Time to concentrate on the team and the manager

The countdown on this blogsite tells me we have just over 25 days to the kick-off at home to Wycombe Wanderers. If the last 48 hours are anything to go by, that could feel like an eternity. I did no work yesterday and was instead surrounded by a battery of phones and computers, waiting like a 100 metre athlete for the gun. Nothing but a matter-of-fact update on the big friendly against Wexford Youths.

I know I am not alone here. This site had a hefty increase in hits on Sunday and a record daily total yesterday. As Charlton fans, we have been treated appalling by the club since our relegation. "Appalling" was the word used by Mick Collins over the weekend in terms of the lack of communication, and him a former boss when the club had a communications department. I'm not expecting anyone to spill the beans or tell us the ins and outs of what's not been going on, but we all know something is happening and it wouldn't be hard to provide regular updates of next to nothing. It's called managing expectations and it's what customer centric businesses do all the time to manage the "emotional" side of their businesses.

What's very hard to comprehend, is just how poorly the Board are behaving when they were once hailed as the leaders in this area. Having said that, it's always much easier to dispense good news and it takes bottle and conviction to do it when it's not so good. Richard Murray is beginning to catch a lot of the stick for the current situation both in terms of the mis-management of the communication as well as the impasse on the takeover. This could be completely unfair (and from what we all know of him, it probably is), however, without doing something about it, this is only going to intensify. Derek Chapple, of course, remains a shady character in the background because apart from a blurt once on Charlton Life and an appearance at a supporters meeting in Bromley (if I recall correctly), we've never heard from him. You have to ask what he paid his way onto the PLC Board for? As Chairman of that he has overseen a spectacular crash in the clubs fortunes and appears to have done nothing as it's happened around him, other than perhaps lead on cost-cutting measures. Perhaps there's been nothing else anyone could do?

No, there's nothing much that us ordinary season ticket holders can do but fret, complain, worry and generally suffer. Not, that is, until 8th August when we will all be turning up on the Board's doorstep and when they will feel the heat of the collective anger about the way we've been ignored whilst our club has become a laughing stock. They have 25 days then in which to sort something out.

In the meantime, we need to channel our energies towards the players and management team however unpalatable that might be for most of us bearing in mind it's largely the same personnel who walked into League One. We need to engender the spirit of the Lennie Lawrence days after we were shunted to Selhurst and get some backs-against-the-wall mentality going. Morale can't be good amongst the players and we will need the best possible start, so we all need to get behind the team and Phil Parkinson from the off.