No Communication = No Commitment

I bought the match-day programme yesterday hoping to read Katrien's latest attempt to put the record straight over 'liargate.' I was disappointed, once again, that there was no comment but I guess I am not surprised.

Like everyone else I was excited and relieved when Roland Duchatelet bought our club. I was relieved that we had shorn ourselves of the hopeless Tony Jiminez and his lawyer and fall-guy Slater. Excited that our club was now owned by a truly wealthy individual, a man with the means and, hopefully ambition, to get us back in the Premier League.

However, it was hard to hear Roland Duchatelet give us his strategy for the future. Investment in youth was good. Sharing resources from his other clubs was also attractive but the sting in the tail was the idea that we might lose our better players to Standard Liege if they were good enough and then the notion that the aim was to break even. Roland's idea in acquiring a stable of European clubs appeared to be based on a plan to beat the house by using Financial Fair Plan to his advantage. I was prepared to accept that Roland had made it his business to examine the plans to implement FFP across Europe and that he might have seen an opportunity but it looked a long shot to me and we were heading back to League One when he took over.

Very quickly we saw some very average Network players rock up and it was equally evident that Roland expected them to start in the first team and Chris Powell's refusal to kow-tow cost him his job. A large percentage of our fan base was very upset by the way Powell was treated but Roland had saved the club from near certain Administration and we had visibly been struggling under Powell despite the fact that he had no funds under Jiminez and had suffered with injuries.

Our subsequent saviour from relegation by Jose Riga was, ironically, because Riga picked the best eleven he could in the run-in and largely dispensed with Network players. Roland rewarded Jose Riga by not extending his contract and instead bringing in Bob Peeters. A minority of our fan base who didn't understand how the network model could work and who were more vocal about Roland's interference in team selection and the decision to sack Powell put their heads above the paraphet and had asked for dialogue. They were told that a relegation battle wasn't the appropriate time for talking and that it would have to wait until the close season.

The close season came and went with no communication. Plans to extend the Sparrows Lane training facilities were announced and the money we got for Yann Kermorgant was ploughed back into a desperately needed new playing surface. Roland also put his hand in his pocket for Igor Vetokele and Johan Berg Gudmundssson, neither of whom were Network players. The notion of supporters questioning the owner were ridiculed by other fans and there was still no communication.

Bob Peeters unbeaten start maintained the feel-good factor but it didn't last. Our out-and-out defensive displays eventually began to turn into a succession of draws and without a fit Igor Vetokele, it was evident we struggled to score goals. The frailty of our squad was obvious for all to see. The defeats started to mount up and the mood turned again. 

We then saw Peeters sacked, somewhat harshly in the circumstances. The handling of this and the appointment of Network manager Guy Luzon was clumsy and naive. When Katrien Meire should have stopped digging she grabbed a bigger shovel for a few days she showed how relatively out-of-her-depth she is in the CEO role.

She was still trying to defend her corner when shouted down by a frustrated supporter on the way home from Watford, which is why I thought she would take the opportunity in today's programme to explain her case again and maybe get some points across she failed to do so previously, or she might come clean and explain her dilemma.

On a personal level, I am very tired of watching dross at the Valley. It's been crap since we were relegated eight years ago. Perhaps it wasn't a lot better in the top flight but you knew the side was largely competing at the height of it's capability. We weren't even that good to watch at home in our promotion year from League One, so not all of my current apathy can be laid at M. Duchatelet's door. However, I find myself wondering what I am doing sitting through one scrappy match after another that I am not enjoying and which ruins my Saturday evening, if not my weekend. It has been a long time since we played like other home sides do and gone all out to beat our opponents. It's seen me travelling to fewer and fewer away games and loads of my old mates who used to go have long since picked and chosen games whilst others have packed it in altogether. Now, I never signed-up for glory football. I have watched us under-achieve largely my whole life. I have been to the 92 league grounds and many more long since. My fundamental issue is I don't believe Roland's Network model can work, let alone for anyone other, possibly, than the 'biggest' club in the Network and that is unfair, even if we were that club. The recent challenge to FFP is credible and will run and run, so the jury is well and truly out in that boat coming in. In the meantime, we are being run to exist and there appears little commitment to continuity of staff or any strategic direction to give us incremental improvement required to prosper. Look at Bournemouth, Ipswich, Derby and Boro. All have have been making small steps for a few years in this division to get to the state of ultimate competitiveness they now have. I cannot see our stop-gap revolving door policy achieving anything more than it appears to be already.

I have been a season ticket holder for 38 years and I realise that it is this emotional purchase that forces me back to every home game I can attend. However, after several years of threatening not to renew, I have decided that I won't be renewing several tickets next season unless there is some communication from the Owner that convinces me that there is a sound strategy for the club's future and not that we are being run as some sort of social experiment, based on a flawed commercial model. I will still support this club because it's my club and I have invested so much it. Some may laugh, but I chose to live closer to the ground 27 years ago because I spent so much of my social time here with other Charlton fans, even on non-matchdays.

I will still pay to see us but without a season ticket. I won't feel like I am blindly supporting a virtual billionaire who doesn't believe he needs to waste any breath communicating with me or who, perhaps, is worried he might be as unconvincing as his CEO was in attempting to pretend we were going to ensure we were going to get the best qualified manager we could after sacking Peeters, rather than appointing the cheapest and most convenient option in the Network Guy. The difference, of course, is I won't prioritise attendance over other things if the product on offer isn't attractive enough (which it definitely isn't right now) and I am guessing I will end up going less. I don't expect anything to change because of one supporters' decision and I am not looking for sympathy because it's very apparent that there are thousands like me who feel exactly the same. Perhaps economical reality is what it will take for Roland Duchatelet to listen to his Customers at Charlton or decide to move on.