Times-up for Thomas Sandgaard

Yesterday's 3-1 defeat at Bolton Wanderers capped a crap week for Charlton fans and signposts the end for Thomas Sandgaard's reign in SE7.

The glaring failure to leave Ben Garner with the tools to do the job following the closure of the transfer window on Thursday looks highly likely to condemn us to another season of mediocrity in the third tier of English football. The fact that it's the second season in succession that we haven't addressed our goal-scoring weakness is unforgiveable. It leaves us with the down-and-outs of London football with Wimbledon and Orient. Even the "but he saved us" brigade now see the writing on the wall and condemnation has been quick and widespread.

It comes on the back of a hyped Summer where he spoke about transforming the style of our play if not quite the "blowing the league apart" guff of last pre-season. We may yet see the transformation in our play and get to see far more attacking football but the bar was so low after last season's horror show that it would be hard not to imagine any improvement under a new manager. 

The 'recruitment team' of Sandgaard, his son Martin, Steve Gallen and Ben Garner has failed to strenghten the squad from last season which finished in 13th (thirteenth) place. We haven't spent a penny on transfers and the wage budget has been cut from last season. Steve Gallen must be fearing joining the growing list of those sacked/made redundant given he has been unable to add anything to the Summer recruitment and you can't see that changing a whole lot going forward. 

Sandgaard has been upfront about his new plans to get the club to break-even over the next two seasons. Owning it has cost him £8m a year and he clearly doesn't want to be on the hook for that going forward, either because he can't afford it (cash-flow?) or he simply doesn't want to be funding it. The trouble is, it is a very difficult thing to achieve when your losses are c 50% of your turnover and your largest costs are contracted players and staff needed to operate your football club. Growing your top line can only really be done with a successful side and as we have already established, we are well short of that and the odds are stacked very heavily against us on that front. Cost-cutting has been going on all Summer. He may be close to trimming £400,000 from the player's wage bill but that is coming at a cost on it's own and that is only 5% of the gap he wants to close. The saving on the replacement costs of experienced staff with new recruits or job shares will save precious little in the scheme of things and we will see things like Comms suffering as a result. The official site updates from yesterday's game were noticeably poorer and it looks like the guy at Welling has been given the job in addition to what he does for them!

Meanwhile, season ticket prices were amongst the highest in the division and the match-by-match pricing options look designed to kill the walk-up gate. I am not paying £34 a ticket with the penalty of the £3 Meire tax on top if I don't or can't commit two days in advance to watch a side struggling to score goals.

So, Sandgaard has no hope of break-even in two years unless we unearth another Ademola Lookman and even then, a continuing selling policy will still leave us languishing in League One. He is the founder and CEO of a large, multi-national business in the US, so he will know the reality of 'break-even' better than I do, so you have to ask yourself what is really doing?

The most obvious thing is that he has to continue running the club in the short-term - he has appointed a new manager, set the expectations that we won't be throwing money around (to be fair he has always been clear about that) and told us about his plans to reduce the club's operating losses. None of that is bad in itself but the failure to leave Garner with a competitive squad writes this season off and looks like condemning us to our sixth season in seven in League One. It's not what he promised when he took-over and a club of our size (we are shrinking at a rate of knots) deserves better. 

On top of keeping the club operating, he has to be looking to get out. When you no longer have ambitions for your club or, more likely, the where-with-all to pursue them, it's time to move on. In some ways he is fortunate that his cost of acquiring the club was so relatively small. Duchatelet was content to let someone else step in and run the club at their expense whilst he retained the heavy assets of the Valley and Sparrows Lane. Ideally any ambitious owner would want full control, which would mean the assets too, but we remain attractive opportunity for anyone who has ambitions to own a London football club but without having to sink £50m+ into the club upfront. The risk here, as we know, is that leaves the club susceptible to individuals who don't really have the money but want control so they can extort a payday from someone else.

On the basis that Sandgaard must know his break-even plan isn't going to get even close, why hang about for two years? I am sure he won't - he must be looking for alternative buyers now and active cost-cutting may look akin to re-painting your house before selling. 

Ben Garner must be feeling a bit cheated at the way things have turned out. He clearly hasn't been backed as he might have expected and despite staying onside with his owner in the first couple of months, there are clear signs he has no intention of carrying the can for a less-than-successful season. He began to allude to the wage budget weeks ago and then was explicit that Harry McKirdy was a non-starter as he had zero transfer budget. After the transfer window closed with no-one joining us, he was quick to put a brave face on things but also clear that building a successful side was a work in progress "and may take one or two windows more." In other words, it aint happening this year folks. I am sure Garner will hang on and make a fist of it. He can see the strength of our Academy and will be hopeful of bettering what we did last year, even if promotion looks beyond us. He may also know that there is the prospect of new ownership and perhaps more support in the not too distant future. 

I am left feeling disappointed for Thomas Sandgaard. He did save the club at the time he stepped in but I can have little sympathy for him if he didn't really have the readies to do what he promised. The share price of his newly floated company was tanking and a selling scandal has left the shares depressed and him being criticised for indulging himself with a UK football team. He tried very hard to win fans over but ultimately, owners have to deliver success on the pitch to be considered successful in the Boardroom and Thomas Sandgaard has failed to do that.