The history of Mr Fraeye

Karel Fraeye has spoken to the South London Press about the claims that he was influential in scouting the players that Charlton have, mostly unsuccessfully, picked up since Roland Duchâtelet arrived on these shores.

Nothing to do with me, mate is what he basically says, claiming instead that he was Duchâtelet's main man at AD Alcorcón:

From the day I left here, which was in May 2014, my job was for the owner, of course. I was responsible for the whole side of the Spanish team - Alcorcón, which is in Madrid. And I did 100 per cent of the recruitments for the Spanish team last year - and also for this season. I worked very closely with the president Enrique Perez. That was my job from when I left here.

Well, maybe, but he was definitely a shadowy figure. I searched for his name on the website of Marca, the Spanish sports newspaper. Not a trace of him, although a similar search for Duchâtelet shows that Marca frequently reported on the club after the takeover in 2014, but never mentioning Fraeye. Incidentally, Duchâtelet's ownership seems to have been much less controversial there; in December 2014 he even wished the Alcorcón fans a happy new year.

Maybe Fraeye's overstating his role there, just as Charlton overstated his role  in the Riga months at the Valley.

Meanwhile, according to Dr Kish, Fraeye found time to visit the Valley on Boxing Day 2014, apparently saying that "The bell is ringing for me", whatever that might mean. Someone else found a link showing that even then, Fraeye was head coach at VW Hamme, leading one supporter to say, 10 months before the rest of us:

I don't know whether to laugh or cry here.

So help me God if they appoint someone who is a boss of team from division three in Belgium.

I would seriously consider my attendance at home games if this were to happen.  Putting money into Duchatelet's pocket whilst he f**** around with our club will be too much for me.

While he's possibly overstating his importance to Alcorcón you'll have noticed Fraeye doesn't mention his job at VW Hamme. Fair enough, it's not something to make a song & dance about, a job so meaningless he could give it up for an interim post far from home. And as we all know, the team's results perked up noticeably after his departure.

In fact, Fraeye had been at Hamme since May 2014. It's not clear how he got the job. Not on his experience, even at that level, you'd think. Duchâtelet doesn't own the club, and so it's tempting to think it was some kind of favour: give this man a job where he can't do too much harm, but can boost his CV a bit, and I'll keep paying his wages. You don't mind if he does a bit of scouting for us, do you?

We basically don't know what he was doing between May 2014 and October 2015. Nominally he was head coach at a Belgian third division team.  He says he was also scouting for Alcorcón, although not officially part of the set-up there. Why wouldn't he also be scouting for the Network as a whole? This is how we're led to believe it works, after all. But as usual there's a fog of uncertainty around everything in Duchâtelet's web of businesses. 


It's hard, however, to avoid the conclusion that, even before he and Riga were sacked, Fraeye was - for some reason - being groomed for the job at Charlton.

Why would Duchâtelet have tried so hard to work Fraeye into the job? Some have argued that he wants the club to be relegated. But Peeters or Luzon could have achieved that. Is it just a sign of a strong friendship between the two men? Did Fraeye save Duchâtelet's life after a boating accident on the canals of Bruges? Did he donate a kidney to save the life of an ailing relative?  I'm ruling out the possibility that Duchâtelet thinks Fraeye's a good manager; that's just too unbelievable.

It's believed that Fraeye is on a salary that, by Championship standards, is tiny - well below that of most, if not all, other managers; well below the players. And maybe that's all that matters: he's the only one prepared to do the job for that sort of pay.  Perhaps he's expecting some other reward in due course.

The more I think about it, the more puzzled I get and the more I realise that I simply don't believe anything that the Duchâtelet people say. If anyone thinks they know what's going on, please let me know.