Olly Groom sacked - what is going on?

Normally at a football club, you get a Testimonial match after ten years loyal service. Usually reserved for players, of course, but loyal servant Olly Groome was rewarded yesterday with the sack. When I say the sack, of course, I mean 'redundancy,' that modern form of the sack where they tell you your job is being made redundant but someone else is quickly doing it in your absence. 

Social media is understandably on fire today with outraged colleagues and supporters thanking Groome for all of his hard work, dedication and loyalty. The club have said nothing officially as far as I can see but I believe he was called back after the U21 match night and told he was being made redundant after Thomas Sandgaard and Raelynn Moroney had left the premises. How low can you go? Dirty work in Corporate America is for the little people. 

This will be passed off as another cost saving measure but with one or more people picking up the workload you know that is bullshit. The pay differentials will be negligible and amount to 'nickle and diming it' as the Americans say. No, this is now part of a wider plan to remove all of those with experience, opinions and voices and replace them with nodding dogs who will simply do as their told either out of inexperience, ignorance or fear for their positions. More Corporate America.

I suspect Olly will be paid off in full and probably with a bit extra for a Non Disclosure Agreement which will prevent him from commenting in future. I have little doubt that he will be earning much better money very shortly for doing many less hours, but that wasn't his decision. He could have jumped ship at any point in the last ten years to chase that but he loved the job he had and was happy to stick at it. I will bet anything you like that new staff being brought in to replace people like Olly won't last two years, let alone ten.

Who's next I wonder? Tom Rubashaw, the guy who was left to fire the gun last night? Or maybe the HR manager whom I believe is down to one day a week and is currently loading part of her role on the Finance Director! 

Looking at the bigger picture under Sandgaard, it is very hard to argue that he still has anything like the ambition he boasted when he acquired the club three years ago. Premier League and European football in a few years have proved to have been hollow boasts with us continuing to struggle in League One. He told us we would 'blow the league out of the water' last year but the squad was inadequate at the start of last year which ended up unsurprisingly with us finishing mid-table. It's still well short today, especially upfront as every single Charlton supporter can see with there own eyes. Ben Garner is now dodging every question about strengthening upfront and instead has taken to talking about the budgets of bigger clubs in this division. He really needs to get his lines straight with Sandgaard on this because Sandgaard is adamant our budget is still at the top-end of this division. Whatever happens, we have repeated the mistake of starting off with holes in the side when the season kicked-off and it's looking like we will be lucky to get one striker in to replace Conor Washington, let alone improve what we had when we finished last year and that was a season when we could only manage 54 goals. 

Sandgaard's aim to breakeven at the end of next season relies on ongoing cost-cutting but also hard-to-believe increases in revenue. The numbers he is talking about can only come from further player sales. So whilst we continue to cut costs from the backroom staff to the playing squad, we are also going to continue to sell whoever we can, whenever we can in order to try to get to breakeven. That isn't compatible with serious promotion ambitions but perhaps he no longer has these? Starting this season so obviously short upfront certainly questions that. We have also spent zilch on transfers and the incoming players have all come in under last year's budget (with some headroom).

It smacks of small-time. League-One average. Why would he want that, unless he's toshing the house up for a sale? Irrespective, Olly Groome won't be reporting on it which will be detrimental for us all.