small inaccuracies aside, this is great - quite a personal attack on RD by a big sports journalist. have bolded the parts that I think are most telling
Football never stands still. New forms, new tropes emerge. There have of course been shadier, more abusive owners than the wretched Roland Duchâtelet and the decent but distant Randy Lerner. But fact remains, even as Lerner creeps closer to finally selling the club, that here English football has found a pair of owners who aren’t just bad judged against the traditional sweaty incompetents, or the standards of some impossibly virtuous fan-collective ideal. But bad instead in new and innovative ways; bad in a way that frankly makes no real sense for anyone.
Consider for a moment Duchâtelet’s progress at Charlton. Has there ever been a more chaotic, self-destructive two-year spell of ownership? It really shouldn’t be that hard to make Charlton work, a homely old suburban club that was fanned into life by the late-Victorian spread of prosperity east along the railway lines, and which in the golden years either side of the second world war could draw the biggest crowds in the country.
Hard times have come and gone. By the mid-1980s The Valley was a concrete ruin, with weeds blooming up between your feet through the cracks on the terraces. But jump to 2004 and Charlton were finishing seventh in the Premier League, hovering around the Champions league spots right up until the moment Chelsea decided to put a stop to all that by plucking out Scott Parker.
Duchâtelet bought the club in January 2014 through Staprix NV “an investment vehicle with several football-related interests”. An entrepreneur, populist politician and mild oddball, he owns a syndicate of smallish clubs across Europe. Clearly he made some kind of sense to Richard Murray, the club’s longstanding chairman.
At which point: enter sandman. In 28 months of Duchâtelet-flavoured weirdness Charlton have burned through five managers. The current braying-donkey regime, with its cast of pressed men and passers-by has won 18 of 70 matches played. Last month Duchâtelet released a statement comparing the club’s fans with cinema viewers and restaurant goers, who don’t “scream to the people in charge” if they’re unhappy with the customer service.
The home defeat by Bolton last weekend brought huge protests outside the ground, with people dressed as Bedouin holding inflatable palm trees, a slightly confusing reference to the chief exec’s recent 10-day holiday in Dubai. The Coalition Against Roland Duchâtelet is planning another massive turnout around Saturday’s home game against Brighton.
More than anything else, it is all bafflingly pointless, good news for nobody. Not least the owner who has scarcely been glimpsed on club property, and who has through a combination of basic mistakes – alienating supporters, enacting some half-baked inter-league player franchise plan – transformed a happy south London middleweight into a wild, miserable place desperate to free itself from the grip of a semi-detached speculator.
Always makes me chuckle when I see this argument trotted out:
"Neither set of fans would be complaining if the business model had them higher up the league."
Even by the usual standards of the Graun's spectacularly braindead commenters this line of thought really does not require much critical thinking to understand why it is wrong.
It is a shame the article makes no reference to Meire's appointment, surely currently the least qualified CEO in all of English professional football?
Always makes me chuckle when I see this argument trotted out:
"Neither set of fans would be complaining if the business model had them higher up the league."
Even by the usual standards of the Graun's spectacularly braindead commenters this line of thought really does not require much critical thinking to understand why it is wrong.
It is a shame the article makes no reference to Meire's appointment, surely currently the least qualified CEO in all of English professional football?
Yes @Fiiish, Arsenal's business model has a league position most would kill for, it's not exempting the fans from complaining though is it.
As for Villa's plight, a couple of Villain friends of mine say that Lerner went through a very costly divorce after which his investment in the club reduced and he's used it as a bit of a cash cow actually. He's a little strange and it's sad to see what Villa have been reduced to but he's nowhere near as hated as RD & KM.
Comments
pardon my language but fuck me is that actually right? I know things have been bad but that is atrocious.
'The home defeat by Bolton last weekend brought huge protests outside the ground'
"Neither set of fans would be complaining if the business model had them higher up the league."
Even by the usual standards of the Graun's spectacularly braindead commenters this line of thought really does not require much critical thinking to understand why it is wrong.
It is a shame the article makes no reference to Meire's appointment, surely currently the least qualified CEO in all of English professional football?
As for Villa's plight, a couple of Villain friends of mine say that Lerner went through a very costly divorce after which his investment in the club reduced and he's used it as a bit of a cash cow actually. He's a little strange and it's sad to see what Villa have been reduced to but he's nowhere near as hated as RD & KM.