dippenhall I don't know the owner from Adam - get over yourself !
Either I am right and RD seeks compromise which meets with a positive response from the fans Or I am wrong and RD runs the club into the ground or he runs off nursing his wounds and crying over his written off loan Selling to a. The new messiah with the brains and inability to make any errors like Grapevine ( crikey that was a self righteous post
RD has never sought compromise with any club he has owned ... where is your evidence that he will do so with us?
Or b He sells to a messiah with no money to offer as with the man city supporting SPIVs Where our pitch was only fit for a pub team and the wages were reportedly often delayed
Time will tell
Ps if I am wrong best of luck with the campaign and fingers crossed for A!
Or b He sells to a messiah with no money to offer as with the man city supporting SPIVs Where our pitch was only fit for a pub team and the wages were reportedly often delayed
Time will tell
Ps if I am wrong best of luck with the campaign and fingers crossed for A!
Final end !
How about answering my question first before you once again ignore us ... RD has never sought compromise with any club he has owned ... where is your evidence that he will do so with us?
They are definAtely cracking ... Stay strong people don't rise to the huge baiting we are receiving ... They have brought the fight to where a lot of Charlton fans are and as Ghandi says first they ignore, then they ridicule, then FIGHT (where we are now), then we win ....
So stay strong, the arguments are utterly ignored by these weird sorry unique people ... Belgium bun sounds like Roland himself ... I'm just waiting for him to give it a HUH and give himself away ... As for this Alan chap he's either a troll loving the attention or someone who is utterly incapable of getting his head round what is utterly clear to the huge majority ... Maybe start again and reread ... Or of course he's bought and paid for by the regime ...
Any which way we are clearly getting traction ... Roland is a disgrace and we will not rest until he leaves OUR club...
Oh please. Why do people keep going on about the pitch? The pitch HAD to be sorted out, the Football League would not have allowed us to continue through another season with the pitch in that state. He knew that before he bought the club and would have factored that in with the purchase price (if he didn't, then he was VERY stupid). These kind of arguments are ridiculous and shows the desperation of the people making them.
Roland has NEVER changed his operating methods with regards to the football clubs he owns. Why is he suddenly going to change them now? What has he done to make you think that he is going to do a complete u-turn on the failed strategy that he has been using for many years at various football clubs?
Alan is basically saying "Better the devil you know". Unfortunately, under the devil we know we are assured of a continued decline in our club, with falling attendances ( falling long before the protests started) and another relegation battle next season. What could be worse than that, Alan?
alanalsace I think you misuse the term self righteous when you write:
a. The new messiah with the brains and inability to make any errors like Grapevine ( crikey that was a self righteous post).
Virtually everything Grapevine49 writes is not only critical, but contains the route map to getting the club functioning properly if the problems he highlights are addressed.
You frequently refer to errors made, mistakes to be rectified, but this is where the line you take breaks down and i will tell you why. Katrien says that the fans have to accept the owner does it his way, she also repeated this in the Dublin interview when she asks why the fans call it 'our' club, but the major shareholder should prevail. Indeed we have had to accept the owner does it his way, and will continue to do so, and that is what we are up against. There is no synergy between the aspirations of the owner and the aspirations of the fans, and it looks like there never will be. I believe the CARD campaign will continue, the fight is for the long term, the fight will become nastier and more targeted, even if it leads to mutually assured destruction. We may have fans who are cool with Roland, we have fans who are decidedly uncool with Roland. it remains to be seen what happens, but mutually assured destruction will affect both the Roland supporters and the Roland opponents and we will all end up with nothing.
Agree with Seth. The opposition to the regime has so far been led by the moderates. If Duchatelet the Failure does not leave then things will indeed get nastier I am sure.
And I would take the 'self righteous' Grapevine 49 every day of the week, you are wrong and its only a matter of time before you realise it.
The owners are failing, regardless if Riga's influence over the team and they are showing cracks of unity/direction as displayed in recent statements/responses/resignations.
I will continue to support CARD and a total change in ownership, I do not have the answer to who that will be but it does not stop my desire for one.
Many have provided excellent & balanced responses.
I apologize to regular contributors. You will have read much of the following oft times before but this nonsense must be rebuffed. I will focus on just 2 aspects though I would be remiss not to point out the irony of the content of the latest contribution.
There can have been no football regime which has displayed a greater level of naivety, including the Venkys, than the one currently presiding over SE7. The irony extends to the opening line.
Looks like some of you on bent on mutually assured destruction if you ask me.
How in the face of the evidence can you not see the destruction of the club as a professional football organisation is staring you in the face today?
Cease the scaremongering and provide one compelling piece of evidence there is a footballing future for the club under this regime? Will Staprix NV unceasingly fund the never ending losses? Who can make any such assertion? Is it as speculative as any other “investor” riding to the rescue.
Through the mismanagement of a regime that came to balance the books our debt has soared!
To date their investment has proven to be either cosmetic or a failure.
This regime had destroyed a professional football organisation. They have torn up the very ethos of a professional football club.
For thousands the club now no longer exists. It is why they walked away long before CARD came into being. It is why people are moved to protest.
You talk of naivety but the business model being pursued is entirely based on acquiring, developing and selling young footballers linked to a yet to be built new academy. It is a one trick pony without a shred of evidence it can run. It is why the regime can put no substance to its vision.
Nobody invests in any business to lose money but billions have been lost by those who failed to deliver a viable proposition to their selected market. Show me one example of a professional UK club which has achieved success purely on the basis of acquiring, developing and selling its players.
Do the club finances look like the policy is working? This years' figures will be worse, for next year the consequences of relegation will bite even deeper.
The argument the best young talent will not join unless you offer them a stepping stone to the Premier League is outrageous fantasy. Can the club claim to offer this unique opportunity be more naïve? What do all the other professional academies offer? It is as unique as a sliced loaf.
At the most basic level it is undeliverable. It ignores the physical demands of the Championship (CL). Very few young players are mentally or physically mature enough to consistently perform successfully in the face of the intensity involved. Without the proper support infrastructure many will struggle with injuries, will lose confidence and will fail. The strategy is borderline abuse.
There is a reason this model has not been pursued. In economic terms the market is not big enough to sustain the business. Where are all the clubs who are going to be buying all these players year on year? What does the sales pipeline look like? What are the numbers? Show me the money!
How many players will the club take to market year on year? How many will remain to keep the club competitive?
Will revenue cover investment costs? Will it cover increased operating costs? Will it cover standard operating losses? What are the projected 2016/ 2017/ 2018 losses? Will it repay the £38+mn debt?
Any vision has to be positioned within the reality of the market place in which you operate. This regime as evidenced by their coaching & player recruitment has rejected the demands of the market. It has come back to bite with a vengeance.
After decades in corporate banking, finance and building new businesses I can assure this business case as structured is not worth the paper it is written on. Financially it is the equivalent of corporate suicide and the club gets to pick up the bill.
The club faces a stumblingly painful death on the road to nowhere. No compelling vision, no driving ambition, no motivation to compete, no expectation, no search for sporting achievement/ excellence just a glorification of mediocrity. With respect to the Belgium people it has provincial Belgium written all over it.
We all acknowledge the value of a strong academy but the regime has destroyed the delivery platform needed to give such a business model any chance – a senior squad with the ability, local industry experience, balance, team skills, leadership skills and depth to successfully compete in the CL.
Their operating principles do not focus on producing a successful team but a shop window for the sale of young talent. The latter goal has pervaded every decision made in the players they have signed, the depth and balance of the squad and the nature of the coaches they have hired.
It is an abomination and a perversion of the team sport in which this club has operated for decades.
The entire industry stands bemused by their decisions. People with decades of industry experience are united in their condemnation.
There is no doubt about the aims of this regime they have proudly declared their intent and their intransigence. The evidence of their failure is across every single performance benchmark.
There are none so blind as those who will not see, who will not talk, who will not listen, who will not engage, who will not learn, who will not change.
Instead of embracing the contributions of thousands who hold the future of the club close to their hearts they disrespect them and their views to blindly pursue their personal agenda. It is the pursuit of a vanity exercise founded in the ignorance and distorted values of someone who neither understands the industry or its clientele.
They choose to barricade themselves in their ivory towers of delusion pointing the finger of blame at anyone but themselves.
You talk of change yet just days ago the owner chose in the face of professional advice to release the most unprofessional statement I have seen in 40yrs of corporate employment.
It confirmed all we need to know about the regime. Not a gram of understanding of the disaster they have brought to SE7. The idea his regime had played any part in creating the disharmony evidenced by the protests simply did not register. It displayed the arrogance befitting a remote, eccentric visionary who holds the opinions of others in pure disdain.
In light of such a statement where there is one iota of evidence of any appetite for change. There is none. It is why they have to go.
No matter the risks, no matter the challenges, no matter the difficulties the club has faced darker times before and survived.
The professional employed to manage communications had little alternative but to walk away.
Many thousands in the coming weeks will follow to leave those with little better to do, those keen to keep their social agenda and their fading memories, seated alongside the apologists & scaremongers and apparently a new breed of "passing spectators", to rattle around an empty stadium which used to house a serious, competitive football club which itself once competed at the highest levels of the game.
The "demonization" of the Coalition against Roland Duchatelet reinforces the void of understanding.
CARD is merely a vehicle through which ordinary supporters have had the opportunity to voice their opinions and put them in the national and international domain. To attack CARD is to attack a significant number of supporters whose crime is to care passionately about the future of the club.
They are deserving of more than your insulting platitudes and your disrespect.
They are of course the same voices this regime has sought to ignore and push aside since it arrived.
Your contribution confirms nothing has changed ......... or will change and for that I thank you.
If PV's men are serious and come forward (out from behind PV) now with an offer that goes some way to RD recouping some of his loss, then I reckon the club's theirs. If not, we are in for a half baked version of RD's model next year in front of an empty valley with some of 'Alan's' list cosmetically addressed. Well, I won't because I won't be renewing as it stands.
If PV's men are serious and come forward (out from behind PV) now with an offer that goes some way to RD recouping some of his loss, then I reckon the club's theirs. If not, we are in for a half baked version of RD's model next year in front of an empty valley with some of 'Alan's' list cosmetically addressed. Well, I won't because I won't be renewing as it stands.
If RD sold now or over the summer, I would renew my season ticket in an instant. Until he is gone, I am out.
I don't know the owner from Adam - get over yourself !
Nobody does, and that's a major part of the problem. He is so disinterested that he can't even be bothered to show up. Either that or he's too chicken-shit scared to face the fans. I suspect a bit of both. Either way, his absence is not what you would expect from a man whose business is in crisis, it is what you'd expect from some stupid old duffer with his head in the sand.
Either I am right and RD seeks compromise which meets with a positive response from the fans Or I am wrong and RD runs the club into the ground or he runs off nursing his wounds and crying over his written off loan he carries on in exactly the same way as he's always done quietly admitting he's made mistakes but never once learning from them. And when the fans point that out, he'll get all upset like some dishonoured diety, making ridiculous statements and throwing his toys out of the pram.
5.RD needs CAFC to be a reasonably successful Championship Club. This year proves his methods have failed to achieve this ( although perhaps we are quick to forget we came 12th last year with 60 points under RD) so it is in our and his interests for him to change and improve the way he runs things.
You have summed up what is fundamentally wrong with RD's ownership in those few words. He NEEDS the club to be reasonably successful ..... I want an owner who WANTS the club to be successful and aspires to reaching the PL.
Either I am right and RD seeks compromise which meets with a positive response from the fans Or I am wrong and RD runs the club into the ground or he runs off nursing his wounds and crying over his written off loan Selling to a. The new messiah with the brains and inability to make any errors like Grapevine ( crikey that was a self righteous post
Jokes aside, I agree with you here - there are three ways this situation can pan out, two of which involve Roland continuing at Charlton:
(a) Roland Duchatelet's continued involvement with the club, whereby he genuinely listens to fan concerns and adapts his intended model - instead opting for something that whilst still sustainable is also competitive. This leads to less fan frustration and more unity, creating a brighter atmosphere.
(b) Roland Duchatelet's continued involvement with the club, whereby the same mistakes are made repeatedly and we slip further down the leagues whilst growing number of fans grow disillusioned and frustrated - meaning we end up with a lower league club with a small fanbase and no "attractive proposition" to newer fans.
(c) Roland Duchatelet's exit from Charlton, leading to a new ownership with - hopefully - a more realistic approach to the management of a football club.
Unfortunately, based on the last two years and his adventures at STVV and Standard Liege I can't see (a) becoming a reality. He has not changed his approach in the last 2 years and is continuing to make the same mistakes, furthermore he shows complete disdain for concerned fans. I cannot see any eventuality where Roland will have a successful relationship with the fans at a club he owns.
This leaves (b) and (c) as the realistic outcomes of our current predicament, and I think given those options it's quite clear that we must all fight for (c): as concerned fans we cannot sit back and let (b) happen.
On a side note, that wasn't a very classy dig at Grapevine at all - incredibly petty and also quite hypocritical considering your attitudes and posts so far. You should really be quite thankful that people are taking the time to give you adult responses and indulge you in discussion, God knows it would be easier to either ignore you or post petty remarks.
The club sometimes make good signings ... Agree, but if you sift through a large pile of rubbish you'll inevitably find a few things worth keeping.
The TOXIC atmosphere at the club is probably not helping us sign promising youngsters, and definitely not POSITIVE for player morale. ( some of you claimed it has no impact but no-one has said it is having a positive impact) Several players have said the protests do not have an impact. As for signing young players, given that most signings come from abroad, they arrive with little knowledge of what they are getting into. Were there any evidence we were trying to sign match-fit domestic players you may have a point.
.. appointing a new UK based CEO- with a remit to win over the fans I don't loathe Squirrel Face because she is Belgian. I hate her for her incompetence, her lies, her smug face ... it would be the same with a British CEO. I want someone fit to do the job and who understands the club. I could not care less where they come from (but please God not another Belgian!)
4. us acknowledging that he has thrown a lot of money at the club - pitch ( we all remember the mud bath of the last set of british owners) , the academy etc and wages, and this is a good startI am not going to thank him for throwing money in completely the wrong direction. If he is so stupid and arrogant to blow cash with idiotic appointments as he has been, then that's his outlook.
I am genuinely surprised at the limited number of posts that Alanalsace has made. It's only 18, ever. Given the number of responses that's pretty impressive.
Alan, this user name messes with my eyes, It looks like a slight misspelling of Al Anal Sauce. If this were pointed out to me, I'd probably choose a different name. Even if my name was Alan and I lived in Alsace. Always preferred the Savoie myself.
There are a few points I agree with you on:
1) The management of the club has made some very bad mistakes since it arrived
2) There are plenty of other shit owners out there, we are not unique there
3) no I've run out
There are other points where I think our views may differ, or not. Perhaps you could answer this:
A) Roland Duchatelet does not 'do' football well at a decent level, stvv, standard liege and Charlton seem to have the same view. Aloncorn and Ujpest are at a lower level and look a bit better currently. Roland Duchatelet is not a football man. C) Roland Duchatelet has a number of people he trusts, he employs them into positions which they are not qualified for. He backs them to support him D) Katrien Meire may not ever be good enough to be a CEO of a championship club, maybe at some point she will. Right now, she has conspicuously failed on pretty much every level and how she is still employed is totally mystifying to everyone I know.
1. I’ve consistently pointed out that the management of the club could have been better, so not sure what your point is other than to exaggerate intentionally.
2. We finished 12th last season and this season we are currently second from bottom. Whilst being second from bottom is soul destroying, it is nothing new for this and many other clubs. The usual response is to draft in new players for the run in. This RD has done and to judge by some of the playing rating posts some of these new players aren’t too shabby.
RD obviously should have stuck with Riga – although his re-appointment probably means RD concedes this.
Riga, who operates under the good and bad of the RD system, has gained 40 points in his 30 games with us –which is 61 points if extrapolated to 46 games which would have meant 12th last season.
If we do go down I suspect RD will throw the kitchen sink at it to make sure we come straight back up- he hasn’t got much choice in my view
3.- More honesty with you host of followers please!. As you know full well if you own a Company you would be mad not to put in further cash in the form of a loan and not increased equity. This is standard business practice, as we all know
And again as you know full well, historically the usual practice of the SPIV like football club owner has been to rake up debt to banks and suppliers – RD is not doing this as far as I can see.
If he sells the club he will either get his loan back or have to write it down in some way, as again you full well know. With his investment of £40m to date receiving anything for the equity is obviously in doubt and explains in part his refusal to discuss selling to individuals who are very unlikely to be offering anything like £40m –perhaps you should ask Richard Murray how difficult it is to sell a football for more than a paltry amount. (Even more difficult now with most clubs being realistically locked out of the premiership promotion race- as I’ve previously pointed out)
4. Young players are only part of the policy. In addition RD seeks to buy more experienced foreign players because they are usually technically better and always cheaper. But I concede he obviously needs to bring in UK based players with experience too because imports plus kids is not patently not enough.
I agree too – far too many players of doubtful motivation (I would have wilfully invaded the pitch myslef, like a good CARD supporter, to drag off Vaz-Te ). This level of poor recruitment has been incompetent to say the least.
5. I would have thought a first-rate academy that is smack in the middle of a huge population area like ours can expect to come up with top players. Have there not been some of them over the few last years? The superb ones like Gomez will go to the premiership and the very good ones like Cousins will stay with us hopefully.
There are dozens of great talents like Lookman languishing in the reserves of big clubs because Managers refuse to take risks by playing them. Do you really think Rashford would have come to the fore unless Van Gaal had been not been refused funds for new players because the MU board expect to terminate his contract at the end of the season?
I suspect Lookman’s parents responded well to our track record of playing youngsters, and for good reason as it has turned out.
The money raised on player sales will help meet the gap between revenue and costs, the rest will need to be plugged by the us supporters (mistake sorry!) …… by RD, just as people like Richard Murray have in the past. To quote Murray
“Through Roland Duchatelet’s backing we have become financially stable…..” Jan 16
6. No platitudes here I am afraid, just a few doses of reality. I understand you think RD is running the club into the ground, you and others have made that very clear.
I simply don’t agree with your viewpoint, and indeed have some respect for RD and people like Richard Murray for putting their hard earned cash into what, like most football clubs, has been and always will be a capital destroying entity.
That’s not to say we should all act like grateful Serfs, but is does mean we should be decent enough to deploy some perspective.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to re read Murray’s interview on the CAFC website in January to help gain that perspective. - no doubt though most of the CARD group think, even after the millions he has lost in supporting CAFC, he too is a twat.
dippenhall I don't know the owner from Adam - get over yourself !
Either I am right and RD seeks compromise which meets with a positive response from the fans Or I am wrong and RD runs the club into the ground or he runs off nursing his wounds and crying over his written off loan Selling to a. The new messiah with the brains and inability to make any errors like Grapevine ( crikey that was a self righteous post
If we do go down I suspect RD will throw the kitchen sink at it to make sure we come straight back up- he hasn’t got much choice in my view
Not happened with other clubs he owns (hence why for example CJZ have tanked and there are arguments at the club about the Duchatelet way) so why would Charlton be treated any differently?
And... if it is wrong for Charlton fans to want Roland out, what was different about Standard Liege that made getting him out right?
RD obviously should have stuck with Riga – although his re-appointment probably means RD concedes this.
Errr, he tried to bring in an unknown Serb manager currently managing Ujpest in the Hungarian league, until Katrien was advised that to do so was to ignite the gunpowder barrel she and Murray were sitting on. He hasn't learnt a thing.
RD obviously should have stuck with Riga – although his re-appointment probably means RD concedes this.
Errr, he tried to bring in an unknown Serb manager currently managing Ujpest in the Hungarian league, until Katrien was advised that to do so was to ignite the gunpowder barrel she and Murray were sitting on. He hasn't learnt a thing.
Ah yes, wasn't there a debacle about the club's press release being issued and retracted, then the exact same one but with Rigas name instead, circulated 24 hours later?
Or b He sells to a messiah with no money to offer as with the man city supporting SPIVs Where our pitch was only fit for a pub team and the wages were reportedly often delayed
Time will tell
Ps if I am wrong best of luck with the campaign and fingers crossed for A!
Final end !
How about answering my question first before you once again ignore us ... RD has never sought compromise with any club he has owned ... where is your evidence that he will do so with us?
@alanalsace for the third time, are you going to answer my question? Check RD's football history ...he has never yet compromised in this respect despite having big problems.
The bottom line is that if you haven't been paying much attention, then Roland's way is alright bar a bunch of bad results and a few unfortunate misunderstandings.
If you've actually been paying attention, you know different.
If you are in the first camp, and have the kind of personality that drives you to wade in and make sure your opinion is heard even on matters you really haven't put a lot of thought into, you end up on Charlton Life with a load of LOLs for things that just aren't very funny.
The bottom line is that if you haven't been paying much attention, then Roland's way is alright bar a bunch of bad results and a few unfortunate misunderstandings.
Oddly replicated across most of the network.
Still, look on the bright side - because unlike Liege, we haven't returned a player sale profit so he's not withdrawn money from us like a piggy bank.
Comments
He sells to a messiah with no money to offer as with the man city supporting SPIVs
Where our pitch was only fit for a pub team and the wages were reportedly often delayed
Time will tell
Ps if I am wrong best of luck with the campaign and fingers crossed for A!
Final end !
So stay strong, the arguments are utterly ignored by these weird sorry unique people ... Belgium bun sounds like Roland himself ... I'm just waiting for him to give it a HUH and give himself away ... As for this Alan chap he's either a troll loving the attention or someone who is utterly incapable of getting his head round what is utterly clear to the huge majority ... Maybe start again and reread ... Or of course he's bought and paid for by the regime ...
Any which way we are clearly getting traction ... Roland is a disgrace and we will not rest until he leaves OUR club...
Roland has NEVER changed his operating methods with regards to the football clubs he owns. Why is he suddenly going to change them now? What has he done to make you think that he is going to do a complete u-turn on the failed strategy that he has been using for many years at various football clubs?
I expect the old fool will try and take it with him when he goes.
Duchatalet Does Faulure.
a. The new messiah with the brains and inability to make any errors like Grapevine ( crikey that was a self righteous post).
Virtually everything Grapevine49 writes is not only critical, but contains the route map to getting the club functioning properly if the problems he highlights are addressed.
You frequently refer to errors made, mistakes to be rectified, but this is where the line you take breaks down and i will tell you why.
Katrien says that the fans have to accept the owner does it his way, she also repeated this in the Dublin interview when she asks why the fans call it 'our' club, but the major shareholder should prevail.
Indeed we have had to accept the owner does it his way, and will continue to do so, and that is what we are up against.
There is no synergy between the aspirations of the owner and the aspirations of the fans, and it looks like there never will be.
I believe the CARD campaign will continue, the fight is for the long term, the fight will become nastier and more targeted, even if it leads to mutually assured destruction.
We may have fans who are cool with Roland, we have fans who are decidedly uncool with Roland. it remains to be seen what happens, but mutually assured destruction will affect both the Roland supporters and the Roland opponents and we will all end up with nothing.
That's when AFC Charlton will be born.
And I would take the 'self righteous' Grapevine 49 every day of the week, you are wrong and its only a matter of time before you realise it.
The owners are failing, regardless if Riga's influence over the team and they are showing cracks of unity/direction as displayed in recent statements/responses/resignations.
I will continue to support CARD and a total change in ownership, I do not have the answer to who that will be but it does not stop my desire for one.
I apologize to regular contributors. You will have read much of the following oft times before but this nonsense must be rebuffed. I will focus on just 2 aspects though I would be remiss not to point out the irony of the content of the latest contribution.
There can have been no football regime which has displayed a greater level of naivety, including the Venkys, than the one currently presiding over SE7. The irony extends to the opening line.
Looks like some of you on bent on mutually assured destruction if you ask me.
How in the face of the evidence can you not see the destruction of the club as a professional football organisation is staring you in the face today?
Cease the scaremongering and provide one compelling piece of evidence there is a footballing future for the club under this regime? Will Staprix NV unceasingly fund the never ending losses? Who can make any such assertion? Is it as speculative as any other “investor” riding to the rescue.
Through the mismanagement of a regime that came to balance the books our debt has soared!
To date their investment has proven to be either cosmetic or a failure.
This regime had destroyed a professional football organisation. They have torn up the very ethos of a professional football club.
For thousands the club now no longer exists. It is why they walked away long before CARD came into being. It is why people are moved to protest.
You talk of naivety but the business model being pursued is entirely based on acquiring, developing and selling young footballers linked to a yet to be built new academy. It is a one trick pony without a shred of evidence it can run. It is why the regime can put no substance to its vision.
Nobody invests in any business to lose money but billions have been lost by those who failed to deliver a viable proposition to their selected market. Show me one example of a professional UK club which has achieved success purely on the basis of acquiring, developing and selling its players.
Do the club finances look like the policy is working? This years' figures will be worse, for next year the consequences of relegation will bite even deeper.
The argument the best young talent will not join unless you offer them a stepping stone to the Premier League is outrageous fantasy. Can the club claim to offer this unique opportunity be more naïve? What do all the other professional academies offer? It is as unique as a sliced loaf.
At the most basic level it is undeliverable. It ignores the physical demands of the Championship (CL). Very few young players are mentally or physically mature enough to consistently perform successfully in the face of the intensity involved. Without the proper support infrastructure many will struggle with injuries, will lose confidence and will fail. The strategy is borderline abuse.
There is a reason this model has not been pursued. In economic terms the market is not big enough to sustain the business. Where are all the clubs who are going to be buying all these players year on year? What does the sales pipeline look like? What are the numbers? Show me the money!
How many players will the club take to market year on year? How many will remain to keep the club competitive?
Will revenue cover investment costs? Will it cover increased operating costs? Will it cover standard operating losses? What are the projected 2016/ 2017/ 2018 losses? Will it repay the £38+mn debt?
Any vision has to be positioned within the reality of the market place in which you operate. This regime as evidenced by their coaching & player recruitment has rejected the demands of the market. It has come back to bite with a vengeance.
After decades in corporate banking, finance and building new businesses I can assure this business case as structured is not worth the paper it is written on. Financially it is the equivalent of corporate suicide and the club gets to pick up the bill.
The club faces a stumblingly painful death on the road to nowhere. No compelling vision, no driving ambition, no motivation to compete, no expectation, no search for sporting achievement/ excellence just a glorification of mediocrity. With respect to the Belgium people it has provincial Belgium written all over it.
We all acknowledge the value of a strong academy but the regime has destroyed the delivery platform needed to give such a business model any chance – a senior squad with the ability, local industry experience, balance, team skills, leadership skills and depth to successfully compete in the CL.
Their operating principles do not focus on producing a successful team but a shop window for the sale of young talent. The latter goal has pervaded every decision made in the players they have signed, the depth and balance of the squad and the nature of the coaches they have hired.
It is an abomination and a perversion of the team sport in which this club has operated for decades.
The entire industry stands bemused by their decisions. People with decades of industry experience are united in their condemnation.
There is no doubt about the aims of this regime they have proudly declared their intent and their intransigence. The evidence of their failure is across every single performance benchmark.
There are none so blind as those who will not see, who will not talk, who will not listen, who will not engage, who will not learn, who will not change.
Instead of embracing the contributions of thousands who hold the future of the club close to their hearts they disrespect them and their views to blindly pursue their personal agenda. It is the pursuit of a vanity exercise founded in the ignorance and distorted values of someone who neither understands the industry or its clientele.
They choose to barricade themselves in their ivory towers of delusion pointing the finger of blame at anyone but themselves.
You talk of change yet just days ago the owner chose in the face of professional advice to release the most unprofessional statement I have seen in 40yrs of corporate employment.
It confirmed all we need to know about the regime. Not a gram of understanding of the disaster they have brought to SE7. The idea his regime had played any part in creating the disharmony evidenced by the protests simply did not register. It displayed the arrogance befitting a remote, eccentric visionary who holds the opinions of others in pure disdain.
In light of such a statement where there is one iota of evidence of any appetite for change. There is none. It is why they have to go.
No matter the risks, no matter the challenges, no matter the difficulties the club has faced darker times before and survived.
The professional employed to manage communications had little alternative but to walk away.
Many thousands in the coming weeks will follow to leave those with little better to do, those keen to keep their social agenda and their fading memories, seated alongside the apologists & scaremongers and apparently a new breed of "passing spectators", to rattle around an empty stadium which used to house a serious, competitive football club which itself once competed at the highest levels of the game.
The "demonization" of the Coalition against Roland Duchatelet reinforces the void of understanding.
CARD is merely a vehicle through which ordinary supporters have had the opportunity to voice their opinions and put them in the national and international domain. To attack CARD is to attack a significant number of supporters whose crime is to care passionately about the future of the club.
They are deserving of more than your insulting platitudes and your disrespect.
They are of course the same voices this regime has sought to ignore and push aside since it arrived.
Your contribution confirms nothing has changed ......... or will change and for that I thank you.
Nothing so sad as unrequited love.
(a) Roland Duchatelet's continued involvement with the club, whereby he genuinely listens to fan concerns and adapts his intended model - instead opting for something that whilst still sustainable is also competitive. This leads to less fan frustration and more unity, creating a brighter atmosphere.
(b) Roland Duchatelet's continued involvement with the club, whereby the same mistakes are made repeatedly and we slip further down the leagues whilst growing number of fans grow disillusioned and frustrated - meaning we end up with a lower league club with a small fanbase and no "attractive proposition" to newer fans.
(c) Roland Duchatelet's exit from Charlton, leading to a new ownership with - hopefully - a more realistic approach to the management of a football club.
Unfortunately, based on the last two years and his adventures at STVV and Standard Liege I can't see (a) becoming a reality. He has not changed his approach in the last 2 years and is continuing to make the same mistakes, furthermore he shows complete disdain for concerned fans. I cannot see any eventuality where Roland will have a successful relationship with the fans at a club he owns.
This leaves (b) and (c) as the realistic outcomes of our current predicament, and I think given those options it's quite clear that we must all fight for (c): as concerned fans we cannot sit back and let (b) happen.
On a side note, that wasn't a very classy dig at Grapevine at all - incredibly petty and also quite hypocritical considering your attitudes and posts so far. You should really be quite thankful that people are taking the time to give you adult responses and indulge you in discussion, God knows it would be easier to either ignore you or post petty remarks.
Alan, this user name messes with my eyes, It looks like a slight misspelling of Al Anal Sauce. If this were pointed out to me, I'd probably choose a different name. Even if my name was Alan and I lived in Alsace. Always preferred the Savoie myself.
There are a few points I agree with you on:
1) The management of the club has made some very bad mistakes since it arrived
2) There are plenty of other shit owners out there, we are not unique there
3) no I've run out
There are other points where I think our views may differ, or not. Perhaps you could answer this:
A) Roland Duchatelet does not 'do' football well at a decent level, stvv, standard liege and Charlton seem to have the same view. Aloncorn and Ujpest are at a lower level and look a bit better currently.
C) Roland Duchatelet has a number of people he trusts, he employs them into positions which they are not qualified for. He backs them to support him
D) Katrien Meire may not ever be good enough to be a CEO of a championship club, maybe at some point she will. Right now, she has conspicuously failed on pretty much every level and how she is still employed is totally mystifying to everyone I know.
Got bored so stopped.
1. I’ve consistently pointed out that the management of the club could have been better, so not sure what your point is other than to exaggerate intentionally.
2. We finished 12th last season and this season we are currently second from bottom. Whilst being second from bottom is soul destroying, it is nothing new for this and many other clubs. The usual response is to draft in new players for the run in. This RD has done and to judge by some of the playing rating posts some of these new players aren’t too shabby.
RD obviously should have stuck with Riga – although his re-appointment probably means RD concedes this.
Riga, who operates under the good and bad of the RD system, has gained 40 points in his 30 games with us –which is 61 points if extrapolated to 46 games which would have meant 12th last season.
If we do go down I suspect RD will throw the kitchen sink at it to make sure we come straight back up- he hasn’t got much choice in my view
3.- More honesty with you host of followers please!. As you know full well if you own a Company you would be mad not to put in further cash in the form of a loan and not increased equity. This is standard business practice, as we all know
And again as you know full well, historically the usual practice of the SPIV like football club owner has been to rake up debt to banks and suppliers – RD is not doing this as far as I can see.
If he sells the club he will either get his loan back or have to write it down in some way, as again you full well know. With his investment of £40m to date receiving anything for the equity is obviously in doubt and explains in part his refusal to discuss selling to individuals who are very unlikely to be offering anything like £40m –perhaps you should ask Richard Murray how difficult it is to sell a football for more than a paltry amount. (Even more difficult now with most clubs being realistically locked out of the premiership promotion race- as I’ve previously pointed out)
4. Young players are only part of the policy. In addition RD seeks to buy more experienced foreign players because they are usually technically better and always cheaper. But I concede he obviously needs to bring in UK based players with experience too because imports plus kids is not patently not enough.
I agree too – far too many players of doubtful motivation (I would have wilfully invaded the pitch myslef, like a good CARD supporter, to drag off Vaz-Te ). This level of poor recruitment has been incompetent to say the least.
5. I would have thought a first-rate academy that is smack in the middle of a huge population area like ours can expect to come up with top players. Have there not been some of them over the few last years? The superb ones like Gomez will go to the premiership and the very good ones like Cousins will stay with us hopefully.
There are dozens of great talents like Lookman languishing in the reserves of big clubs because Managers refuse to take risks by playing them. Do you really think Rashford would have come to the fore unless Van Gaal had been not been refused funds for new players because the MU board expect to terminate his contract at the end of the season?
I suspect Lookman’s parents responded well to our track record of playing youngsters, and for good reason as it has turned out.
The money raised on player sales will help meet the gap between revenue and costs, the rest will need to be plugged by the us supporters (mistake sorry!) …… by RD, just as people like Richard Murray have in the past. To quote Murray
“Through Roland Duchatelet’s backing we have become financially stable…..” Jan 16
6. No platitudes here I am afraid, just a few doses of reality. I understand you think RD is running the club into the ground, you and others have made that very clear.
I simply don’t agree with your viewpoint, and indeed have some respect for RD and people like Richard Murray for putting their hard earned cash into what, like most football clubs, has been and always will be a capital destroying entity.
That’s not to say we should all act like grateful Serfs, but is does mean we should be decent enough to deploy some perspective.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to re read Murray’s interview on the CAFC website in January to help gain that perspective.
- no doubt though most of the CARD group think, even after the millions he has lost in supporting CAFC, he too is a twat.
WRONG !
And... if it is wrong for Charlton fans to want Roland out, what was different about Standard Liege that made getting him out right?
If you've actually been paying attention, you know different.
If you are in the first camp, and have the kind of personality that drives you to wade in and make sure your opinion is heard even on matters you really haven't put a lot of thought into, you end up on Charlton Life with a load of LOLs for things that just aren't very funny.
Still, look on the bright side - because unlike Liege, we haven't returned a player sale profit so he's not withdrawn money from us like a piggy bank.