Mar 15
A sad day.
Lee Bowyer gave me one of the best days of my life. 90 +4. Wembley Stadium. Me, my son, my brother, my mates, 39,000 joyous fellow Addicks. Thank you Lee.
This time may well be right for everyone, and although I cringed whenever fellow fans were calling for his head, today’s resignation with a move to Birmingham City expected allows everyone to shake hands turn around, and walk away with a big smile on their faces.
Good riddance to old fruit loop rubbish. 6 years to the day that Roland Duchatelet added Charlton to his football club collection, we are rid of the old scroat after the EFL finally ratified East Street Investments purchase for a sum guessed to be in the £50m range.
After the narcissist ownership of Tony Jimenez and Michael Slater backed by the secretive and shall we say complicated assets of Kevin Cash, we were very glad then to see a new owner with fresh ideas take the club on in January 2014. Especially after Cash cut Jimenez’s credit card up and for the longest time the club survived on a shoestring.
It looks as if the lying, the incompetence, and sheer spitefulness has finally caught up with Katrien Meire.
Our ex-CEO left a similar role at Sheffield Wednesday in February, and is now back in Belgium as COO at Club Brugge, but her past is catching up with her and yesterday she was charged with misconduct by the EFL alongside Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri and CFO John Redgate.
According to local Eltham based community magazine SEnine, Charlton have submitted new proposals for Sparrows Lane training ground improvements. Scaled down from those previously submitted, which literally lay in the dirt, the new plans still include a purpose-built indoor facility and a two storey pavilion to house state-of-the-art training equipment and accommodation.
The Addicks are off to Spain this weekend for a pre-season training camp. The importance of which cannot go unnoticed. After years of Katrien Meire not being able to hold a piss up in a brewery type planning, it was Karl Robinson who eventually managed to convince Roly to cover a short trip to Ireland in 2017, hastily thrown together and in fact just imitating what he did the season before at MK Dons.
Last year Bow managed to convince Roly to splash on a Portugal bonding trip, which was the beginning of a journey of oneness and desire that ended on the Wembley steps.
I woke up uneasy. Feeling a sense of dread and deja vu, or whatever the Flemish equivalent is.
Yesterday was disappointing, very. Blackpool are decent but it was another missed opportunity. No win in four, and a creeping impression that we are suddenly easier to play against and we haven’t any solutions. Or goals.
Three points behind 2nd and four behind 1st as we approached the end of the January transfer window. Since then we have fallen away badly thanks to one man. The richest, most obtuse and neglectful owner in our history.
Cancel the open top bus, put the rosette back in the drawer we will not be going to Wembley this year, or with Lee Bowyer’s attitude any time soon. We were always cack in the cup, and now we can’t even be bothered.
I was very disappointed in the team Bowyer put out, especially the bench. Where’s the match-winner, game changer sat on there? I mean we are not playing on Tuesday, we have a week until our next game, so what’s with all the precautions? We’ve only just had an international break.
Huh.
Roland Duchatelet’s interview today with Jim White on talkSPORT started rather sedentary, but by the end of it will have had the vast majority of Charlton fan’s blood boiling.
The man is an out and liar and a grade one delusional fool. If you haven’t listened then click the link but make sure the cat is outside and you are close to a strong drink.
The sadly anticipated morning after the evening before. I hope Addicks’ fans all got home safe and sound, I understand it was a bit hairy during and after the game. Superb support from Charlton fans again though, a resurrection of pride that can be put solely at the feet of Lee Bowyer, who spoke again very well after the game.
It continually surprised me that we clung on to any play-off hopes during Karl Robinson’s reign. We didn’t win from the middle of November through to January and when the season hotted up in February and March we won just once, away at relegated MK Dons. It was pretty desperate at times as Robinson stuck to a plan that clearly wasn’t working and although the finger should always be pointed at Duchatelet and ex-CEO Meire for not giving any manager or head coach a base or confidence to which to build from, Robinson was given a lot more to work with than his predecessors.
After what has seen like a length of a James Cook expedition the Aussies are apparently finally coming. We have seen plenty of false dawns but word is that next week we may eventually get rid of the Belgian poison and have new owners.
According to the sage Richard Murray there were two bids accepted. One was obviously the Aussies, and the other may have been an Arab consortium, or was it English or was it the Scots, and someone said today there was some American interest. Who the hell knows, except that we finally rid ourselves of Roland Duchatelet.
Maybe only to Karl. (more)
A very downbeat Robinson at today’s press conference as realization sets in that Duchatelet is not going to splash the cash if he is wanting out and no new owner before the end of January will result in just Mavididi coming in, and possibly still players being sold from under him by the Belgian to line his own pocket.
It’s always amazed me how washed up managers get recycled at football clubs, with bright successful managers being overlooked time and again. Players are signed on the back of a VHS video and due diligence and the fit and proper test has as much depth to it as a paddling pool.
Seriously is today April 1st, not January 1st? Katrien Meire has been appointed CEO of Sheffield Wednesday.
Rats and ships.
Rick Everitt has heard what I heard yesterday (from a fellow Blogger) that Charlton CFO David Jones has resigned. Possibly he has a job elsewhere lined up, like Meire apparently.
I was woken by a big storm during the night, our garden furniture took a bit of a battering as the wind howled around outside, but what I was unaware of, was that Santa Claus had reappeared bringing more gifts.
“Katrien Meire has decided to stand down from her roles as CEO and Director of Charlton Athletic and will leave the club at the end of the month.” (more)
CARD plan to honour Addicks’ fans at the 25th Back to The Valley anniversary game by distributing thousands of red-and-white rosettes to fans outside the stadium. The rosettes are to celebrate the part played by fans in the re-opening of the The Valley in 1992, and particularly the role of the Valley Party, whose 60 candidates amassed almost 15,000 votes in the 1990 local elections, changing Greenwich Council policy in the process.
With the risk of the true meaning of the game being lost by the club, I am happy to see the return of CARD for the first time this season. Katrien Meire is on record as not caring about the club’s history and has regularly failed to mention the massive role that fans had in bringing the club back to it’s spiritual home.
Chicago Addick 