Hello again you lot, been a while (again!) First of all, just want to say i have not been posting because i have been busy and Charlton related reading has been rather depressing for a fair but now, has nothing to do with any of the previous dramas. I am rather miffed i seemed to have missed all the banjo strings that came and started dishing out uncalled for grief, but i have a serious issue to bring up and would love to hear what everyone thinks on the subject. We all know the takeover routine here at Charlton, we get a little bit optimistic that finally we might get the funds we should have found years ago and finally get back to where we were before madness nearly completely killed the club. The thing drags out longer than expected and before you know it the supposed buyers pull out and we are left realising we are rather buggered. Now some of us appreciate the board have reduced the debt, i include myself in that group, some of us are not happy with management or specific players, but i have got serious grievances with the board and here is why. We are a business in their eyes, which is expected, however in the world of football, if you muck about with a club, the fans do not take very kindly to it. We were fed a 5 year plan, which has obviously been ripped up and forgotten about since Kevin Cash pulled out, however the silence and mystery that has come with that are completely unacceptable. We already know money needed to be spent before this season got underway, however instead we were left with a reduced squad in both size and quality. This was never going to be a good thing, but may very well have been necessary and unavoidable. However, as a fan of this club, which holds a very important place in my family through several generations, i think i have had just about enough of speculation, worry, annoyance, and everything else. All i want is honesty, i do not expect our board to come out and tell us our exact bank balance, the exact amount of debt, the price they want or anything else that could harm the potential sale of the club. I just want some form of response to us fans who have raised several worries over the last couple of years that have been completely ignored and left to fester. After seeing post after post, thread after thread, with a negative or worrying approach and tone, it is clear that as a set of supporters, we are not happy. We are worried, angry, upset, and just completely fed up with almost every aspect of the club at the moment. I took to twitter, and directed a few tweets to the clubs official twitter account in the hope that maybe just maybe, the club would finally take notice of what they clearly already know, we want answers. Every forum, fan page or anything else where CAFC fans can communicate with each other, you see one thing in common. We are not happy, some want Powell out, some blame Pritchard or Stephens, some seem to just want to pile the blame here there and everywhere to get it off their chest. However all of the worries lead directly back to the boardroom. If you really look at all of the issues raised, the real issue seems to be the fact we do not know anything for sure, for all we know we are not even in trouble money wise they just cant be bothered to spend. For all we know we are in huge trouble and they are effectively saviours, but all the while we are kept in the dark what are we supposed to do? Wear a fake smile and pretend to be optimistic while we fluff away 2 goal leads to sides like Yeovil? If you have a twitter account, and feel that you would like to voice directly that you are a supporter and feel we should be getting more respect from the board or the club in general and deserve to be given some form of evidence for the club we still support both financially and with out voices and hearts, go and air your problems or ideas straight to the club. I started yesterday, and pretty quickly, a lot of other fans followed suit. Using #OurCAFC you can see what fans have been saying, and what the club still want to avoid addressing so far. There have been talks of a protest demanding answers after the Derby game, which to be honest i am completely behind. We as supporters always seem to soft and too laid back, well i think it is about time we stood up for our club and get it back to the way it should be. Sod the politics, sod the pockets of certain board members, this is our Charlton and if we have something to say or something to ask, that is our right. Without us, CAFC is just a name, nothing more. I look forward to reading responses and hopefully, seeing some more supporters get behind this. We dont want milions to spend on Messi if we have not got it, we do not want a magic wand, we just want our club to be open and honest with its supporters when they are worried and have something to say, engaging with us at all would be a welcome start. Cheers for reading, and here is hoping for 3 points on Saturday, COYR
How can you protest against owners who don't attend our games? Unless we charter a dozen jumbo jets, and fly en masse to see good old Tone at his home in Northern Cyprus, it ain't going to happen. The vast majority of Charlton fans are over 65, wear a kagool all year round, and are more likely to drop their false teeth in their half time Bovril than protest against anything.
PS And protest against what ? They want to sell but can't find a buyer for the price. Its simple market forces.
So you are saying if a few thousand fans made their opinions known at The Valley, the board would not hear about it? And as for protest against what, protest against the shoddy way us fans get treated by those in control of the club. For a long time now there has been absolutely no communication from them to us about anything. They cant find a buyer for the price they want, if i wanted to sell you a £20 note for £50 would you be interested? They are taking the piss to be quite honest, and all the while fans shrug it off and carry on in the illusion that we are not all fed up with it what incentive do they have to do anything about it? If you are genuinely happy with all the speculation and worry that has surrounded our club for well over a season now, then good for you, but i am not alone in being very annoyed at this situation, it is unnecessary for the board to be so ignorant towards the fans that are this club
Jimmy A genuine question for you - how much blame do you attribute to Richard Murray for this mess? Lets not forget who sold the Club to Jiminez & Co, at a time when we were in League One , on the verge of administration, and had Pawel Abbot up front. And yet amazingly it was only last week that Muzza was given a standing ovation by our Cardigan intelligentsia at the BTTV meal. WTF ?? Say what you like about the owners, but they made clear from the start that they were not Charlton fans, had no emotional connection to Charlton, and would hope to sell us quickly for a profit. And good ol Muzza sold to them.
I have no problem with the board wanting to sell, i have no problem with them wanting to sell for a profit, i have a problem with the shady nature of the way they have been handling the club for quite a while now. When they came in, we had the 5 year plan, things changed, but they said nothing. Selling for a profit is one thing, trying to hold out to sell for a profit of the magnitude they are attempting is ridiculous and is going to kill both the club and their business. It does not take a genius to see that if we get relegated, we are less attractive both as a business and as a footballing venture in general. Murray was no saint, he made some serious mistakes that very nearly completely buried us, but with Murray you have a business man who is not the sort of bloke who will happily kill something so important to so many people purely to line his own pockets. We owe the man £7 million and he has had it written into a contract that we do not pay a penny of that back until we get back to the Premier League, which at this rate may never happen. It says a lot about his character to do that and i will forever be grateful to him for seeing what he had done and trying to rectify it. He could have been stubborn and kept control of the club in the hope something miraculous happened and he could get all of his cash back, but he knew that was not best for the club and stepped away. I am seriously not impressed with the current board at all though, they started so well, i trusted them entirely and they were very open and honest about the direction of the club both in footballing and business terms. The original plan was a situation that both the club and its fans were going to benefit from, as well as the members of the board who would receive a nice return for their efforts upon completing the 5 year plan and making a sale. However, due to reasons that are clear and some that are not so clear, the 5 year plan was tossed aside and has been replaced with a squad of underpar players all running very low on contract time, a club legend at the helm who has been left to take the flack for a poor side playing poorly with no money to improve it whilst his own contract and therefore source of income draw closer to expiring too. Quite simply, something HAS to change. We cannot continue this way or bye bye championship, hello league one. That pushes us a huge step away from the Premier League again and will make it even harder to find a buyer that will actually pay a price that means these guys get a profit. Literally, at the moment this situation is bad for the club, bad for the fans, and bad for business. It really is as simple as that
Playing devil's adovate, you can't say Jiminez & Co were shady when they set out right from the start what the plan was! You may not like it but they are the Ronseal Owners - they have done exactly what it said on the tin.
They have done the complete opposite Vol, i really do think you argue with me for the sake of it. They said a five year plan of CONSISTENT AND STEADY INVESTMENT in the club in general and the playing and coaching staff. We saw signings in the first full season, and a fair sum of money spent, nothing massive but enough. Since then, we have spent absolutely nowhere near enough money to back up the choice of words they used, steady and consistent. In fact, the only thing that has been consistent since the first full season with them in charge has been poor football and worry, and a string of collapsed takeovers. They are taking the piss and it has got to the point a lot of fans are contemplating a protest before or after the Derby game
FFS Newsflash Jimmy - you ARE where you should be - look at your history (it won't take long) and you'll see that over half of your time has been spent in the 2nd tier with cameo visits up and down - and yes, you were punching above your weight under Curbishley in the same way you were under-achieving in League 1. Without Jiminez et al you'd still be in League 1 but with a points deduction and transfer embargo - so Murray was rightly applauded as he saved you by letting go
TC, we are not where we should be, full stop. History comes into this why exactly? If Swansea go down and in the next few seasons are just sitting there rotting would you say they should see that as their rightful place, and ignore the leaps and strides they have taken as a club? As a club we should not be happy sitting at the bottom end of the Championship, end of. The "Little Old Charlton" tag is just a tactic used to numb the pain of how little has been done to correct the stupid mistakes that were made to get us in this mess in the first place. Jimenez and Slater got us out of League One, but will be directly responsible for getting us back there as well if they do not sort themselves out. I am not going to let them off for the shocking way they have handled things over the last 12-18 months purely because they used to know what they were doing. Would you be happy if this went on at your club? Because i am certain you wouldn't be, nobody should be
League 1? I honestly think we'd be in the conference doing a Luton or at best a Portsmouth if it wasn't for Parky (for first stopping the rot) and then the new owners for stopping administration.
Happened to us loads of times Jimmy - most recently when Pathitis and Wise left that saw an exodus of players - we went down to League 1 as a result (and stayed there for 5 seasons). What makes Charlton different to Nottm Forest (European Champions) Leeds (Massive club apparently) Derby, Leicester, Sheff Weds, Brighton, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan, QPR, Wolves - all bigger clubs than Charlton - why do you think you have a divine right to top flight football ahead of these teams? Get you head out of the sand mate
I don't get this "ought to be". It's all about results, so every team is where they deserve to be. If a team ought be in a higher division, they will get there if they play well enough. We got there thanks to having an exceptional manager, and great youth coach. When we had 3 poor managers in a season and a poor youth coach that came to an end. We've now got Paul Hart who is a very good Youth coach, all we need is for CP to prove himself to be an exceptional manager. Curbs had no money either, btw.
He didn't have to compete against teams with ridiculous parachute payments though FB - doubt he would be so successful in today's unfair climate
I hate the team "ought to be" exactly why I have a passionate hate of Wednesday as they believe they "ought to be" at the top level. How do you think Ipswich feel? Have been a midtable side on the championship for about 10 years now... should they be higher or lower? What makes us better than those above us? The answer, nothing, they are above us for a reason...they deserve to be because they have more points.
I did not say we have a divine right to top flight football, but we should not have fans giving it the old "it could be worse" routine. As a Millwall fan, do you not feel you have a right to point out you should be attempting to progress as a club? That is what my point is, some of our fans are all to happy to sit there and pay to watch us play like ****e and put up with it. I on the other hand am annoyed that it is deemed acceptable to not put the funds in to actually progress as we were all promised, and not only that we actually went and weakened ourselves for the start of this campaign. We as a club should all be working on going forward, or at the very least maintaining. We are halfway up a massive hill and some twat has taken the hand brake off..........
FHB, we are only where we are because not only did we not add to the squad we weakened it. Our position in the table is down to poor running of the club in footballing terms from the boardroom. If you want to progress, you go forwards, not backwards. So yes, we ought to be doing a lot better than we are, because we should not have been put in this position in the first place by our owners.
Jimmy, we're stuck with them because nobody wants to buy them out, for reasons unknown. Our club is losing money and we don't have a Jack Walker. Maybe the owners don't have any more money to put in, I don't know. What seems to be emerging is that there is not any sort of working relationship between the board and the manager. That's a recipe for relegation.
