept of a football club as seen from the fans’ perspective?
A: The danger of these live interviews is that under the pressure of having to give brief answers which address the perspective of the event – in this case a business perspective – the whole picture is not captured. So, with the benefit of having the time to give a fuller picture, let me attempt to do that.
The prime purpose of the academy is to produce players for the club. It is inevitable that many players will not make our grade, that some will, and that some will turn out to be capable of playing at a higher level than that at which the club is playing. Those in the first category get released. Our hope for those in the second category is that they will stay with us long-term. Our hope for the third category is that they will stay with us for a reasonably long period, but the players and their agents have their own views on how long they are willing to stay. It was not the club’s wish that Diego Poyet left as soon as he did, nor that Joe Gomez did. In general we believe it’s not in the player’s interest either, although it’s hard to argue that point in Joe’s case as he left and then immediately found himself in Liverpool’s first team.
Q: Katrien’s answer at the fans’ meeting that all the decisions on managers / head coaches were correct ones left everyone stunned. How can you credibly claim that it’s good to have five managers in two years?
A: Five managers in two years is not good. However, I would argue that the decision on Chris Powell was correct. As Chris said himself, Roland’s strategy and his were incompatible – it would have been stupid to have ignored that. The decision to appoint Jose Riga to keep us up was clearly correct, as that is exactly what he did. You might argue, with hindsight that he should have been given a new contract rather than appoint Bob Peeters, but Bob looked to be a strong candidate and I think the decision was entirely understandable. It didn’t work out as we wished and so Bob was replaced by Guy Luzon whose first task was to keep us up; again he was successful in doing this. Of course, it would have been better if Guy’s reign had lasted longer, but we were in freefall under Bob and it was correct to take action. Maybe the answer to the question put to her was stated too unequivocally, but the record on management appointments has more to be said about it than a bald ‘five managers in two years’.
Q: You’ve spoken earlier about the importance of open communications with fans. Was it good and open communications to appoint Karel Fraeye as an ‘interim’ coach and then let this run on for over two months with no sign of this becoming permanent or of another person being appointed permanently?
A: No, we should have said more. Some people clearly took ‘interim’ to mean simply holding the fort for a week or two before someone else came in. That is sometimes what an interim does. On other occasions, however, the intention is to treat it more as a trial period for someone who either hasn’t held a head coach position or hasn’t done the job at the same level. There are plenty of examples of the latter situation, eg [ provide a couple of examples]
Q: You’ve not touched on the fact that all appointments were of people managing in Belgium and, with the exception of Bob Peeters, of people previously employed by Roland Duchatelet. I think people will recognise that a candidate who is known to the owner starts with an advantage as he’s a known quantity, but surely other qualities/experience should sometimes outweigh being a known quantity, especially when the known quantity is only known for his experience of managing in the Belgium third tier?
A: Er, you’ve got me there. [It’s really hard to find an answer that could be given that didn’t exacerbate things.]
The only "statement" I really wanted to hear was that Mr. Duchatelet had entered into negotiations in respect of the sale of CAFC. I'd have settled for an interim statement that a viable manager had been recruited to replace the hapless Fraye. Instead we get this. Mealy mouthed bullshit and confirmation if it were needed that nothing is going to change anytime soon. That they underestimated the Championship - ffs they were saying that after the first wave of foreign misfits arrived and were then hastily moved out of harms way. Still, we have moved swiftly to bring in players with championship experience (e.g Poyet who hasn't completed a single season and Johnson who we had to get rid of to make available). And Duchatelet is here for the long term. Utterly, utterly depressing
Murray, a word to the wise, the day Alan Curbishley left the building you started losing the plot, and have been losing it ever since, up to and including your pretentious drivel put out today.
Make no mistake, Airman Brown and his merry men are more savvy and streetwise than you'll be if you live to be a hundred years old.
They will make mincemeat of you and your Belgian mates in the coming weeks and months.
This is RD's third season with us. How can anyone "underestimate" the championship for 3 seasons? Absolute drivel.
And was RM on holiday or something? He's overseen Charlton for 20 years, and half of that has been at Championship level.
Key point! So what's his input been over the three years? Can hardly believe he's been banging down the door offering pearls of wisdom for the entire time.
On the one hand You could argue that by not attending you are not supporting Charlton properly but au contraire I say to you that by Boycotting you are not supporting Rolands evil plan. So what if you have a ST. A one match boycott will be worth it to show them we cannot be shat upon anymore. I say put the ball in their court and demand Meire be sacked or we Boycott.
It is not an easy call i understand. I have said on here a few days ago i will not be going to the valley again until this shower of shit are gone. Does that mean i dont support charlton anymore? Of course not. I will continue to love CA FC but i cannot support what is happening so will take a break for my own sanity
We complain in advance that the silence is wrong and that whatever is said will not be enough.
A sale of the club is not realistic within the transfer window nor are multi million pound star signings.
Who we have signed is a small step forward and suggests some acknowledgement quick action is needed to try and retain our Championship status if you accept that what has gone before cannot be undone.
The only thing but a VERY big thing is the continued non reference to the managerial position. It is incredible that not even a side reference was made but nonetheless there it is.
I don't understand why the local and national press are not pushing this very specific simple and direct question on our behalf far more.
After all the hype and build up of a "club statement" this was simply nothing more than a Q & A session.
Usually a "club statement" is short and brief but with the build up to it I actually thought it could be RM finally seeing sense and deciding to stand down or maybe even KM standing down, either way I expected some kind of reaction to the protests and all we got was a re-hash of information we already knew with the odd snippet of news thrown in by RM the complete opposite of what I thought we would see.
Many others have said it better than I can on this thread or the Murray thread. Even upto a couple of months ago at most I still had RM down as better to be in the boardroom with little influence than outside it with none. That final shred of confidence in RM has now dissolved. If he had anything about him he would have addressed the hard questions which needed answering.
Yes in an ideal world I can see what RM is saying about buying in to self sustaining not wanting to take a punt etc but the point is RM has already told us this information many times before. He will gladly tell us he supports the regime because he believes they can take us from A to B but what he constantly overlooks are the methods used to take us from A to B when in fact we are going in the opposite direction. I think the only new bits of information gleaned from that Q&A was an official admission quoted from RD that he had under-estimated the strength of the Championship and a few references to doing early business in the January transfer window.
And the other point to his argument about the alternative being administration...that was 2014 and there is your problem RM the failure to keep pace with the changing times...it's been proven there are other willing buyers out there so that argument no longer holds any weight.
I said before the only way RM can salvage his good reputation was by helping the club to move forward either by making RD see the error of his ways and address the issues that need addressing or just help broker a deal for new owners whether that involves PV or not. Now I just feel even if he did manage to achieve either it would only just about keep his head above water now. He just can't see it, just doesn't get it and hasn't done at all post Curbs and now you have to question did he ever get it at all even during the Curbs years or was he just riding the wave of good fortune Curbs created.
Pathetic, cringeworthy and frankly a waste of time reading that interview. Only at Charlton can they build up a "club statement" only to serve us a re-hashed Q&A with RM.
Not unusually there is as much drivel posted here as the stuff most are criticising. I am no admirer of the management but nothing (except possibly an EXTENDED BOYCOTT) is going to effect any changes at the top two levels: that is Roland and KM. There would be a better chance if ALL "protests" and comments were directed for one limited purpose: namely for the appointment of a credible manager
From the looks of it, the club never announced it beforehand, it was actually the SLP that said a "statement" was coming out. There might indeed be an actual statement forthcoming, but if there isnt it wasnt the club that said there was one....
Annoying.
Suspect the club leaked it though. And now they have headed back to the bunker to resume complete silence.
Exactly. Cawley would've been briefed.
He must feel pretty cheesed off now at having been duped by Roland's stooges.
On the one hand You could argue that by not attending you are not supporting Charlton properly but au contraire I say to you that by Boycotting you are not supporting Rolands evil plan. So what if you have a ST. A one match boycott will be worth it to show them we cannot be shat upon anymore. I say put the ball in their court and demand Meire be sacked or we Boycott.
So if Meire is sacked, you'll be happy and return for the rest of the season ?
what a patronising, bordering on offensive load of bs. Like ooh ah this makes more angry than ever, KF is a fraud and signings to make his tenure easier annoys me intensely.
Freye out, Meire out before I even start on the path to listening to anything the club says.
On the face of it Richard Murray makes some positive comments in the interview, but it is what is not asked or answered to me that is the problem. He highlights the signings which we have made this week, which I agree could well be very positive and I sincerally hope will help to keep us up. However we currently have no manager or director of football and just an inexperienced intrim head coach, in addition our experienced chief scout has left the club. Who is responsible for player recruitment at the club at the moment?
The fact that we have signed two former players, although I feel they will both strengthen the squad, concerns me. Does this mean there is no one out there really searching around for who might be able to boost our team and we are just relying on players that are already known to us and have done a job in the past? Surely this gives us a very limited pool of players to choose from if that's the case.
There is no discernible football strategy and we won't be getting any gifts like Tony Watt from SL this year. For a football club I see this as something as a problem and it is almost becoming the elephant in the room in the comments coming out of the club. To succeed long term in this division we need to make steady progress forward, not to keep fire fighting when we are in trouble. I can accept the mistakes of the past, as I think making mistakes is natural, however not learning from them is completely inept.
It's been two years now, they should have learnt about the challenges of the league, got the right football management and coaching team in and be beginning to make progress beyond scraping around for players to try to stay up. This more than anything needs addressing to me, or none of the rest of what is said has any credibility
Comments
I think if you’re going to do it in the form of a Q&A, then for it to be persuasive at all to fans it must (1) ask the difficult questions and not skirt round them; (2) it must answer with an appropriate balance between acknowledging mistakes and arguing in a credible way for the club’s views. I think it’s pretty difficult for a piece from RM to achieve (2) without seriously undermining KM. Therefore (unless it’s been decided to dump KM) I would say it should be written as though from KM.
I’ve had a go at including some of the difficult questions and I’ve tried to answer them (from RM) in a way that might do more good than harm to relations with supporters. I imagine many people will still be unimpressed, because it really is hard to get this right at this stage of relationship-breakdown, but I offer it as some food for thought. I found it useful to try to put myself in the club’s shoes.
Q: Supporters were very unimpressed at being described as the equivalent of customers of a restaurant. Is this the way supporters are viewed by the club?
A: Most certainly not. The point that Katrien was trying to make was the exact opposite: supporters are not like customers in a restaurant. That is why they can get so angry at club actions with which they disagree. I should also clarify that Katrien did not say supporters are weird; she said that the phenomenon of being a supporter was weird. To be fair it is weird how that lifelong, deep commitment to a single club comes about – weird, but also a football club’s most important asset and we accept fully that it is our responsibility to look after that asset in a way that recognises its value.
Q: In the same interview Katrien said that the club sees the academy as a source of revenue, realised by selling our best players to the premier league. There was seemingly no interest in the value, and pleasure, these young players could add to the club through our keeping them for as long as possible. Doesn’t that imply a fundamental mismatch between the club’s objectives and the whole concept of a football club as seen from the fans’ perspective?
A: The danger of these live interviews is that under the pressure of having to give brief answers which address the perspective of the event – in this case a business perspective – the whole picture is not captured. So, with the benefit of having the time to give a fuller picture, let me attempt to do that.
The prime purpose of the academy is to produce players for the club. It is inevitable that many players will not make our grade, that some will, and that some will turn out to be capable of playing at a higher level than that at which the club is playing. Those in the first category get released. Our hope for those in the second category is that they will stay with us long-term. Our hope for the third category is that they will stay with us for a reasonably long period, but the players and their agents have their own views on how long they are willing to stay. It was not the club’s wish that Diego Poyet left as soon as he did, nor that Joe Gomez did. In general we believe it’s not in the player’s interest either, although it’s hard to argue that point in Joe’s case as he left and then immediately found himself in Liverpool’s first team.
Q: Katrien’s answer at the fans’ meeting that all the decisions on managers / head coaches were correct ones left everyone stunned. How can you credibly claim that it’s good to have five managers in two years?
A: Five managers in two years is not good. However, I would argue that the decision on Chris Powell was correct. As Chris said himself, Roland’s strategy and his were incompatible – it would have been stupid to have ignored that. The decision to appoint Jose Riga to keep us up was clearly correct, as that is exactly what he did. You might argue, with hindsight that he should have been given a new contract rather than appoint Bob Peeters, but Bob looked to be a strong candidate and I think the decision was entirely understandable. It didn’t work out as we wished and so Bob was replaced by Guy Luzon whose first task was to keep us up; again he was successful in doing this. Of course, it would have been better if Guy’s reign had lasted longer, but we were in freefall under Bob and it was correct to take action. Maybe the answer to the question put to her was stated too unequivocally, but the record on management appointments has more to be said about it than a bald ‘five managers in two years’.
Q: You’ve spoken earlier about the importance of open communications with fans. Was it good and open communications to appoint Karel Fraeye as an ‘interim’ coach and then let this run on for over two months with no sign of this becoming permanent or of another person being appointed permanently?
A: No, we should have said more. Some people clearly took ‘interim’ to mean simply holding the fort for a week or two before someone else came in. That is sometimes what an interim does. On other occasions, however, the intention is to treat it more as a trial period for someone who either hasn’t held a head coach position or hasn’t done the job at the same level. There are plenty of examples of the latter situation, eg [ provide a couple of examples]
Q: You’ve not touched on the fact that all appointments were of people managing in Belgium and, with the exception of Bob Peeters, of people previously employed by Roland Duchatelet. I think people will recognise that a candidate who is known to the owner starts with an advantage as he’s a known quantity, but surely other qualities/experience should sometimes outweigh being a known quantity, especially when the known quantity is only known for his experience of managing in the Belgium third tier?
A: Er, you’ve got me there. [It’s really hard to find an answer that could be given that didn’t exacerbate things.]
Quite depressing read
The questions wernt deep enough for one thing.
Thanks Murray.....f*ck sake
I'd have settled for an interim statement that a viable manager had been recruited to replace the hapless Fraye.
Instead we get this.
Mealy mouthed bullshit and confirmation if it were needed that nothing is going to change anytime soon.
That they underestimated the Championship - ffs they were saying that after the first wave of foreign misfits arrived and were then hastily moved out of harms way.
Still, we have moved swiftly to bring in players with championship experience (e.g Poyet who hasn't completed a single season and Johnson who we had to get rid of to make available).
And Duchatelet is here for the long term.
Utterly, utterly depressing
Maybe the unasked question is how come we're facing relegation after two years of this regime?
Make no mistake, Airman Brown and his merry men are more savvy and streetwise than you'll be if you live to be a hundred years old.
They will make mincemeat of you and your Belgian mates in the coming weeks and months.
You mug. You silly old mug.
We complain in advance that the silence is wrong and that whatever is said will not be enough.
A sale of the club is not realistic within the transfer window nor are multi million pound star signings.
Who we have signed is a small step forward and suggests some acknowledgement quick action is needed to try and retain our Championship status if you accept that what has gone before cannot be undone.
The only thing but a VERY big thing is the continued non reference to the managerial position. It is incredible that not even a side reference was made but nonetheless there it is.
I don't understand why the local and national press are not pushing this very specific simple and direct question on our behalf far more.
Top notch effort.
statementinterviewhogwash today. At least the advert placements on Charlton Life were perfect for the mood:Usually a "club statement" is short and brief but with the build up to it I actually thought it could be RM finally seeing sense and deciding to stand down or maybe even KM standing down, either way I expected some kind of reaction to the protests and all we got was a re-hash of information we already knew with the odd snippet of news thrown in by RM the complete opposite of what I thought we would see.
Many others have said it better than I can on this thread or the Murray thread. Even upto a couple of months ago at most I still had RM down as better to be in the boardroom with little influence than outside it with none. That final shred of confidence in RM has now dissolved. If he had anything about him he would have addressed the hard questions which needed answering.
Yes in an ideal world I can see what RM is saying about buying in to self sustaining not wanting to take a punt etc but the point is RM has already told us this information many times before. He will gladly tell us he supports the regime because he believes they can take us from A to B but what he constantly overlooks are the methods used to take us from A to B when in fact we are going in the opposite direction. I think the only new bits of information gleaned from that Q&A was an official admission quoted from RD that he had under-estimated the strength of the Championship and a few references to doing early business in the January transfer window.
And the other point to his argument about the alternative being administration...that was 2014 and there is your problem RM the failure to keep pace with the changing times...it's been proven there are other willing buyers out there so that argument no longer holds any weight.
I said before the only way RM can salvage his good reputation was by helping the club to move forward either by making RD see the error of his ways and address the issues that need addressing or just help broker a deal for new owners whether that involves PV or not. Now I just feel even if he did manage to achieve either it would only just about keep his head above water now. He just can't see it, just doesn't get it and hasn't done at all post Curbs and now you have to question did he ever get it at all even during the Curbs years or was he just riding the wave of good fortune Curbs created.
Pathetic, cringeworthy and frankly a waste of time reading that interview. Only at Charlton can they build up a "club statement" only to serve us a re-hashed Q&A with RM.
for one limited purpose: namely for the appointment of a credible manager
No then we do the same thing with Murray, then Fraye and eventaullt RD.
http://www.charltonlive.co.uk/2016/01/07/the-big-match-preview-colchester-away-fa-cup/
I just don't get it why RM has put himself in such a pitiful position. A truly sad state of affairs.
Time to go Mr Murray, enough really is enough.
Like ooh ah this makes more angry than ever, KF is a fraud and signings to make his tenure easier annoys me intensely.
Freye out, Meire out before I even start on the path to listening to anything the club says.
The fact that we have signed two former players, although I feel they will both strengthen the squad, concerns me. Does this mean there is no one out there really searching around for who might be able to boost our team and we are just relying on players that are already known to us and have done a job in the past? Surely this gives us a very limited pool of players to choose from if that's the case.
There is no discernible football strategy and we won't be getting any gifts like Tony Watt from SL this year. For a football club I see this as something as a problem and it is almost becoming the elephant in the room in the comments coming out of the club. To succeed long term in this division we need to make steady progress forward, not to keep fire fighting when we are in trouble. I can accept the mistakes of the past, as I think making mistakes is natural, however not learning from them is completely inept.
It's been two years now, they should have learnt about the challenges of the league, got the right football management and coaching team in and be beginning to make progress beyond scraping around for players to try to stay up. This more than anything needs addressing to me, or none of the rest of what is said has any credibility