CARD to resume protests

The Coalition Against Roland Duchâtelet (CARD) announced today after last night’s most recent on the field disappointment that they will resume their organized protests at the home game versus Coventry on October 15th.

Whilst away from The Valley anti Duchâtelet and Meire songs, chants and flags have filled away ends, the sparse home crowds have been devoid of the pre, during and post match protests we saw last season, although there was a black and white day to coincide with the visit of AFC Wimbledon.

At the beginning of the season CARD said that they would not organize any protests during the opening month of Russell Slade’s reign as manager, and in that time The Valley faithful have seen just one league win from 5 games and a League Cup defeat.

Many Addicks, myself included, have been calling out for a resumption of the protests, especially since Duchâtelet and the so called senior management team appear to have learnt nothing from their previous mistakes.

We were all but relegated in March, when the planning for a new manager, player sales and acquisitions should have started. Instead the players left the ground after the last game of the season with no instructions to return, no post or pre-season training programme or an arrangement to treat and improve injuries.

The squad to any knowledgable supporter or onlooker is horribly thin and is almost certainly not capable of fulfilling a promotion chase in League One.

Meire has failed to show for games and blatantly appears more interested in furthering her career, joining the FA Council, and then unsuccessfully seeking election to the Football League board.

Then in another flying visit between actual matches Duchâtelet tells the feckless Target 20k group that he only considers the club as merely 1.5 per cent of his business interests, and that explains the attention he gives us, and in one of the most astonishing stories to come out of the Belgian’s reign we find out about Thomas Driesen.

If any other evidence is needed that Charlton Athletic are nothing more than an experimental plaything then please learn more about Thomas Driesen (photo), a nerdy looking young kid with a laptop, internet access and full authority over the transfer of players in and out of Roland Duchatelet’s network of clubs including Charlton. 

The bloke who recommended to RD that Loic Nego was better than Chris Solly, Piotr Parzyszek was better than Yann Kermorgant and that Yohann Thuram was better than Ben Hamer. All on the basis of some stats and some software. Powell refused to accept Thomas Driesen’s involvement, Riga engaged with it, Peeters put up with it initially, Fraeye embraced it as he was the other half of Duchatelet’s network scouting and Slade far has pushed back.

The role of Thomas Driesen needs more publicity and if for this reason alone, we need to take our football club back before Duchâtelet and Meire fly us into a mountain.

I say bring the renewed protests on, and although due to the potential make up of the crowd for Saturday’s fiver game at home to Rochdale, combined with Coventry’s own issues, meaning CARD will wait for another couple of weeks, I see no reason for individuals, if they so wish, to make their own feelings clear at The Valley this weekend.