I mean seriously, do those supporters trust lot smoke some strong pot or what? After they buy the valley, I hear they will be setting up a USA branch in Waco, Texas.
Well it's seems the valley is being sold and cafc won't exist unless you give a fiver to the supporterst trust. It sounds perfectly plausible. So far the trust has raised nearly £450 and only needs about 22 million to buy out the current board. Go check out the charlton life page. Some people really don't like being kept behind at cafc yesterday.
I'm happy to discuss the trust, but please can we stop the sniping of other sites? Charlton life, or any other sites, represent the opinions of a very small % of CAFC fans so its not fair to target the audience as a whole. Thanks
I replied to the original thread, which is unusual for me as I never post on Charlton Life. Using the stadium as propaganda to increase membership numbers for me, isn't what the Trust should be about. Whether you agree with the Trust or not, if we're going to have one, I want one that represents all of our interests, and given the way we were treated on Saturday, there's an obvious place to start. If I was an owner of a football club, and saw a body with just 250 members was trying to take some kind of control or block the potential re-sale of the Stadium (which has secured debt against it, so who knows what our creditors would think about that) I wouldn't engage with them. It's too extreme to early in my eyes. The aim of this should be to secure a seat at the table, and to be a fans representative, with enough clout and support behind it to have a real say without providing major investment. Only then can we start talking about safe guarding the future of the Valley. If the Trusts message is falling on death ears, shouting louder won't work, but a change of direction might.
A very well thought out response Mr Survival. I agree. Allow me not to be so eloquent and thoughtful. The Trust is simply a political arm of Charlton Life. After all it the thread was introduced in this fashion. "CHARLTON LIFE EXCLUSIVE-THE BATTLE FOR THE VALLEY HAS BEGUN. Now given that the trust want membership and financing (not to mentiion to usurp, the supporters club but that is another matter) would not the usual and decent thing to be post on this site and others to recruit or advertise? It costs nothing.... they ignore us. So why did they regard it as an exclusive to the CL. Its obvious to me that we and the vast majority of CAFC fans do not matter!! even we supported the Trust (which I firmly do not) the closed anuses of CL would never allow anyone but there own to run such a thing or to have any input apart from a fiver to 'cover costs' It is so incestious, the members are so finger sniffing that it not only threatens to tear up all relationships with the club but also divides the fans into them and us. the very thing is tells us it sets out not ot do. I detest the trust becuase its nothing more than a bunch of plastic wananbee homemade politicians with too much time on their hands, trying to make a name for themselves without due regard for the majority of fans, their feelings or the good of the club.That is reflected amply and supported in the CL site. They will destroy this club turning instead into a union which will stain the club making outside investment impossible. How about they come on here and explain themselves to fans that are not sheep? Can they explain how they are going to change CAFC without financintg. The idea that the ground is about to be sold. Their expirience of running a football club, the future financing of CAFC etc etc And Dick do you actually know what the Trust are trying to achieve?
The ST want to take over the club and run it themselves...... but ..... as Mr Murray found out ..... it is not possible to run a championship/top L1 Club without rich backers!
I will e mail Barnie Razzel,the interim chair,to see if he will come on here to answer any questions.If people want to read up about anything else I suggest they look at the following. http://www.castrust.org
By the way Typical,Barnie has posted on other forums like Into the Valley.But don't let facts get in the way of a good rant.
I wish the Board would close it down, it doesn't represent the majority of fans and is an embarrassment to the club. The established supporters groups have more members and co-operate with the Board recognising all the good work they've done in saving CAFC from entering administration, this Trust does the opposite.
It's a shame that the trust appears to be so politicised and has an agenda, premised upon rumour and speculation. I completely agree with their wish to build-up communication with the board, but they have to stop speaking as though us fans have the divine right to know whats going on. Like it or not, CAFC is a business, we are customers. You don't go into KFC and demand to know what their secret herbs and spices are, or go into a Premier Inn and ask what the state of the managerial finances are like. The idea of us becoming a fan-owned club is also extremely ambitious. I'm not saying it's impossible, but given we are a club with Premier League ambitions, they're gonna have to ask for a lot of fivers.
Talk of biting the hand that feeds you because that's what they do. Motivated by the politics of envy, they're not worth a fiver.
Hello everyone First off my post on cl was unofficial and stated at the start of the thread, there were no links to the trust either. Second, cas trust operating on an extremely low budget/staff, etc put on a fan bttv even when no one else would including the club, pretty much from day 1 we have attempted engagement with cafc, i can show u the emails if you like. Lately this culminated in attending the FF and meeting Steve Bradshaw, this has all been covered in our literature, but heres the thing you do have to actually read it. Fourthly our team of dedicated volunteers have built an organisation with professional website and other media channels, a network of nearly 2000 addicks with no assiistance from official channels, just hard graft talking to fans in the rain and cold. Fifthly we have engaged with the club about policing and continued to do so and called for better communication with the police, again read our website. And finally for this evenings big one, here are the facts. Our present owners care nothing for the valley, nor are they fans, they also as do many i have spoken to believe it to be a financial millstone, ask them if you like, maybe they are right or maybe they don't 'understand cafc'. They also rather worryingly are running a deficit of £7m last and we understand this year, and appear to have run out of cash. I have spoken personally now to all the major players, and I understand that the Valley would be under threat if we got a foreign owner, one such group is speaking to the club at the moment. There are further rumours about the gravity of this current situation, but I don't deal in rumour, sadly we may only hear of the fate of this club that way but c'est la vie My appeal on CL was for people to join the trust not for their fivers, that is a nominal amount that will make little difference except to maintain the trust and help us publicise it, but what it does do is show commitment, it means that we can say we actually represent fans and that they are willing to put a small but symbolic sacrifice up to that. We are approaching our first election and the end of the startup phase, we wanted to expand our network and active base so that the meeting wouldn't be a clique behind closed doors but as inclusive as possible. I am sorry I cannot be on every message board inhave my limits. In short I believe that we need a strong active trust because otherwise our views and concerns over the future of cafc will not be heard or listened to. How we achieve that is up for debate, but it's been done elsewhere and after all we pioneered this stuff at cafc. Could we buy the club? Would we want to? Well first off we certainly couldn't do it using the fivers, we would need a different scheme. I think a consortium on the model of swansea, could work if the opportunity arose. If you look out of your window, maybe read our publication 'tnt' you will notice the championship is in an awful mess of debt ridden speculation. Join us as at the SGM next month, no link no details, this is self help, this Trust is for you lot, make it yours.
Ill do a more detailed response later en route to Coventry, but a plea for stopping the sniping falls on deaf ears with me due to some of the trusts allies and past conduct. Re the valley, I'd also point out that it wasn't safe under Murray and Varney in the early 00's. My main point being that having the valley will always be like having a £30 million pound striker to any board that we've had or will have. However, thank you for taking the time to come over here to discuss some of the points raised.
I'm fairly sure that if the present owners hadn't come in then The Valley would have been sold by now.
They call it asset stripping, and it is often the first step in breaking up a business and selling the component parts. As far as the Charlton Life thing goes, I've never been on their forum so I don't really know what the fuss is about (though some of the comments on here make me fear to write anything there in case they eat me!) but hey, we're all supposed to be Charlton fans, apart from the embarrassing seat breakers at the Den, so maybe we could all take a deep breath and try to find a bit of common ground. As usual, I agree with most of whats on her including Typical's posts AND the Charlton Trust reply. One thing does strike me, that if we're going to spend eternity together in Red shirts, we'll do better united than in small factions (again, the racists from Fulham away last season and the mob we took to Millwall can piss off!). There's a certain amount of common ground especially the desire not to sell the Valley po pay of debts that with poor management would soon build up again, which we all share, and if the difference is between those who see the future as debt ridden and those who don't see a financial cloud, maybe thats because we are'nt directors, and therefore don't have access to the accounts!
