Evening Standard saying Tom Eaves is coming to Charlton a fee of 750000. Ajose is going to Gillingham. Personally I think it is a load of bollocks.
If RD approves £750,000 on a player in the January transfer window that will be a statement of intent. However, its impact will depend on how many players are sold and what he gets for them. £750,000 sounds good, but it pales if RD pockets £3,000,000 or more from player sales. We shall see what happens...
First reaction is to agree, but Charlton haven't been linked with this type of transfer for ages, so I won't dismiss it. How reliable is the Standard?
With the run of form Bowyer and the lads are on at the moment I find myself not actually wanting a take-over now - not until the end of the season anyway, or until after the wheels come off of this campaign (if they do), whichever comes sooner. A take-over in the next few weeks might lead to the new owners turfing LB out in favour of their own man. That would be insane, but new owners do that kind of thing all the time. Even if they gave a new manager money in January, there is no guarantee the players he buys will fit well into the current team, and the present players could well resent losing their gaffer and not take well to the new manager. That could ruin everything (for this season anyway). Right now it ain't broke - so there's no need for anybody to come in and upset the apple cart in their efforts to 'fix it'. Of course I still want RD gone. But not if the manner of his departure wrecks what could be a real chance for Charlton to get back into the Championship. PS: My above post makes the risky assumption that RD will not plunder our squad in January to line his pockets, so leaving it weakened and scuppering Charlton's promotion hopes anyway. I am very much hoping RD will listen to the plea of Lyle Taylor and leave the squad alone. However if he does raid it, then eveything I said in the first part of this post is null and void.
i dont think you've thought it through. what would happen if we got promoted under RD? he'd jack his price up and it'd be even harder to shift him. then he'd try and get us to get through a season in the championship with zero funding and even more of a spotlight on our young players. he wouldnt be able to resist raping our first team then.
That is a fair point. I have no faith at all that RD will suddenly become a responsible owner if Charlton are back in the Championship again next season. In my view it is most likely that he will Raise the asking price for the Club, probably to well over £50 million Feed Bowyer a few scraps in the summer rather than invest properly in a competitive Championship squad Cash in on any players who are left. However, those are problems for the future. Duchatelet cannot ruin another Championship season for CAFC unless we get there in the first place. I want Lee Bowyer to succeed this season. Partly for the sake of the fans who have had virtually nothing to be happy about in three years, partly for the sake of the Club itself (to give us our first chance since 2012 to stop the long term decline) and partly to give RD no excuse whatsoever not to sell it, if he is being honest about wanting to - which I severely doubt. If by some miracle the Club is sold in the summer of 2019 after a promotion, not only will we be seeing a new era dawn for CAFC, but we will see it back in the 2nd tier again. If a few apologists want to give Roland any credit for that, let them. Who cares what they think. Against my previous better judgment I find myself beginning to believe in Lee Bowyer. If he is our manager next season and we have new owners who can invest, but also give him a chance rather than replace him, LB might just be the manager who can make Charlton Athletic a force in the Championship (even if that takes four or five seasons). He might even be the man to eventually lead us to the Premier League. On the other hand if RD carries on behaving like Scrooge and we crash and burn back to League One, there will be nowhere for his few remaining sympathisers to hide. The man will have proven himself yet again to be an incompetent, disinterested bungler.
We would have the lowest playing budget in the Championship by a country mile under Duchatelet We would make Rotherham look like Man City.
Then Roland's lies will all be exposed. He can currently hide behind excuses about how tough it is to get out of this league, but if Bowyer actually achieves it, RD will have to show his hand; Sell the Club (like he says he wants to) - much easier if we are 2nd tier again as long as he does not hike up the price Invest in making the team competitive in the 2nd tier (one of KM's empty promises from years ago) Carry on cost-cutting and watch as Charlton are relegated again. Roland's recent throwaway comment about Charlton being relegated by "a few points" in 2015-16 was the daftest thing he has ever said. We were down by December that season. Utterly humiliated.
Another factor to throw into the mix is that if Bowyer achieves promotion under Roland he will become a hot property, and his contract runs out in the summer.
Jamie Ward returning to Nottingham Forest. Rich Cawley sounding pessimistic that the clubs will be able to work out a future agreement on Ward's wages. I assume that Duchshitalot doesn't want to fork out for an injured player.
To be fair, Jamie Ward's loan was only until the end of December. That was never a secret. Ward has made 6 league starts in his time at CAFC but has never stayed on the pitch for the full 90 minutes. He has also come on as a substitute 3 times. This is from 19 games where he was eligible to play. He has missed 8 games through injury and 1 because of International duty. Charlton did win 5 of the 6 games where Ward started (Bradford, Plymouth, Barnsley, Doncaster, Bristol Rovers) The other result was a defeat was against Rochdale. That is a pretty impressive 83% win rate with Ward in the starting XI. Without Ward in the starting XI Charlton's win rate drops to 44% (8 wins from 18 games). Stats don't tell the whole story of course, but if Jamie Ward had been fit more often they suggest Charlton might even be in the automatic places now. Certainly if Jamie Ward does not play again for Charlton this season, we will have to do better than a 44% win rate to maintain a promotion push.
