New owners

Wages in 2019-20 9% lower than in 2015-16

Duchatelet was a tight-fisted old git - official.

 

I suppose that in the run up to 19/20, we had spent 3 years in league one. Plenty of time to cut the wage bill.

 

Yes, three years in League One thanks to that deluded old twat.

 

Not very wise from TS

He has built a weaker team than anything Roland ever did. It's just not good enough. NA is a good manager but he can't turn crap players into good ones and neither can the fans.

 

Thomas Sandgaard is right on one thing - the team needs our support.

What I saw and heard today in the last few minutes of the match, and after full time, disgusted me.
After the last 14 years I thought I had witnessed a fair bit of extreme behaviour of one kind or another at the Valley.
But I've never been so ashamed as I am now by the way the covered end reacted.

I won't say any more, because I'm likely to offend people.

 

I agree with you Lardy. Turning on the team because they were second best was ugly. They will be even worse if that is going to happen. The fans were good until Wigan scored, it was the suddenness of the change that was shockin, juss shockin.

 

I'm all out of common ground with fans who take the existence of CAFC and its league status for granted, and demand success as if it's our God given right.
The kind of fans who turned on the team on Saturday. Who disowned those players.

Every day that the Club opens its doors and lets its employees in to do a days work. Every day that it opens its turnstiles to let supporters in to watch a match. Every community project that it runs to support disadvantaged kids and vulnerable people in the neighbourhood.
ALL of that continues to happen each day because of one man.

Not a man who owes the Club or the fans or the community one damned thing.
Just a man who gave time and effort and huge resources paid for off his own back, to see that those doors at the Club were not padlocked, the workers there not made redundant, the 116 years of football tradition not just ended in a court room or a solicitors office.
Now if that man walks into a pub in SE7 tomorrow, how many Charlton fans would even offer to buy him a drink?


Everything the Valley Party fought for was thrown away - by fools who took things for granted.
The board of CAFC, in its complacency after 7 seasons in the Premiership, presided over Charlton Athletic's fifteen year downfall.
It should have ended with Farnell.
Nothing should be left now but a demolition order and a big billboard showing an artists impression of luxury flats.

But hey, it's not too late for that future to happen if fans really want it that way.
All we have to do is convince Mr Sandgaard that he (like Roland) has made the biggest mistake of his business career.
And we've made a great start.
I'm half convinced already.

 

This pretty well sums up my own feelings. On Saturday I left after the second goal because I didn't want to be part of it when the team got booed off the pitch, which was clearly about to happen. I don't remember a team being booed like that when they've tried their best. OK so TS made a rash statement about "blowing the league apart" or something like that, but that was just wishful thinking at the time based on enthusiasm more than anything else. I didn't take it seriously at all, and it seems disingenuous now for fans to take that quote as the equivalent of a legal undertaking. TS is learning the hard way about what is required for success at this level at this time, and it could get harder. In fact it could all blow up in his face, since a relegation battle is a distinct possibility, so imagine how he must feel now that reality is hitting home. He also said that he came to Charlton because of the fans, and having those same fans turning on him now is just wrong. Not just a few keyboard warriors, the entire Upper North. I just can't empathise with it.

 

I don't agree with your stance, and I mainly mean from how to convey one's opinion and wrap up everyone in two groups etc.
All of the above is admirable and by all means true. But just because someone isn't happy with what's been done and what hasn't taken place doesn't mean they are part of some post-game football bandit group. To me it is the signings, the investment, get on with it, for months there have been players available CAFC could have signed up. If you want to be successful and have a club to follow you do not shoot for the ground. To blame any future possibility of downfall and demolition orders on upset, frustrated supporters is ludicrous.

 

There's no doubt about it, TS has made mistakes, we put out an unbalanced, disjointed team which had their frailties exposed by an average L1 side. But there was no lack of effort by the players, and I don't agree with those who say differently. They just weren't good enough, and didn't deserve the bile n vitriol which erupted after Wigan scored.

 

Any fan who turns on his own team before the end of the second home game of the season shares no fellowship with me.
If the players get more of the same next Saturday it will be the last game I go to.

I opposed Duchatelet.
And I had little time for those fans who (at that time) said they wished the protesters would stay away because of the toxic atmosphere that they created inside the Valley. But I understand how they felt now, and I'm sorry that I was intolerant of them.
I won't be an accessory to the abuse of players who are trying the best they can. Certainly not after two home games - both against Championship teams (in effect).

If the upper North wants to drag CAFC over a cliff edge, they can do it by themselves.

 

I think it was a typical football fans knee jerk reaction, crap though it was, to attack the players verbally on saturday. I remember Morgan Fox being regularly hammered by his own fans, though he didn't pick himself, always gave it everything and never hid in the game. Had we nicked two in injury time, the same idiots wold have been singing 'we've got our Charlton back', and never batted an eyelid over the hypocracy.
I'm fairly sick of hearing the quote about how we would blow this league out of the water - it was a stupid quote, and looks worse every day, but the way some of the fans have latched onto it (but daddy, you PROMISED!!) is equally silly. As far as I can see, TS is worth about 500m quid, and Duchatalet was pretty similar. Duchatalet had a season of grace before some odf the stuff he was saying began to catch up with him, aided by the idiotic Meire (you will be able to see great Charlton players in the premier wearing other clubs colours). TS is now under the same hammer. Maybe a few of our fans need to take a breath and drop the sense of self entitlement. TS could throw half his fortune at CAFC over five years and not get us into the premiership - unless the fans who keep demanding he spend more are prepared to offer him some cash to do it, maybe they should think how easy it is to spend other people's money. I read somewhere both Ipswich and Wigan are paying players 10,000 quid a week. How sustainable is that, and if we go massively into debt, how many of the fans demanding a spend spend spend approach will be there to say 'my fault, have a couple of million to repair the damage. Bear in mind we nearly went under with the Spivs, a sorry state of affairs that lead us to RD.

Let's be honest, the window has been god awful. No one knows why we have assembled such a mediocre batch - a lot of the starting line up on saturday would barely been desireable as squad fillers had we bought in skilled players first and then got in some cover players. We may have some decent loans lined up - I'd rather we had got a decent striker paid for than on loan, but one of the things about loan players is that you have to play the buggers. We now have a narrowing window and a poor squad. But I repeat, we don't know if this is budget, TS, Gallen misfiring (Thomas Dreisen has popped up on twitter claiming he was the key to all our decent signings under Bowyer if you want a real weird theory) or Adkins, or simply a bad working practice amongst the scouting team. But something hasn't worked.

But taking it out on the likes of Kirk, Stockley et al is simply wrong - I'm with Lardy on this. TS isn't a Saudi Sheik, and the numbers are out there in public - anyone who listened to that quote and thought we'd be spending millions has only themeslves to blame - RD said the aim was the premiership when he came in. There is simply no point in believing this stuff thta people in football say. I'm not a happy clapper. I'm as miserable as nearly everyone else at how bad we look. But when I finally get home for a weekend and get the chance to visit the Valley, I won't be chanting the sort of rubbish the North were on saturday. That will hardly inspire the players. All the tossers who run about singing 'Charlton till I dies' and then do that as a response to a couple of late goals from a team who cost a lot more that ours did aren't fans - they're demanding infants.

 

OK, so a few different views have now been expressed here on the situation and strangely I find myself able to agree with virtually all of them.

There is no doubt that TS saved the club, from at best administration and at worst non-existence and by doing so saved everything else that Lardi mentions. We shouldn't forget that or take it for granted.

Equally fans who are now frustrated that we seem to be accepting a position as a mid table L1 team despite assurances of greater ambition, are not anti-CAFC and do not want to drag the club down.

The idiots who abuse players from the stands because they've lost a match against a team who are better than them are, well, just idiots. They need to understand how football works. A weak team will almost always lose to a strong team.

I think it's just a case of re-adjusting our expectations. We will not get promotion with this current squad and would have done better to keep some of the players we had last season. We have not improved our midfield by getting rid of Pratley and Shinnie and replacing them with Dobson and Clare, although the latter two are clearly younger.

Football is more enjoyable when you are winning games and if we can only do that by operating in a lower division then so be it. We will still have a club and still be able to go to The Valley.

Or will we ? I actually think that there is as much of a danger to us if we remain at this level. A club of our size, with our outgoings, especially as we have to pay to use Sparrows Lane and The Valley cannot survive forever with the income we will generate with crowds of 8,000 and severely reduced money from TV rights, marketing, sponsorships, etc which will inevitably follow if we stagnate. I think we need to at least achieve Championship level to maintain our club in the long term. Alternatively we will need to find a new, smaller training ground, reduce our community involvement and ultimately find a new home ground away from SE7. Roland will not hesitate to cash in on his assets if we can't afford to pay him.

So I think we do need to be more ambitious and we do need to call for a stronger squad and we do need to call out if we are being misled. But we should do it with respect and understand where the problem originates. Abusing hard working young men in their 20's who are doing their best is not the answer. TS does need to step up and recognise what is needed in terms of investment and if as seems likely he can't provide it on his own, he must work on bringing other investors in.

 

I might start going to the women's games and supporting their team.
Cannot believe it will be as toxic supporting them.

 

Simon Francis was one who got singled out as being unfit to wear a Charlton shirt, but went on to play at a much higher level than Charlton did. The self entitled 'I've paid my entrance and I'll say what I like' fans can actually be said to be damaging our players and club.

 

Seems like Royston was one of the “hardcore “ massive booing the lads off on Saturday- now why doesn’t that surprise me