Five tips for Charlton's new owners

Welcome to southeast London. You'll like it here.

I hope you don't mind if I give you a few tips.

Don't be this man

You may have heard that Charlton fans gave the club's last owner a hard time. That's because he was an idiot. So that's tip no 1: DON'T BE AN IDIOT.

The last owner didn't even pretend he had any ambition for the club. The fans don't expect instant success, but we want to know you want the club to do better. Tip no 2: HAVE A VISION AND SHARE IT.

In the protests against the last owner the FANS showed incredible PASSION, CREATIVITY and ENERGY. He fought against them. Tip no 3: USE THESE THINGS.

Do not employ this man

The last owner hardly ever came to the Valley to watch a game. He boycotted the fixtures long before the fans did. Tip no 4: WATCH MATCHES. Be happy when Charlton win, and sad when they lose.

Tip no 5: a man called Karel Fraeye may get in touch with you: DO NOT GIVE HIM A JOB.

Farewell, so long, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

It will be the Kennedy moment for a generation of Charlton fans. "Where were you when you heard that Katrien was going?" Personally, I was on a bus (the 185 from Lewisham, if you must know). Logged on to Twitter, saw a lot of happy comments and scrolled down to find out what everyone was so happy about, and found the news, the official on-the-club-website, confirmed-by-Duchatelet news that Katrien Meire has quit as CEO of Charlton and that Duchatelet is in discussions with a potential buyer.

A few days late, but what a Christmas present!

But what a disastrous effect she's had on the club. It could all have been so different. Clearly she has some talents and qualities, but with no experience in running any business, let alone the specialised, complicated beast that is a football club, she was a poor choice by Roland (one of many, but I haven't got all day to list them.) Worse, it seems she lacked the humility to realise she needed help, and pressed ahead with her own crazy ideas (again - had we world enough and time I could list them).

It could have been different. There was general goodwill to her when she started. Apart from a few sexists, no-one minded that she was a woman. For most of us, it was a matter of right-on pride that Charlton was leading the way with her appointment. And she and Duchatelet followed in the steps of Slater-Jimenez, the extent of whose mismanagement is still being revealed.

But it all went wrong very quickly. The arrogance, the contempt, the lies ... No-one made her do those things. As everything went wrong, on and off the pitch, you had to wonder what she had to do to get sacked. Relegation, dwindling crowds, massively increased borrowing - what kind of performance targets had Duchatelet set her?

We'll probably never know what's been going on inside his head these last four years. But now, it seems his time is nearly up. We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.

Vinegar Pissers 1 Duchatelet 0 (a.e.t)

Roland Duchatelet broke his silence in an interview today, in which he conceded that his involvement in football has been a huge mistake.

I think we already knew that.

Talking about foreign ownership of Belgian clubs, he says "It makes no difference if the owner is foreign, so long as the day to day management stays in Belgian hands. What matters is that the owner should have empathy for the club, and respect its identity and local roots." Change "Belgian" to "British" and it's exactly what we've been saying all along about Charlton.

But it's not his fault. He has, oh so slowly, learned that "Football is a passionate, complex world; there are many underground forces, many decisions are based on emotions, rumours can make or break your image, and social networks create groundswells that are hard to answer." The mixed metaphor is typical Roland, of course. He means, I think, that a wave of opinion can be stirred up on social networks that his coastal defences cannot contain.

Talking of his poor reception among Sint Truiden fans, he says "I understand these people because they are attached to their club and were influenced by false information about me. They didn't know me and sometimes took me for an idiot. Doesn't bother me, because I know I'm not."

"If I were starting again, I wouldn't invest in football," he says, again much too late. On selling Charlton and his other remaining clubs he says "I haven't decided anything. I'm open to offers that may come along. I will take time to consider it."

Basically he wants out, and as one of the groundswelling, fake news-peddling vinegar pissers of social media, I couldn't be prouder.

Charlton 3 Swindon 0

Only my second visit to the Valley this season, but both times Charlton have won 3-0. What on earth is everyone moaning about?

Unlike those people who went to grammar school and were regularly thrashed by a sadistic deputy head and it never did them any harm I'm not going to treat my personal experience as anything more than anecdotal. Charlton's season has been awful. The two victories I saw at the Valley were against teams - Coventry and Swindon - who've been relegated. Both of them were poor, with Swindon on Sunday throwing a complete lack of interest into the mix.

With a "top six budget" and promotion the priority, Charlton have just about managed to be top of the bottom half of the third division. And that's not unlucky, it's incompetent (all that money so badly wasted) or dishonest (there never was all that money). Duchatelet's regime has made immaterial and pointless the distinction between incompetence and dishonesty. Such a pile-up of catastrophes can only be proof of the Manichean heresy: some things are simply evil - who can say why? - and must be opposed.

One of the most distressing effects of being a part-time supporter this season is that I hardly know the players any more. With the obvious exception of Ricky Holmes, who is clearly gifted and has what we used to call a proper Charlton attitude, I hardly even recognise most of the players (my pet cataract doesn't help) and have no view (haha) on the merits of players whose role is less obvious.

As always, a joy to watch Chris Solly and Johnnie Jackson, the Captain making his last appearance as just a player. Officially a player/coach from now on, I would hope he'll develop the role that Andy Hughes had: most often on the bench but an inspiring presence there and in training. It was worth attending the game just to join in his ovation. He's navigated skillfully through the troubled waters of the past three years: wisely silent but his presence and actions have made him unassailable. Any new owner (please please please) would be an idiot not to put him at the centre of any reconstruction.

Yeah, reconstruction. Again. 

Sheffield United 2 Charlton 1

My first Charlton game in months and, surprisingly, my first visit to Sheffield and my first experience of the Greasy Chip Butty song. Sheffield, it turns out, is compact and buzzing and Bramall Lane football ground is tucked in neatly, very near the city centre.

There was a crowd of 23,000 watching United's seemingly untroubled progress towards the Championship and when they sang together it was an impressive noise.

But soon after silenced, as Ricky Holmes - as in all the few games I've seen this season, outstanding -  scored within 3 minutes: a perfectly struck free kick from just outside the box. Charlton were dominant for the first ten minutes and looked more like the team that was walking towards promotion.

With their first attack, though, United equalised. A poor goal to concede with the first sign of how United would learn to take apart Charlton's defence. Declan Rudd is the scapegoat of the day, it seems. I don't know what his recent performances have been like but would have to agree he should have done better.

As the half went on, United attacked more, initially getting caught offside too easily. What looked to me like a clear penalty was denied them, and they figured out how to time their runs to avoid the offside. The last ten minutes of the half were perilous as they created and wasted chance after chance and Charlton fans were grateful when it was over.

After the break United simply picked up where they'd left off and quickly took the lead. From then they gave a lesson in how to do enough and no more. It was thoroughly competent, and none of the home fans would be complaining but by now they surely ought to be playing with a little swagger. Maybe that's a sign of how good Charlton were: United couldn't relax until the game was over. There were a few tweets circulating from United fans about how Charlton were strong opposition. Here's one I got:

@brianhaines @wardychris1972 I'd agree wi that, you should be higher than you are. Whatever the reasons are hope it gets sorted 👍

— David Huntington (@dhunts0102) March 18, 2017

Probably the best of the few Charlton performances I've seen this season. Much too late to make any difference of course and a loss is still a loss and the relegation zone is still too close.

Too many coaches?

After a disastrous February for Charlton, here are some thoughts I've been having for some time. I haven't seen Charlton play this year so this is speculation on my part and I'd be grateful for comments from people who've seen the shambles recently.

The Charlton website lists four first team coaches supporting Karl Robinson.

Ritchie Barker is Karl's old colleague from MK Dons, and it's safe to assume they have a good working relationship.

Next listed is Simon Clark who by all accounts is a very promising prospect - a future head coach or manager in his own right.

Then there's Chris O'Loughlin. No-one's exactly sure of his role, but the general suspicion is that he's Duchatelet's spy in the camp, and a warning to Karl that he's replaceable any time Roland has a grumpy fit of indigestion.

And then there's the goalkeeping coach, Lee Turner. I've no idea if he's any good or not.

That's the formal team. We've also heard that Lee Bowyer and Robbie Fowler have played a kind of consultancy role - Bowyer was in the dugout last week. And Johnnie Jackson is supposedly taking a greater role in coaching these days.

To sum up: a whole lotta coaches. There may be more that I haven't heard of. And I've nothing against any of those I've listed - except O'Loughlin, obviously, but that's only by association. But with so many coaches there must be different opinions, different approaches, and different motivations. That could be positive: it can helpful for an established way of working to be challenged. But at Charlton, right now, I'm not sure it is.

There can't be a clear, unified message coming through, and it's hard to imagine that the players know what's going on anymore. Those who allegedly don't want to make an effort have somewhere to hide and those who do can't be sure what's expected of them. It's a perfect, Delia Smith-ish in its infallibilty, recipe for chaos.

Karl and the C-word

Warning: in this post I quote the c-word several times. Look away now if this offends.

As we all know by now, Karl Robinson got a little over-excited at Wimbledon on Saturday after a volunteer at the home ground allegedly said "You fucking scouse cunt! I hope you die" and home fans unfurled a banner accusing him of being a "lying cunt". Terrible stuff. As Karl said "Certain aspects of it were disgusting and shouldn’t be part of any industry." I suppose we should be grateful he realises how offensive language can be.

But it was intriguing to discover, thanks to the Guardian's Fiver, that Karl had himself been found guilty of calling an opposition player a "fucking French cunt" (on 16 September 2014). The official record of the disciplinary meeting makes interesting reading. Karl's defence, taken straight out of Fawlty Towers or some other sitcom, was that he'd been misheard. Rather than saying "It's nothing to do with you, you fucking French cunt" what he'd actually said was "It's nothing to do with you, you should be on the bench, you cunt", following it up with "Fuck off back to France." The FA didn't buy it: he was given a four match ban, a £3000 fine and costs.

Goodbye to Morgan Fox

I've only seen four games this season, and I'm a notoriously bad judge of football and footballers, so who am I to comment but ...

When they write the book on confirmation bias, Morgan Fox won't just be a footnote, he'll have his own chapter, illustrated with screenshots from the twitter response to the news that Sheffield Wednesday have paid seven hundred thousand undiscloseds to get his services. Here's an extreme example, from someone who obviously never saw Yohann Thuram's hilarious impression of a goalkeeper.

Yes, he had bad games. Who hasn't, under the revolving door management regime at Charlton these three years? My feeling was that he needed a better, more defensive, left midfield in front of him than he usually got. But he had good games and he played a part in some important goals.

Above all, he somehow rode out the disgraceful abuse some fans would give him, never seeming to be affected by it. (But of course he was. He must have been. The culture of denial got to him. Unable to directly address any feelings of anger, it's likely he internalised it, and that may be why his play this season was apparently worse - but again, what do I know?)

I'm absolutely sure that Wednesday's scouting team know more about football than I do, and I'm prepared to bet they have looked at Fox with a more balanced, less prejudiced eye than many Charlton fans. I really hope he does well, not just for his sake but because it will really piss off all those who wanted him to fail, laughed and jeered when he did, and somehow didn't see when he didn't.

Letter to Roland Duchâtelet

Yesterday the Belgium 20 delivered around 200 letters from Charlton fans to Roland Duchâtelet in Belgium.
One of them was mine! In case Roland somehow lost it and wants to read it again, here it is.

Dear Mr Duchâtelet

May I belatedly and sincerely wish you a happy birthday. You have obviously been a very successful businessman and have shown a genuine concern for the future of your society which goes beyond many businesspeople’s selfish and overriding search for greater profits at any cost. Now, as you said when you sold Standard: “Quality of life and personal happiness are the most important things in my life”. You have clearly earned the right to enjoy yourself and to indulge in the things that make you happy.

It’s hard to see how your continued ownership of Charlton Athletic can be one of these things. As you and Ms Meire have pointed out, it’s costing you a lot of money to run the club and there’s no guarantee you’ll recover that investment. It looks like an expensive hobby and a hobby you simply don’t enjoy.

One of the reasons Charlton fans don’t like your ownership is that you show no interest in the club. Famously, you don’t attend games, and any recent trips to SE7 have been timed to avoid attendance at any match. If Charlton win, are you happy? Does it ruin your weekend if they lose? Probably not. When Charlton were relegated last season, completely avoidably, did you find yourself furious with anger at the mismanagement that had caused it? Probably not.

To us, the supporters, it seems as if you have bought the club and forgotten why you did that. There has never been a clear statement of what ambitions you have for the club. When you bought the club it was in a position of great potential, given clever investment. Instead, the team was weakened by some disastrous decisions from the start, culminating in the appointment of an interim head coach who was clearly out of his depth and made relegation certain. None of this needed to happen. Would you tolerate this level of mismanagement in one of your industrial businesses? Probably not.

When you have expressed an opinion you have tended to blame the fans. Most recently you said that the protests in Belgium recently were the work of a group of core actors and you were reported as saying that fans are unhappy because they don’t like the idea of a female CEO.

If you look at Charlton’s history you’ll understand that the club’s fans have a reputation - sometimes quite smugly so - for social progressiveness. I think many fans were, like me, delighted with the appointment of a female CEO. We can see that women are underrepresented in football management and were glad to see the club doing something to change that. For most people, the issue with Ms Meire is not her gender or her nationality but her competence. The team has not succeeded, and revenue, with diminishing ticket and merchandise sales, must be savagely reduced. Presumably you have given her achievement targets and unless they are incredibly minimal, she can’t have achieved them. If she were a manager in one of your core businesses, or in something you care about - STVV, perhaps - would she still have the job? Probably not. I don’t wish her ill, but her performance and your acceptance of it is another demonstration of how little you care for Charlton.

I wasn’t one of the “core actors” who visited Belgium recently, but they have my admiration and full support. I’m one of the much larger group who are protesting by staying away from games at the Valley. I have supported Charlton since I was a child and had held a season ticket for 12 years. It wasn’t an easy decision not to renew it but I simply want to make owning Charlton as expensive and unprofitable for you as possible, so that in time you will look for and find a buyer who will give the club respect and develop the enormous potential. Potential not just in terms of the facilities and location of the club, but in terms of the fans. Look at the energy, creativity and imagination that has gone into the protests. Imagine having that behind you! It could have been yours but you blew it and the chance won’t come back.

Again, I’ll quote your comments following the sale of Standard: "I have felt it was complicated for me at Standard. For the Standard fans too - those who didn't see in me the leader they wanted".

You’ll never recover the trust of Charlton fans, just as you’ll never recover the money you’ve spent.

Cut your losses. Sell the club.

(Source of quotations: http://www.castrust.org/2015/06/duchatelet-sells-standard-liege/ )

The Sacking of Russell Slade

Tolstoy famously and wrongly said that all happy marriages are alike while every unhappy marriage is different. There are many successful alternative models for a happy marriage, while unhappy marriages tend to share certain features: bad communication, distrust, lack of a shared objective and, if there are children, deep distress, fear and confusion. They don't know why their parents are arguing but they know something's wrong, and they may respond with tantrums or sulks or more serious antisocial actions. A good social worker can diagnose the health of a relationship by looking at the childrens' behaviour.

People routinely underestimate the intelligence of footballers but even the dumbest of them can feel the same vibes that upset small children, and even the dumbest of them, spending hours in the company of their smarter teammates, will come to understand exactly what's gone wrong in the managment of the club they represent.

The great Richard Cawley (who unlike Tolstoy is seldom wrong) tweeted this last night while the sacking of Slade was still unconfirmed:

O'Loughlin has been at the last three home matches and in directors' lounge.

— Richard Cawley (@RichCawleySLP) November 14, 2016

Either deliberately or carelessly, Slade's position was being undermined by this public display of a yellow card warning him to improve or face the sack. I think we saw the outcome at Swindon on Saturday when, by all accounts, even the brighter, older children Jack and li'l Chris threw a 90 minute sulk. They knew Slade was unsupported by the ownership and nothing he could have said - even if he were a far more charismatic leader than he appears to be - could have brought more out of them. The backstage actions had once again wrecked any semblance of team spirit. Just as happened immediately before the sacking of Powell, Peeters, Luzon.

No-one can manage Charlton successfully in the current set-up. Slade is probably not a great manager, but I can't believe he's not better than his record at Charlton will suggest. Those few months, those 16 games will be a blot on his otherwise decent but unspectacular record and a cause of nightmares for years to come. I actually feel very sorry for him. In spite of the baseball caps.

#taxiforRoland

CARD's latest brilliant idea had me making an unexpected Sunday morning trip to the Valley

 A taxi decorated with images from the anti-Duchatelet protests is heading to Belgium today, to deliver Roland's birthday presents and to publicise the campaign. Two other cars are going, less flamboyantly, and a total of 12 people will be spreading the word. They'll also be visiting First World War memorial sites.

On its return the taxi will keep the decorations for three months while Chris, its driver, continues to ply for trade around London, so look out for it. At the ground this morning there was some discussion of how it could be pre-booked for strategically important journeys, such as to the FA or the EFL offices. I've a feeling we'll hear more of that later.

This little charmer won't be going to Belgium. Gadafy is her name and she stole everyone's heart when she dragged her human along to the photoshoot in front of the North Stand.

At 11 there was a short and moving act of remembrance outside the West Stand, with details given of people connected with the club who died in the two world wars.

The people going to Belgium are paying their own way, it should be pointed out, but if it's been a while since you contributed to CARD funds, maybe it's time to slip them a few quid.

Charlton 3 Coventry 0

To the Valley for the first time this season, breaking my boycott to be part of the protest. Details of the Pigs in Space event have been widely reported, including - importantly - in the Belgian press, and video of the violent suppression of a peaceful protest made it to the Evening Standard. The irony of that is exquisite. I'd suggest that at the next game CARD try to make the stadium a sea of North Korean flags, with two possible outcomes. Either a striking image is created or there's a beautiful story of hundreds of symbols of an oppressive state being censored.

The game itself wasn't bad, in fact. Not high quality, but open and, in a way, flowing. Coventry weren't as clueless as you'd expect, except where it mattered (scoring and defending). Charlton played much more attractively than they have in the away games I've seen. With Ademola and Holmes both starting, they tested the opposition more.

The first goal was against the run of play but well taken by Holmes. A suspicion of offside but the replays showed the officials got it right. The second goal was apparently well made, but I was standing at the urinal at the time, and the third goal came as I was leaving, hoping to get home before the rain. (This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am not your man for a full match report.)

But I never leave early, I thought to myself, and I've cycled through snow to get to a match. Clearly I don't have the same attachment as I used to. During the pre-match build-up and at half-time it felt like being at an away game, observing the rituals from the outside rather than feeling part of them. It's a testament, I suppose, to the importance of Dave Lockwood. When he was trying to raise interest in the absurd fans sofa or the ludicrous pie-cam, I would feel sympathy for him, as for an actor lumbered with an awful script. I simply didn't care about what was going on on Saturday. I've searched hard and found I don't even have an opinion about the crossbar challenge.

And the stadium was so empty! Rationally, of course, I knew it would be, but I was still shocked. Presumably it's usually emptier still, without returning exiles. Without the Coventry fans and without the protests the atmosphere would have been dead. Once again, though, we saw that a protest can bring some life to the team, and the biggest win for some time.

Maybe you should bring your 🐷🐷🐷 along every week if that's the result 😂 ....just the result we needed!! Roll on Tuesday  #cafc

— chris solly (@cjsolly) October 15, 2016

So, despite the win, a rather depressing experience. This is not how it's meant to be.

Oxford 1 Charlton 1

 It's tempting to say more about the trip to Oxford than the game, just as it was more tempting to stay in the pub (Beerd, on George Street) than to get the bus, the slow, slow bus, to the Kassam Stadium and my lofty seat offering an excellent view of the car park.

The first 45 minutes didn't help, don't help. A fairly frantic opening saw Charlton pressing for about 5 minutes, then Declan Rudd making an excellent save before the game subsided into a low quality affair, Charlton ever more defensive and Oxford unable to make any clear chances.

Half time came along with its village fete style entertainment featuring a man in drag (on a stag, was his excuse) and his best man trying to catch a football in a wheelie bin. It was both less and more amusing than it sounds. Generally their efforts were about as successful as the two teams' had been.

The second half promised more of the same. Charlton's goal came from a penalty, one of the clearest and most unnecessary handballs I've ever seen, and was confidently put away by Johnnie Jackson. Charlton, particularly after Ricky Holmes came on, pressed forward more, overstretched and let Oxford equalise. It was a pretty good game from then onwards but both sides didn't look particularly likely to score and didn't.

A packed bus, a slow, slow bus, took us back to town and a packed train - three coaches, GWR? Who do you think you are, Southeastern? - got me back to London.

It looks like this might be the last game I'll see for a while. All the away games next month are problematic for me in their own way so perhaps I'll try the non-league experience again.

Confidential

Another bizarre week at Charlton.

The least expected thing was that Roland Duchatelet turned up in SE7. Or SE9 at any rate, when he attended a meeting of the Target 20k group at Sparrows Lane (we think - but even the venue hasn't been officially disclosed).

Completely predictable was that he'd say something stupid, probably involving a percentage figure. And so he did, pointing out that Charlton represents about 1.5% of his interests, so he can't give the club any more time than he has. When you think of the way he has used the 1.5% so far - appointing Katrien Meire, listening to Thomas Driessen, selling Yann Kermorgant, sacking Chris Powell, appointing then sacking Bob Peeters, Guy Luzon and Karel Fraeye, writing the notorious Statement {...} - you can see he's been busy and perhaps we should be grateful he hasn't given the club more of his valuable, poisonous time.

The ball's now in Katrien's court. She's got to come up with a ridiculous statement involving the figure 1%.

Maybe it will represent the amount of deliberation by the T20k group that isn't confidential. The anonymous representative of the group said today that most of the discussions are confidential and the rest is circulated, but he didn't say where.

@LauraCY1 minutes are taken but are mostly confidential, anything that is not confidential we distribute

— CAFC Target 20k (@CAFCTarget20k) September 23, 2016

Which isn't very satisfactory. No-one seems to have ever seen details of the group's discussions. What are they discussing and why is it so secret?

I imagine they spend most of their time eating biscuits and laughing at the sheer absurdity of a target of 20,000 attendance in the present circumstances. Then Katrien Meire presents her lastest big idea, and they all have another good laugh. (If this isn't what happens, the group can easily refute it by releasing some minutes.)

It's been clear for some time that her main idea is to give away tickets to anyone who'll take them: local residents, schools and other groups. I suspect that what's being covered up is how badly that's working and the lack of any other plan. Or to put it another way, Katrien's incompetence.

While it's never been clear what Duchatelet's motivation is, it's increasingly obvious that Katrien is using the club to advance her career. For her it's important that any failure is unreported. Why is a group of fans colluding in this?

---

Hungry Ted and Albury Addick have also blogged about this

Thomas Driesen (3)

... and here - thanks to @ce2310craig is a picture of him shortly after Jose Riga took over.

@airmanbrown here is the little prick when riga took over the first time pic.twitter.com/DTCPvzqDIe

— craig (@Ce2310Craig) September 2, 2016

Thomas Driesen (2)

The News Shopper has found a couple of pictures of Thomas Driesen, the mysterious network scout, and he's not at all the spotty nerd we feared he'd be. Perfectly clear skin.

Thomas Driesen

Hey @CharltonCARD, here a Belgian article (fr) on how Roland Duchâtelet manages your club #cafc pic.twitter.com/hiYb6HoFY7

— TheSwedishConnection (@ibnkafka) August 27, 2016

An article appeared in a Belgian magazine (www.sportmagazine.be) about Roland Duchatelet's football methods, and scans were posted on twitter (thanks, @ibnkafka). Here's an extract, quickly translated by me. For copyright purposes, this is probably as much as I can get away with.

So who are the other scouts “in England and elsewhere in Europe”? One name keeps coming up: Thomas Driesen. O’Loughlin admits that he met Driesen while he was trainer at STVV but doesn’t know him any more than that. In fact no-one seems to really know him. Apparently a twenty-something with little football experience. That’s all anyone knows. Try to find out more and you hit a wall of silence: Duchatelet won’t talk about him; neither do his close associates.  Driesen himself, listed on Facebook under an assumed name, doesn’t reply to any contact.

A search on Google gives some help but may  be misleading since the author refers to a “Thomas Dressen”. Denis Lapiere, a walloon comic artist and long-standing supporter of Standard Liege, is working on a series about power struggles within a football club. Hence his fascination with the machinations within his favourite club. In November 2015 he joined in a blog debate about the sporting fortunes of Standard, and he seems to be very well up on the internal politics of the Liege club. He wrote: “For his sporting options, Duchatelet consults Christophe Dessy, Dudu Dahan and his two personal advisers (Dylan Salomon and Thomas Dressen) as well as the scouting teams of the clubs in his stable."

Driesen apart, these are names that appear regularly in the media. Dessy is currently the manage of the Robert Louis-Dreyfus Academy. Dahan is Luzon’s agent; Duchatelet has blind faith in him, and he has negotiated transfers on behalf of Standard. Salomon is more than just an intermediary: he’s behind almost all the transfers of players from France to Duchatelet’s clubs. Unlike Dahan, Salomon has always worked for him.

And Thomas Driesen? He is the mysterious “network scout” that Luzon spoke of. The man who, based on statistics and videos, gives the green light (or red light) to the signing of any player.

Otherwise, the article goes on to say that Driesen impressed Duchatelet with his chutzpah, rather than his actual experience or ability. Remind you of anyone?

Out of nowhere, Driesen sent Duchatelet an email pointing out all the things Standard had done wrong, and "explained" why Mario Balotelli had missed a penalty. Duchatelet made him his "sporting oracle", but, according to the article "success has not yet been achieved".

Driesen appears to have a preference for small, skillful players, perhaps not best suited to the Championship.

A final quotation:

After a defeat, the coaches would often find an email in their in-box, full of comments and recommendations for what they should do in the future. The email was signed by Duchatelet and cc'd to Meire and Driesen.

Katrien Jong-Un

Image from http://www.thelondoneconomic.com

When you look at someone's CV and you see a mysterious gap of a few months, you being to wonder what they're hiding. A prison spell, perhaps. These days, any professional in the football business would rather you believed that, than the horrible, shameful truth: that you spent some time working for Charlton.

Mel Baroni, the turned-out-to-be-interim head of communications, doesn't mention her time at Charlton on her LinkedIn page. She shouldn't be ashamed. Her resignation after the {...} statement was one of the few honourable actions to have come from the club in the last few years.

I can't believe she's ever regretted it, least of all today when once again Charlton's management have managed to make their public image even worse.

The club's letter to a fan, threatening removal of his season ticket if he wrote anything derogatory about the club on social media has predictably gone all over the internet and been picked up by the national media, allowing Nick Miller in The Guardian to summarise the chaos of Duchatelet's ownership in an article that's all the more persuasive for its calm and measured approach. We weren't imagining or making it up: all these things happened.

It's not just the attitude of the management that's repulsive; it's the sheer thundering incompetence that allows such enormous damage to be done. But the person responsible gets away with it every time.

Oh well, the protesting season starts again tomorrow. You know what you've got to do.

The FA Council

News broke last night that the CEO of Charlton Athletic now has a place on the FA Council. Unless membership of the Council is football's equivalent of the naughty step - sit there in endless, boring meetings and think about what you've done - it's an absurd, dishonourable appointment. Meire's failures on and off the pitch are obvious and hardly need repeating. To give her any influence at all in the management of the game is bewildering and insulting.

But what is the FA Council, and what does it do? It's easier to say who it is: a full listing is given on the FA website. Lots and lots of names, mostly from the lower levels of the game. Almost all of them presumably male (the site adopts the quaint, some might say sexist, policy of referring to men by their initials, while the few women on the list have first names or a title). Two "inclusion representatives" (one of whom is Paul Elliott), one disability representative and, almost an afterthought, a solitary supporters' representative (Dr M Clarke, who should be expecting to hear from us).

Attending a meeting so stuffed with blazers would surely be a kind of hell. Perhaps it is a punishment, after all. Equally, it seems likely that Meire's appoinment is seen as a welcome touch of diversity. Not only female but, presumably, considerably younger than the average. Presumably, too, also much less competent than the average. At least you'd hope so.

What does the Council do? The website tells us that

The FA's Management Team, working together with The FA Board, Council and staff, aims to deliver an effective and professional organisation for the greater good of English football.

which, of course, actually says nothing about the specific role of the Council. With such a huge membership, it's hard to imagine it is a dynamic, forceful presence. I haven't spent hours searching (I like to pretend I have a life) but I can't see any details of Council meetings on the site - no dates, no attendance lists, no minutes. North Korea would be proud of this level of secrecy.

In the end my guess is that the Council does nothing. It's a bit of window-dressing by the FA to make it appear more democratic, but that's it. Real power lies with the management team, and we know full well that they do exactly as they please.

What's in it for Katrien? Another entry on her CV, which might impress some people who don't know better, in exchange for a few boring meetings.  Another demonstration that the important thing here is her career.

In lieu of a proper salary

Charlton's quest for a new manager continues, four weeks since Riga resigned. It used to be so easy, huh, Katrien? Interview 24 prospects before breakfast, find a new Ferguson, awkward press conference, phew, off to Dubai for a week.

Not now. Britain's finest managers seem strangely reluctant to sign up. Currently Russell Slade is the bookies' favourite at 1/4. (I say "bookies". At the moment only SkyBet are interested enough to quote odds.) He's been in the frame for a couple of weeks now, and I can't help thinking that if that was going to happen, it would have been settled by now.

Maybe it's a question of control. British managers will be aware of the restrictions that come with the job and will be looking for strong assurances that their hands won't be tied/strings won't be pulled.

But I've no doubt it's also about money. Remuneration. Pay. It's widely believed that the club will be offering a very low salary in comparison to other clubs. It's rumoured that Rochdale offered Keith Hill more. Few managers will be happy with that, especially if they then have to manage players earning vastly more.

With network managers, like Luzon and Fraeye, you can understand they might have seen the Charlton job as a way into British football, and they'd accept a low salary against the prospect of future riches.

For British managers the job could be a way into the Duchatelet network. Once firmly inside, nothing you may do, however incompetent you may be, will get you thrown out, huh, Katrien?

But it's a poison offer. The network in general, and Charlton in particular, have nothing to attract an ambitious manager. No wonder it's taking so long.