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Jul 31

Powell restrained in transfer market

The pre-season rolls on and it’s Nick Pope’s Bury Town tonight. Ian Cartwright’s guide is as good as always, and the line-up is expected to be mostly developmental players but should include Danny Hollands as he catches up on his pre-season. Sadly Nick Pope misses the game in the pretty cathedral town of Bury St Edmonds due to injury.

A development side captained by Danny Hollands beat Bromley Town 2-0 on Saturday, with Ruben Bover’s stunning free-kick the highlight. On Thursday last week a 1st XI comfortably beat Barnet at Underhill 4-1. Kermorgant (both free-kicks), BWP and Jackson got the goals and Jon Fortune captained the Bees.

The first team go to Crawley Town tomorrow night and this is followed by Gillingham, whose hard-to-love chairman has vowed to clear his club’s name of racial discrimination. Pre-season is completed with a game at Tonbridge Angels and finally behind closed doors the Saturday before the new season, Fulham.
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Jul 31

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Costa Rica

Back from Chicago, a change of clothes and back to the airport on Thursday for a trip to Costa Rica. Never been before and we have been looking forward to this since we booked it a couple of months back.

To break the trip up and because of flight connections we are sandwiching Costa Rica between two stops in Florida’s sweltering heat. Coral Gables for a day going out and three nights further up the coast in Palm Beach on the way back.

Costa Rica is a small country in Central America but it packs a big punch with it’s rugged backbone of volcanoes, 800 miles of coastline, many national parks and rich variety of wildlife.
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Jul 29

An alien in New York

A fantastic wedding weekend in Chicago has been extended by one night as we are holed up in the Hilton at JFK. Due to supposed bad weather, I am guessing somewhere in the world because it was not obvious, our flight from Chicago to New York this afternoon left late and sure enough we missed our connection back to Bermuda.
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Jul 26

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Stephen Kavanagh gone

Rumours emanating from Charlton Life are saying that long time director and current chief executive Stephen Kavanagh has left the club. I true Kavanagh joins Peter Varney and Alex Newell in leaving the club in the past month. That leaves only majority owner Tony Jimenez, front man Michael Slater and Richard Murray as directors.
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Jul 25

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Italian wedding

Tomorrow we are back in Chicago for what will be our 3rd wedding of the summer.

To acknowledge this and also to mark two years since I moved my blog over to WordPress, I thought it was high time I wrote my ‘Chicago Page’ over there on the right hand column. Hopefully I can get you to take a look.

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Jul 24

Sports Day

Back in Bermuda, but not back at work as I had designated today as my team’s first annual Sports Day. Seven of us met for breakfast at 8am at the Fairmont Southampton near to my home. We then went out and played 9 holes of golf at the hotel’s par 3 course.

We started out in the rain but came back to the club house in the sunshine. We then played tennis for an hour and a half. This was the first time I’ve played tennis since my knee operation almost 2-years ago. It felt good and not unexpectedly I enjoyed the tennis more than the golf.
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Jul 22

Tour de Force

Over the years we have often had to dig deep to find a true “British sporting hero.” Bradley Wiggins has been at the pinnacle of his sport for sometime but these past couple of weeks he has burst into our lives with immaculate timing. There are just days left until the opening of the London Olympics and we hope for more British achievement, but it is hard to imagine anyone coming even close to what Bradley accomplished today.

Team player first, when Wiggins should’ve been swigging champagne and waving to adoring fans on the Champs-Élysées, he instead hurtled to the front of the peloton to give compatriot Mark Cavendish every chance of sprinting to victory, which he conclusively did. We must also remember that Chris Froome came 2nd overall to make the podium. Unfortunately both had to grin and bear Lesley Garrett mullering the national anthem, which would at least have given the Parisians a laugh.
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Jul 22

Back from Spain

Chris Powell and his squad return to London tomorrow after a week of pre-season work in Spain. I am sure the coaches and sports scientists will pick out other highlights from the trip but the fan’s focus will be on the 1-0 win over Sporting Lisbon on Thursday night in Lepe. I never get very excited about friendlies but they have to generate a winning mentality and Sporting is a considerable scalp.
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Jul 19

George Friend to sign?

Doncaster Rovers’ left sided centre-half is said to be close to moving to The Valley. Friend started his career at Exeter and will know Matt Taylor well. He earned a big move to Wolves 4-years ago and was part of Mick McCarthy’s team that won promotion.

The 24-year old couldn’t break into Wolves’ Premier League side and after loans at Millwall and Scunthorpe, he moved to Doncaster two seasons ago and made 60 appearances.
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Jul 18

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Olympic woe

A hop, skip and jump back to London tonight. This trip was originally planned for a couple of weeks with family to get ourselves fully absorbed into the Olympics. Not so.

Copious (more than three) attempts to purchase a range of tickets for a range of sports over a few week period ended up with zilch. No, I lie, I did get some Women’s Preliminary Round (non beach) Volleyball tickets for Earls Court. No disrespect to Earls Court but all of us slogging across London to watch Algeria v Japan just didn’t do it for me, so those tickets went back.

Thus I came incredibly frustrated with the whole Olympic ticket process and called it off as a bad job especially after a couple of very early mornings/late nights tapping away on the computer with millions of others. Don’t get me started on the 250,000 tickets unsold, including athletics, opening and closing ceremonies. LOCOG couldn’t have got the ticketing procedure more wrong. 
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Jul 15

Hearty eating

I hit a few new places out and about in Chicago last week. My favourite was Trenchermen which had only been opened a few days when we got there on Wednesday night. We had just walked out of the haughty Violet Hour, after we had got blind sided by a bum-fluffed assistant manager who roundly accused us of something we didn’t do. He handled the situation incredibly badly, we told him so, and we walked out without even sipping a drink.

Trenchermen mind you gave us a very warm welcome and we recognised one of the bartenders as an old colleague’s brother. That set the scene for some imaginative drinks (I really don’t like gin but the Green Hornet was superb) and even better food (the sea trout was wonderful).

Trenchermen, named for someone that eats heartily and often to excess, occupies a space that was once a Turkish bathhouse. It’s got authentic white glazed brick, similar to tube station tile, and a terra cotta exterior.
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Jul 13

Tony Jimenez = Mr Fixit

The eagle eyed of you or those that have read Wyn’s blog, will have seen a change in the ownership structure stealthily tucked away within the club’s website underlying the lack of transparency in place under this ownership.

Tony Jimenez now owns 47.6% (an increase of 19.6%) of CAFC Holdings Limited shares, which in turn owns 90% of the club. Richard Murray owns the remaining 10%.
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Jul 11

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Home town

Chicago, my kind of town.

My third day here and sadly I have to leave tomorrow, although happily I will be back in a few weeks. Fortunately the 100 degree heatwave is over and the weather has been beautiful these last couple of days encouraging late night strolling around familiar streets and sights.
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Jul 10

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First signings

Noah’s Ark or Sparrows Lane at least is back in business as two new signings joined the fray yesterday.

Ex-academy youngster Lawrie Wilson (who was the last Lawrie we had? Madden? Abrahams?) joined on the famous undisclosed fee, reported to be £500,000. Striker Jordan Cook joins from Sunderland I would think as more of ‘one for the future.’
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Jul 8

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Announcement: Supporters Trust meeting

History tells us that there is nothing quite as formidable as Charlton Athletic fans all pulling in the same direction.

A supporters trust would give the club’s fans potential ownership and a vital say in the future of the club. It would keep the current and future majority owners of CAFC honest and would go a very long way to preserve our history and our future.
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Jul 6

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Slater’s response

Michael Slater: “I’ve heard about some gossip about the club, but for the last year and a half we have consistently said that we will operate the club on sound commercial principles, and I believe last season’s success vindicates our approach. Last summer Chris signed players to create a team that we believed would be able to compete in the Championship, so although he is looking to bring in a few new players, there is nothing like the urgency of last summer and we will not be rushed into decisions. We are not inactive in the transfer market, but the fact is that in League One we were a big fish in a small pond whereas in the Championship there are plenty of other big clubs vying for the players we are trying to sign”

Jul 5

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Michael Slater to respond to rumours

Michael Slater is said to be giving a response to the boardroom rumours tomorrow in the South London Press. Slater, chairman and the acceptable face of the ownership conundrum, will address stories only circulating on Charlton Life but unquestionably with a lot of substance.

Ironically the local media have shown little interest nor knowledge of the recent challenges engulfing the CAFC owners. Equally bewildering is why Slater would pick the SLP, a newspaper that Richard Murray and the previous administration used to shun.

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Jul 4

Independence

The beginning of July represents an interlude in work stresses as our business flow is predominately backed into the first half of the year. There are always things to do of course, but the foot is lifted of the accelerator a bit until the last quarter.

I have also taken the opportunity to book a few trips off island this month. Next week I go to Chicago, predominately to do some continued education stuff for work, but also catch up with my mate, who is getting married at the end of the month in the Windy City.
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Jul 3

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What is happening in the boardroom?

I’ve sat on this for a few days now, as like other Addicks I search around in the dark for clues. The euphoria of winning, sorry walking the League One title after many years of hurt, is suddenly becoming a distant statistic as once again the team we love enters into the murky world of boardroom mistrust and rumour.

For those of you that don’t follow Charlton Life, their forum is awash with scaremongering and unanswered questions. Yet amongst the thousands of comments a couple stand out. Three or four posters, each one I recognise as having some good connections within the club have sources they say, each one different, that suggest that all is not well behind the scenes.

The main source of rumour is that we offered a deal to a potential new signing (I believe a current Premiership player) but then we reneged on the deal. Others suggest that all is not well in the boardroom, with potentially Slater and Jimenez wanting the club to go in different directions and an unknown backer pulling out his investment.
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Jul 2

The Spanish Armada

The Invincible Fleet overwhelmed Italy last night with an awe-inspiring display leaving no doubt in any football fan’s mind that these distinguished galleons are not only the best in the world, but possibly the best in history.

It is nigh on impossible of course to compare era’s and I have to rely on old footage to watch the Brazil 1970 vintage. My fond memories of the Dutch side as a young whipper-snapper in ’74 and ’78 mean that I more often than not list them as my all-time favourite national team, yet they didn’t win a bean.

The West Germans post England 1966 were pretty indomitable but one of my favourites were Brazil in 1982. The likes of Zico, Sócrates and Falcao played with such panache, but memories play tricks and they didn’t even make the semi’s in World Cup ’82.
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