Would a non-league Amateur future be better for CAFC?

Researching the Club's early history has revealed to me how successful Charlton Athletic were in their first fifteen years, before they turned professional.
The Addicks won over a dozen local league titles, various Cup competitions, and grew into one of the best Amateur teams in the South East of England.
Even the Valley was founded and created as the Club's home before the decision was taken to turn professional.

We had our glory days for sure.
But the modern professional game in England is now not what it used to be.
The obscene money in the Premier League has distorted everything.
Our Club has fallen prey to crooks and scum for owners, and probably always will.

It may be in a few years CAFC will be ruined by this.
A time may come when the Club is forced to reincarnate itself as an Amateur outfit, playing in a regional league.
I am beginning to wonder now, from the perspective of simply enjoying watching a game of football, whether that fate might be such a terrible thing.

Will elaborate on this later, time is pressing right now.
But I thought I would share this musing and invite comment from fellow fans...

 

You are a black cloud in search of creating a puddle @lardiman

Where on Earth has this thread come from ?

 

We have had our fair share of scummy owners but it is early days, but our current owners are good. There will never be a time now or in the future where Charlton will return to Amateur days. The only scenario I can see is if we go out of business and we restart as an AFC. But I really can't see that happening.

I find in life that there is always a tendency to look back at things with rose tinted glasses. I agree that the huge amount of money in the Premiership is not fair on the rest of the Clubs. Clubs playing in the lower leagues should have a much larger slice of the pie. But Sky and the other Broadcasters are not that interested in the lower leagues, despite the fact that more Championship and League one games will be shown next Season.

 

This is the bottom line , as Dicky alludes to.

There is no money & no commercial revenue & no media interest in League One - period.

What this means in effect is that you need a wealthy owner to plug the gaping holes in the hull of the boat.

This is why I get so frustrated at times with certain geeks who treat life in League One as some sort of enjoyable, stats driven **** fest.

Life down here is slowly strangling the club. You only have to look at 1. Average home attendances 2. the club accounts.

I also find it strange that nerds who are normally so stats-obsessed choose to turn a blind eye to our two most critical KPI’s.

 

When ESI were running amok there was realistic talk of reforming as AFC Charlton, as they were an existential threat to our club. That danger has passed.

 

Where would AFC Charlton play ?

Such an absurdity would almost certainly not be able to play in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

 

Who knows where? Greenwich Council are no friends of Charlton, so presumably it would have been in an easterly direction. We've had some unsuitable owners, but they've all started with good intentions except ESI who set out to loot and pillage.

 

We have had some bad owners in the past. I remember Michael Glikstein who always sold our best players and didn't invest much in the infrastructure of the Valley. But at least he kept us going for years. Who could forget Mark Hulyer who single handily took us within minutes of extinction.

 

I was merely asking a question, relating to the state of modern professional football and whether or not it might be actually more enjoyable, purely from a sporting point of view, to watch the team playing at an amateur level.
I was asking other fans to have a think about the issues involved.

Aren't fans' forums (and indeed all forums) about expressing different ideas and alternative viewpoints?
About opening minds to possibilities beyond what we take for granted?

Anyone who thinks it is better in all respects for CAFC to be the way it is now, playing in the division it plays in, under the owners who control it, losing £800,000 per month with no solution to that problem? that's fine with me.

Part of me believes there is no long term future for the Club going down this path.
And I for one would not regard a non-league, non-professional future for Charlton Athletic as being unthinkable.
I'm tempted to say it is almost inevitable.

There are Clubs who have been around for nigh-on 150 years, and have never been professional or played League football.
Their fans have not been under a cloud of doom for six generations.
They are as proud of their Club as we are of ours.
I'm merely suggesting that there is more to being a Football Club than leaking vast sums of money chasing a pipe dream.

 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

 

The serious answer to your wider point is that the investors must “do an Ipswich” and spend big this summer to buy us out of this league. We have tried slowly slowly & doing it on the cheap for years - remember our fascination with Swindon players and staff and look where it has left us - 16th.

The investors will get one shot at this before they too lose interest.

 

It’s been clear from the start that this is the only way.

But it’s been equally clear from the start that it’s not going to happen.

Charlie and his fellow owners have been quite clear about it. They are NOT going to spend their way out of L1.

The lies that were bandied about in the run up to the takeover were spread to turn the fan base against TS and put pressure on him to sell at a lower price than he wanted, with the threat of ever decreasing crowd revenue and thus ever increasing losses, hanging in the air.

TS did not buckle to that pressure which is why the takeover process dragged on but conveniently gave the new SMT (and one of the owners) an opportunity to blame every failure during the last year on TS. And they have taken every chance to do precisely that.

Nothing illegal in any of it of course, just hard-nosed business practices from hard-nosed businessmen. TS didn’t even really complain about it, just accepted it as a business negotiation and held his ground.

The only people who were fooled were a section of our fanbase who thought that simply having rich owners automatically led to success on the pitch.

Most have now realised their mistakes and can see the reality, which others could see from about December 2022 onwards.

Naturally there are still a few who can’t see it or who are so far down one road that they don’t want to, or can’t turn around.

No doubt they’ll find this post too negative and doom-mongering, but they’re entitled to their opinions, even if those opinions are clearly wrong.

 

Would anyone be interested in supporting an AFC Charlton ie paying to go to the games ?

I must confess, I wouldn’t.

 

Nor I. They would simply be two different clubs. No reason to support the new one just because it included the word Charlton in its name.

 

I don’t feel like I have been under a cloud of doom for 60 years. There are a huge amount of League and non League Clubs who are living hand to mouth. Do they feel like they have been under a cloud of doom for 60 years? I don’t know. I want Charlton to play at the highest level we can. To do that we have to increase our budget and go for it, but there are no guarantees.
I still really enjoy watching us, in fact I am really enjoying life at the moment. I just find the constant doom mongering on here very wearing.

 

If I thought that we were a progressive Club like AFC Wimbledon were and our whole aim was to progress through the non Leagues I would probably pay to see us play. But not otherwise.

 

At least there is a modicum of humour & banter on 606.

Over on Stats Weekly, I’ve never seen so much humour free man-splaining, and all from the same 2/3 Vulcans.

 

It has become extremely repetitive. Every fan sees the situation through their own eyes. If someone's happy to watch L1 football at the Valley that's their right. They're lucky, aren't they? It doesn't mean they're wrong. This forum is in danger of become a bit toxic.

 

It is, but it’s detrimental to the well being of the club. We are losing £800,000 a month. How much longer do you think that can go on for ? Messrs Freidman & Co won’t sustain such losses for long.

 

I don’t mind which league we play in as long as there is a will to do the best we can and above all, honesty from our owners.

Unfortunately I will never be able to believe that our current owners and SMT are honest. There have been too many lies spread.

Not directly by our richer owners of course, but it was a very underhand campaign against TS, which I shan’t forget.

Fans sometimes have very short memories. Without TS we probably wouldn’t even exist now, thanks to ESI.

I’d rather us be a competitive Championship team than a Premiership whipping boy but under this ownership group even the former is a million miles away and we are not even competitive in L1.

If L1 is the limit of their ambition and what they are prepared to pay for, then fine, just come out and say so.