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Still, look on the bright side - because unlike Liege, we haven't returned a player sale profit so he's not withdrawn money from us like a piggy bank.
Earlier in your post, and in other posts, you say that the Premier League is ultimately an impossibility.
So in point five you signal Lookman's sale in the summer to the Premier league, whilst you envisage retaining Cousins.
Why can't our young players end up playing for us in the Premier League? To say it is never going to happen is actually to say results don't matter.
The notion that results don't matter stops us being an actual football club.
This season we did not prepare to get promoted, and that lack of aspiration has led to our relegation. You always have to start a season aiming to get promoted, to start a season bent on survival alone is almost to guarantee relegation, the best form of defence is attack if you like.
What you're promoting is the player farm model which so many of us hate and despise, it is no wonder the owner never sees matches, why should he when the outcome of those matches don't matter to him?
However it is the results of those matches which motivates attendance by supporters at games.
I have never ever since I started watching Charlton in 1963 gone to a match thinking, oh well never mind if we win lose or draw so long as I can have a good time. Indeed a good time largely depends on the result, I go to matches ALWAYS wanting my team to win, and expecting them to try.
So it may well be that you are neatly re-articulating the consistent Duchatelet line since he bought the club, which is results don't matter so long as you can churn players for a profit. What is laughable is that even if Roland Duchatelet succeeds in churning some players for a profit, he is going to have to go some to pay for the huge losses his appalling stewardship of the club has already created thus far.
Let me ask if you can, as a sideline, to explain one thing. What was the rhyme or reason for signing Christophe Lepoint? He is a glaring example of appalling decisions. I could name another dozen players as well as Christophe, and no, I am afraid the successful signings have simply not materialised to balance the dross, I can barely think of one successful signing under this regime.
The fans will not support a player farm because it is anti the sport, and it doesn't work.
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.
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. Probably to suggest that the phrase "could have been better" might be something of an understatement.
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. The difference is that most football teams don't have to completely rebuild every six months, whether the inadequate numbers from the Summer or the panic buys drafted in each January. And, I think that you will find that being in a relegation place is not new to many clubs, however our circumstances are. In fact, not only are they new, but they are also weird, in both the real and the regime meaning of the word.
RD obviously should have stuck with Riga – although his re-appointment probably means RD concedes this. No, The Shareholder should have stuck with as many as possible of the first team and backroom team that he inherited, people who understand what is needed to survive and thrive in English football. The scale of the turnover has been shockingly ridiculous.
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. When the FA/League allow teams to extrapolate their season's points from, for example, two brief periods two years apart, then this might be a point worth making.
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 Let's all hope that it makes it on to the pitch and that the Met Police do their duty then....
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 Rightly or wrongly, football is a unique (possibly meaning weird) business, so standard practice doesn't really apply.
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. And your point is, he is still racking up debt - the descriptions from Belgium suggest that this debt is likely to be slightly less friendly than the pro-regime camp would allege.
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) How much of the money has actually been paid out to date, as opposed to announced? If he wanted to avoid making a loss the standard football approach (as for anyone investing in a business of which they no little/nothing) is not to completely overhaul proven systems and people that work effectively, and replace them with your own (possibly deranged) completely untried and unproven staff and structures. The fact of the matter is that he bought the club on an assumption that football fair play would be enforced rigorously, and in the second tier of English football you could remain competitive with reduced funding than is currently the case. In this assumption he has been proved wrong. A sane approach would be to then change your model to address the actual circumstances in which you operate.
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. No, I think you may be slightly muddled. The policy, with regard to foreign players, as various fans were advised by a certain individual who shall remain nameless, but sounds like one of the Carpenters (whichever view of the discussions that were had both in 2014 and 2015 you believe), is that person(s) use computer modelling to identify players from other leagues. This stats based model means that the coach (because The Shareholder does not trust anyone to actually manage) has only a say in decisions, he does not identify the type of player he would like, what kind of skills or personality; it's about as much use for finding players suited for this League as the Miss World pageant. Also, if you say that the Duchatelet way is to select more experienced foreign players than the callow youth of the Academy, you're not really setting the bar too high. If The Shareholder was serious, he would have ensured that the first team squad was sufficiently large to handle reasonable numbers of injuries.
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. Apart from the, at least vaguely slanderous statement about what CARD supporters will do (and would you say this to a named CARD supporter?), surely the "poor recruitment... incompetent at best" does not match what you said about what he seeks to do (was Vaz Te both technically better and cheaper than, for example, Lee Tomlin?
So Roland would need to not act like Roland, and be reactionary rather than "visionary".
The odds of that must be greater then the odds quoted for getting us in to the Premier league.
On the subject of the Premier League, one of the least quoted bits of the Dublin debacle is Katrien saying that a premier league wage bill would not fit in with the owners salary structure. This then led on to her saying that instead the Championship needed to market itself better, then came the infamous "my proposition is a unique real football fan experience" line.
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)
Given the last published accounts are nine months old, the debt to Staprix will be higher than the published figure at June 30th, 2015, reflecting subsequent operating costs and some capital spend. I expect it will be offset by selling Lookman and anybody else he can get a fee for in the summer. However, I'll point out again that:
1) the debt figure includes what he paid to acquire the assets, which was not invested in the club as such. That money went to the spivs. Nobody has claimed that he has so far put £40m into Charlton himself, including his stooges at The Valley; therefore you seem to me to be double-counting the purchase price when you talk about receiving anything for the equity. The original cost to him is already in the debt figure. 2) The debt figure includes interest that he is charging himself, now running at more than £1m a year. 3) The debt figure will include (notional) amounts that he transferred to Standard Liege for Reza and Tucudean, in effect payments that he made to himself, but which nonetheless presumably add to the interest charged by Staprix. See also above, because he took money out of Liege. If this includes money from CAFC for signings he has effectively recouped funds in Belgium that are still owed to him in England and on which he can charge interest. Nice work if you can get it.
1) is much more significant than 2) or 3) and is certainly part of the cost to him of owning the club, but nobody should run away with the idea that it has been invested in Charlton by Duchatelet. In practice it is the money lost by the previous regime in operating costs between Dec 2010 and Jan 2014. And RD still owns the assets, so the eight-figure value of them is not a sunk cost.
It is silly to imagine that people with a serious interest in buying the club are not fully aware of the real sums RD has put in, at least in general terms. Had he sold the club last August when he was first approached then he might reasonably have expected to recover them. Instead he and his chief executive have devalued the business substantially this season. But he has no idea what offer might be on the table or who the Varney investor might be.
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. But the problem is that a large part of what encourages players to come to any football club's academy is the reputation of the club. The possibility of getting first team football may be an attraction, but so, also is the quality of coaching. We have been lucky to produce some excellent young players in recent seasons, but only a fool would rely on it continuing ad infinitum. One of the things that is most common in a young talent played too often and too early, which will be much more likely once we are relegated, is that they either do not progress or go backwards.
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? Someone may not have mentioned this to you, but we have no hope of being a big club under the current regime, and, in passing, we're not Man Utd. (though I do think it only fair to point out that Man Utd. have a history of playing young starlets who burn brightly and then disappear - Danielle Nardiello, for example). Yes the top clubs will have hundreds, probably, of very talented youth/reserve team players, many out on loan. And yes, many will be let go, and may, if they are lucky, rebuild their careers, working their way up through the Divisions.
I suspect Lookman’s parents responded well to our track record of playing youngsters, and for good reason as it has turned out. And how do you think the way that the current regime treats its players will be seen? As I understand it, Ademola Lookman signed to the Academy in 2014, and I am delighted he signed a contract this season, but parents looking at Charlton as an organisation today may well see a different beast.
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. I take it that, despite your long term support for the club, you have forgotten the fans that bought shares in the club. Shares which then became worthless. So, in fact, it is people just like the supporters who have, in the past (and, if Duchatelet remains in control for too long, will have to in the future), "meet the gap between revenue and costs". Frankly, if you are a genuine fan, you should be ashamed. Yes, we all recognise the amounts of money that Richard Murray and his fellow directors put in to keep the club running; but to completely ignore what fans have done to keep this club afloat in order to defend our Belgian visionary supremo is contemptible.
To quote Murray
“Through Roland Duchatelet’s backing we have become financially stable…..” Jan 16 To quote my niece, "Meh". Which I take to mean, well, he would say that, wouldn't he. If owing money to The Shareholder, rather than to banks is financial stability, then we are stable, but The Shareholder, if the evidence from Standard Liege is not to be ignored, intends to squeeze every penny of his "investment", and then some, out of the club, before he is gone. Anyway, Richard Murray said some other things, in that Q&A (minus the "Q") session, that might not stand up to close scrutiny. Over the years, also, Mr Murray has made a number of statements that he may have had cause to regret in retrospect.
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 believe that those fans disagreeing with you think that because the evidence from elsewhere in his footballing network supports that argument.
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. Feel free to disagree with the viewpoint expressed by most of the posters (though, I would have thought that the action of looking at the banner heading on Charlton Life might have indicated to any sane individual what the likely response to comments such as yours might have been). For what it's worth, I have huge respect for the many people who put their hard earned cash into supporting football teams, trying to improve them and make them more competitive. This has been the way in which all football in England has developed over the past 150 years or so. I even have some respect for Slater and Jiminez. Other than in relation to Charlton, I have no opinion on Duchatelet. However, I do not view his investment in our club as being for the good of our club, attempting to improve the team and make us more competitive. He has his own reasons, articulated by both himself and his Chief Executive Officer, but they have nothing to do with footballing traditions.
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. Trust me, I've loads of perspective, it's just not yours; and my reading of your comments on this thread is that we should be doffing our caps/tugging our forelocks to the Lord of the Manor (which is not a million miles from acting like grateful serfs - though slightly less medieval).
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.I think that you will find that CARD and the many fans who want Duchatelet out of our club will have pored over the comments in January, and we will have noticed how much of what was said has come to pass. It was clearly a panicked attempt at damage limitation, and has proved to be on a par with other regime communiqués And, by the way CARD is a coalition, so it is a collection of different groups and individuals, if you don't know most of those supporting CARD, I would hazard that you do not know what most of them think. I will tell you that, in my opinion, Richard Murray had established over the many seasons, up until the current regime, a significant bank of goodwill among the fans. In my case, his abject failure to fulfil the role he had identified for himself at the takeover and his continuing defence of the indefensible means that this goodwill has been evaporated. The best thing that he could do is leave this all behind him, if he got out now, and came back in a private capacity once Duchatelet is gone.
Either I am right and RD seeks compromise which meets with a positive response from the fans
Verbatim from someone very high up in football circles in Belgium:
"I said: 'Now listen Roland, I think you're making a mistake', and rather than asking me 'Why do you think so?' he said 'No you're wrong and I'll tell you why, blah blah blah blah blah!' so that's (the kind of person) he is."
That statement sums the man up. He wont change, wake up or have an epiphany. He is always right despite every evidence to the contrary. If he doesn't go then we are doomed.
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.
CARD doesn't spend much time worrying about Murray, but I will tell you that is a pretty typical sentiment from many of the people who have sat round the boardroom table with him in the past - shareholders, elected directors and executives - even if they wouldn't use such a word. And some of them would.
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.
That "statement" that had the local press being briefed before hand because fans were getting excited thinking Katrien had got sacked, the very same one that ended up being a Q&A session? A Q&A session with the interesting twist that he wrote both the questions and the answers?
You can read my take on that utter nonsense here - https://medium.com/@FergusMorrow/charlton-athletic-make-a-statement-6cad0fb1248f#.1c60tpu6f - and for what it's worth, it's interesting he hasn't attempted to make a statement since isn't it? He was wheeled out to spout a few platitudes, got found out very quickly and has since retreated in to his bunker with Katrien.
you are not a Charlton supporter Al ... It's not posible for you to misunderstand this situation so completely and to be so .... What you actually are is a troll/new PR guys employee/ moron ...
If we do go down I suspect RD will throw the kitchen sink at it to make sure we come straight back up-
Roland and his cronies will not have a clue how to deal with League One and him "throwing the kitchen sink" will be playing the u18s and a some Alcoron and Carl Zeiss (sic?) outcasts.
Can we all remember this quote to refer back to our new friend Alan in a year's time? Actually, the chances of you still working for the club and posting on this board are rather slim so maybe we shouldn't bother. You must be an employee because I can't imagine any supporter would match the lack of ambition or dreams our esteemed owners have-"Wake up and smell the coffee everyone, the Premier League is a closed shop and we ain't ever getting there!"
Comments
Earlier in your post, and in other posts, you say that the Premier League is ultimately an impossibility.
So in point five you signal Lookman's sale in the summer to the Premier league, whilst you envisage retaining Cousins.
Why can't our young players end up playing for us in the Premier League? To say it is never going to happen is actually to say results don't matter.
The notion that results don't matter stops us being an actual football club.
This season we did not prepare to get promoted, and that lack of aspiration has led to our relegation. You always have to start a season aiming to get promoted, to start a season bent on survival alone is almost to guarantee relegation, the best form of defence is attack if you like.
What you're promoting is the player farm model which so many of us hate and despise, it is no wonder the owner never sees matches, why should he when the outcome of those matches don't matter to him?
However it is the results of those matches which motivates attendance by supporters at games.
I have never ever since I started watching Charlton in 1963 gone to a match thinking, oh well never mind if we win lose or draw so long as I can have a good time. Indeed a good time largely depends on the result, I go to matches ALWAYS wanting my team to win, and expecting them to try.
So it may well be that you are neatly re-articulating the consistent Duchatelet line since he bought the club, which is results don't matter so long as you can churn players for a profit. What is laughable is that even if Roland Duchatelet succeeds in churning some players for a profit, he is going to have to go some to pay for the huge losses his appalling stewardship of the club has already created thus far.
Let me ask if you can, as a sideline, to explain one thing. What was the rhyme or reason for signing Christophe Lepoint?
He is a glaring example of appalling decisions. I could name another dozen players as well as Christophe, and no, I am afraid the successful signings have simply not materialised to balance the dross, I can barely think of one successful signing under this regime.
The fans will not support a player farm because it is anti the sport, and it doesn't work.
I can't see it happening but if it did, I would support this and put my back behind making the club a success with RD as owner.
He would need to agree to row back and leave most of the decisions to the competent staff.
Unfortunately cannot see this happening.
@Badger thanks have received the junior hoody.
We want Roland out, say we want Roland out.
The odds of that must be greater then the odds quoted for getting us in to the Premier league.
On the subject of the Premier League, one of the least quoted bits of the Dublin debacle is Katrien saying that a premier league wage bill would not fit in with the owners salary structure. This then led on to her saying that instead the Championship needed to market itself better, then came the infamous "my proposition is a unique real football fan experience" line.
1) the debt figure includes what he paid to acquire the assets, which was not invested in the club as such. That money went to the spivs. Nobody has claimed that he has so far put £40m into Charlton himself, including his stooges at The Valley; therefore you seem to me to be double-counting the purchase price when you talk about receiving anything for the equity. The original cost to him is already in the debt figure.
2) The debt figure includes interest that he is charging himself, now running at more than £1m a year.
3) The debt figure will include (notional) amounts that he transferred to Standard Liege for Reza and Tucudean, in effect payments that he made to himself, but which nonetheless presumably add to the interest charged by Staprix. See also above, because he took money out of Liege. If this includes money from CAFC for signings he has effectively recouped funds in Belgium that are still owed to him in England and on which he can charge interest. Nice work if you can get it.
1) is much more significant than 2) or 3) and is certainly part of the cost to him of owning the club, but nobody should run away with the idea that it has been invested in Charlton by Duchatelet. In practice it is the money lost by the previous regime in operating costs between Dec 2010 and Jan 2014. And RD still owns the assets, so the eight-figure value of them is not a sunk cost.
It is silly to imagine that people with a serious interest in buying the club are not fully aware of the real sums RD has put in, at least in general terms. Had he sold the club last August when he was first approached then he might reasonably have expected to recover them. Instead he and his chief executive have devalued the business substantially this season. But he has no idea what offer might be on the table or who the Varney investor might be.
"I said: 'Now listen Roland, I think you're making a mistake', and rather than asking me 'Why do you think so?' he said 'No you're wrong and I'll tell you why, blah blah blah blah blah!' so that's (the kind of person) he is."
That statement sums the man up. He wont change, wake up or have an epiphany. He is always right despite every evidence to the contrary. If he doesn't go then we are doomed.
You can read my take on that utter nonsense here - https://medium.com/@FergusMorrow/charlton-athletic-make-a-statement-6cad0fb1248f#.1c60tpu6f - and for what it's worth, it's interesting he hasn't attempted to make a statement since isn't it? He was wheeled out to spout a few platitudes, got found out very quickly and has since retreated in to his bunker with Katrien.
Can we all remember this quote to refer back to our new friend Alan in a year's time? Actually, the chances of you still working for the club and posting on this board are rather slim so maybe we shouldn't bother. You must be an employee because I can't imagine any supporter would match the lack of ambition or dreams our esteemed owners have-"Wake up and smell the coffee everyone, the Premier League is a closed shop and we ain't ever getting there!"
So in summary - Roland is doing ok apart from recruitment, managerial appointments, league position, fan enjoyment.
Don't you understand that those ARE the problems? What else is there?