I think this is very telling and something I 100% agree with. I admit I wanted Slats & Jimi to sell up and as I have stated on other threads I will not apologise for this as the club would not have progessed under their stewardship. Yes, they did a lot of good work trimming wage bills and dead wood etc but once the Kevin Cash money dried up they didnt have the funds to back any manager they had in place, regardless of if it was Powell or not. Under this new administration, the heart and soul is being ripped out of the club to the point where I almost do not recognise the great club I once supported. Fans can feel no affinity to Charlton, we are merely another child in the RD family and managers will come and go irrespective of the good work they do if they do not share the vision of RD. Powell didnt play the RD signings because they were not good enough, Riga didnt play them for the same reason and between them they kept Charlton in the Championship with only 1 game to spare. If RD is so insistant that the likes of Thuram, Reza, Nego etc will take Charlton forward why doesnt he manage the team himself and save himself a lot of money hiring a manager? The good will and feeling generated at the end of the season was starting to win me round when it came to renewing my ST but after this news I am now back at square one. I really hope in 6-12 months time we are all waxing lyrical about 'Super Bob', the great job he has done and how fickle we all were in the first place, but I cannot see it. I do not recognise Charlton Athletic anymore, and it breaks my heart.
I personally like to think of myself as being very clever (and possibly not very modest). But the more I know about the board situation etc the more I risk enjoying Charlton. So I'm quite happy to remain uninformed apart from the mixed messages I read on here (which, no offence, I take as entertaining hearsay rather than truth!). Self-chosen ignorance is bliss. For me Charlton has never been about winning or a connection between me and the board or even me and the players; it was, I admit, when Curbishley was here - but can anyone really say the 'network' players are any more soul-destroying than Alan Pardew bringing every available mercenary to the club? Charlton is more the experience for me; the pre-match sausage sandwich and Football Focus, going to the game with my Dad, competing with the same white 4x4 for the same parking space every week, the long walk down the hill talking about nothing in particular, getting down to Floyd Road and remembering that we're here for football, getting to my seat and watching the people in the crowd until kick off. None of that will change based on who plays for Charlton. In my own way I will support the 11 players in red regardless.
Good post Thrrock, agree about the previous regime, so if we are to pin our hopes on one man, I would never look beyond the owner...
Until now I was feeling a certain optimism, but getting rid of JR has changed that at a stroke, for all the reasons already stated. Tomorrow might change that if Gomez puts pen to paper, that maybe depends on who he's been talking to on his England adventures.
I might add that you have got no sense of humour, either Don't get me started on the whole "Charlton experience" thing. It is an absolute load of bollox. The core entity of any professional football club is a serious and competitive football team. We are going to struggle to get that under the RD Revolving Door system. You can enjoy as many pre match hot dogs as you like, but it ain't much fun if you are gorging them before watching the likes of Nego and Koc v Rochdale.
I like alot of what you enjoy, when going to your teams live match etc. But i find it hard to believe nothing will change, the way things are going your whole match day experience will diminish significantly. CAFC's efforts and season dip's n high's all form part of your match day experience. When we look like a joke of a team on the pitch and we drop to the lower echelons of the tier, your sausage sandwich may become a dry biscuit only.
i dont think it's bollox - i think you'll find a high percentage of our fans go because of tradition, affinity and community related circumstances. i dont go 'cos we win every week, i go 'cos i quite like the other fans, the atmosphere (when we're not imploding), the good the club does for youngans. if i wanted to see winning every week i'd support man u like all the other kids did when we were at school. what i had then, that they didnt, was that i was able to connect with my club. i used to spend loads of days at the training ground.
@ SIG Surely you need to feel a ceratin bond with the team, players & manager. You can relate to Solly and Poyet, but what about a team of Kocs and Negos ?
no, i would not be getting koc on my shirt. solly and poyet yes because i do valley gold and can see a direct relation to what my money's doing. it also helps that they're good.
It would be very appropriate for all season ticket holders to have 'Koc' on their shirts because that is how Rolly is treating them.
Well said... I'm glad you never brought up the word "ambition", now that really would have offended a large section of our support..
what's happening now is that all of the stuff that 90% of the fans like about the club is being disintegrated before our eyes and we cant do anything about it. we get katrien or whatever her name is swanning round like the only female member of a gentlemens club. at the players meal, she loved the attention she got - the belgian equivalent of karen brady - with one difference, she's crap at her job. everything they've done so far makes no business sense at all. swaps a perfectly good english manager for someone no one ever heard of. pays compo to CP. punt on the unknown pays off and then they fire him too because he learned english and said no. allows players worth millions to just walk away for free - regardless of them being fan favourites or not. decimates our academy by allowing paul hart to leave, but says our future is based on bringing through the youth. i honestly believe he or she have no idea what they're doing. communication has gone downhill since they took over, there is nothing coming out in terms of positive news. the goodwill that the last 3 years built up after being destroyed, is being destroyed again.
Football fans are very forgiving when it comes to their club, but the bottom line is what's on the pitch come match days, and if it constantly disappoints, fans protest the strongest way they can by not turning up.... Plenty of other places to get a hot dog & have fun these days...
Riga's dismissal is merely a tasty aperitif for the more tasty morsels to come. Just wait until Phase 2 of RD's player recruitment gets underway this summer. We will all have hours of fun scouring the websites of club's from Peru and Greenland, and debating the strength of Moldovan left backs and Kurdish wingers. It is going to be great It is fair to say my enthusiasm for RD's ownership is Peetering out fast
I liked what RD had done bar player recruitment. Watching the interview on Sky with Riga has pissed me off. He has been shafted. He did the job he was brought in to do, got on with the fans, and been dumped. His rumoured replacement is low grade trash. No basis to run a football club.
