Having just watched the Centenary You Tube link posted by dearest Rodney Charlton Trotter, well done mate, a timely reminder.
In the 111 years (100 of which are covered) there has certainly been some very, very low points indeed!
Never in my opinion have the "owners" of the club managed to alienate the fan base in the manner and to the extent that the Douche Bag regime has now achieved.
After what this club has been thru; "Douche Bag you will loose"
A football club cannot sustain itself without the backing of its fans!
We will likely go and beat Burnley next week just to underline what a completely ludicrous and stupid relegation we've been forced to endure!
COYR!
4
Comments
The promotion (and leaving the Valley season) was 85/86
That is relegation form, and we have been a very poor team this season.
Mak - cupping his ears at Rotherham, then couldn't hit a cow's ass with a banjo for the next 4 months.
Poyet - can't get in the MKD team, so he comes to us and can't get in our team either.
Sarr - dubious ability
Bergdich - dubious ability
Roger J - 18 month contract given to him 6 months too late
Ba - humbug
Vaz Te - no ta
Reza - a push-over
Ceballos - no talent
That's about a third of our squad.
The question is - will we learn from this for next season?
KM has said that we will be "competitive", which is a totally meaningless phrase, and probably means we are trying not to get relegated again.
Think about our L1 winning squad from a few years back:
Hamer
Hollands
Wiggy
Kermo
Morro
Cort
Clarkie
Green
Stephens
Hughes
Taylor
Hayes
Bradders
The current rag bag are nowhere near as good.
Compare that to now. A multi-millionaire owner who does things his way. That is, to alienate the fan-base to the point where, following a wretched season culminating in a needless relegation, perhaps 50 per cent of the home crowd will be lost. There is nothing of any substance to be cheery about as regards the immediate future.
CAFC almost faced a Winding-Up Order in 1984, but this was avoided. What now for this rudderless, ridiculous and relegated CAFC? This must be our darkest hour...and, sadly, the tunnel appears long and there is no light to be seen.
It's good for us to stay positive, but at times it is very hard, as the blood boils and the anger rises...
But we are in a war of attrition and we have to win or there will no longer be a CAFC. There is no workable solution.
We have a cancer in the club and although we may have stopped it's growth it's all a question of if it's already too late...
Of course there are key points in our history such as losing the valley and having to ground share at selhurst park. These dark days also brought light days such as when we returned to the valley...
I wasn't born during these periods but even though the ground share sounds awful, I wish I experienced it.
I know too many fans that simply would just rather be doing something else with their saturdays then watch Charlton. It's sad. The protests are the only interesting thing happening at the valley now.
We have a unique kind of er fan experience where you can watch apparent young stars of the premier league, meet up with friends have a drink and feel a souless empty void and hurt that Charlton will never be what it used to be and in katriens words .....,..we must accept it.
Charlton was such a great club and a great club to support.
It is no longer the same on almost every level.
The only thing keeping this clubs heart and soul alive is the fans and the protests.
In terms of football...its apathy. No one cares whether we win or lose ....or its to a much lesser extent. I bet relegation didn't really pull at the heartstrings that much this time around. Very unlikely.
I don't know if football has evolved into something that is no longer as enjoyable or passionate as it used to be...or we've just been dealt a really weird unique shit hand falling into the mad depressing boring world of Roland Duchatelet.
Roland Duchatelet has and had his vision for what he wanted Charlton to turn into. That's actually ok.
If along the way it makes people severly unhappy or dis-interested then that is kind of a good indicator it's backfired and you should jog on and start a new project somewhere else. We all know the plan and idea RD wanted for Charlton, it wasn't nasty or secretly evil, it was just unsellable and the idea is not an exciting or fun thats good enough reason to spend money. Its just arguably a waste of someone's time.
You can meet up with your friends go round someone's house as a meeting point and watch premier league football on TV.
The beer is cheaper. It's free entry. You are watching actual stars of the premier league whether or not they are young or old.
Or you could just go to the pub....
That's more of a sellable idea even for Charlton fans.
I still love Charlton but the love started for a reason. If I was a kid and my dad took me to my 1st game in the present, it would probably put me off football....
You can live with adversity caused by incompetence or reckless ambition if neverthrless it came from a desire to take the club forwards.
What rings out time and again from that video is the undefinable collective conscience surrounding the club and its history that we define as spirit.
What this regime just can't see, is that unless you feed that spirit, if not with immediate triumphs, with respect and hope, you breed a cancer that destroys it.
Telling us the owner is prepared to piss £1m a month up the wall in pursuit of a casual experiment in techno football management shows just how out of touch they are. As if all that matters is money.
Charlton has more often been in financial crisis than not, yet the spirit has helped to win through and survive.
Money only sustains the fabric of the club, and attraction for plastics. It only has value for supporters if they feel it is a mark of intent to sustain the spirit of the club.
A mad engineer may have difficulty in acknowledging something like a spirit which is both intangible yet real in the minds of those it has afflicted. So he ignores it and dismisses it as an irrelevancy to his experiment.
That is why we cannot imagine a future for our club while he is any part of it and why he cannot understand our reactions to him.
His reaction to us in turn is to tell himself we are an unexpected, unwelcome, external interference in his experiment who need to be excluded from the laboratory.
Our worst times are yet to come i believe.
This lot will well and truly bury us.
You must be mental if you think that.
A man who doesn't care what division we are in or what state the infrastructure of the club is and yet still refuses to sell is far more of a threat.
If this is your view, I humbly beg to disagree...
We have the richest owner in our history, and he is treating our club as his personal plaything, to do with as he pleases. Unfortunately, as he pleases is utterly, utterly useless and incompetent.
He is determined to prove that his ideologically driven model of football ownership is right, despite it never having worked before. Remember, he sees himself as a visionary, his way is always right, because he is the keeper of a secret truth.
Under the Duchatelet Way, we will never have stability of squad or football management (and we will never see competent footballing people willingly join). We are caught in a vicious circle of wholesale squad changes each summer; because anyone of any value will be sold, and others will be shunted around the network.
There is nothing to suggest that The Shareholder wants footballing success for us, all he wants is economic success for himself (and, if he achieves that, not likely I know, he will be able to claim a victory - one that eludes him in all his ventures outside his core business - I wonder why?).
Remember this, he has no attachment to our club or us, as fans. When his experiment is over (having failed again), he'll treat us, whether protester or apologist, with as much concern as the lab technician bagging up the lab rats for disposal.
So, Colin1961, keep telling yourself that things have been worse before, and in certain regards they have, but you are making a mistaken assumption. You are comparing the current position under this regime with the worst outcomes of previous owners (who, as others have said, actually wanted footballing success for us). Unfortunately, if we do not get this regime out, we, to misappropriate Churchill, are not at the beginning of the end, but at the end of the beginning.... And the longer they stay the less pretty the end will be.
There has never been anything in what the regime have said or done that indicates they understand the fans or the footballing culture in England, what reason would any sane person have to expect an improvement?
If Duchatelet and his cronies are not forced out, they will do lasting, maybe permanent or even terminal damage to our club. I don't want to face a future generation that knows nothing of Charlton Athletic because of this regime. I'd want it even less if I had foolishly nailed my colours to the regime's mast....
If Colin1961 really thinks this isn't as bad as in the past he is as deluded as Duchatelet. The ONLY thing that will save this club is if RD sells up and we get new owners who not only have the means to improve the playing side of the club but also understand Football in this country and know what is required to get success.
So yes these are the darkest times
Hulyer was a fantasist and, as you say, yes his actions took the Club to near bankruptcy but his motives were 'pure' in that he wanted us to play at the highest level and be successful as exemplified by the signing of Simonsen. As my dear old grandmother used to sometimes say his eyes were bigger than his stomach.
For the youngsters that signing was the equivalent of Messi (the real one not Callum) joining Charlton today!
Gliksten frustrated me at the time when he sold the likes of Bailey, Hinton, Bonds, Glover and later Hales and Flanagan just as it looked as if a breakthrough might be on but even he invested when necessary to get us back to Championship level.
Duchatelet and his bint simply don't seem to care what level we play at and appear happy to run the Club down.
That is why he is so poisonous compared to past chairmen.