No splashing the cash

The Meet the Board video has finally been made available to subscribers to CAFC Player subscribers after unexplained delays in the editing suite. Perhaps Acworth managed to gate crash the event and had to be edited out. It would be nice if it could eventually be made available on You Tube for non-subscribers.

One message that came across loud and clear is that there is going to be no splashing the cash, although we knew that already. Roland Duchatelet said that the strength of the Academy was one of the things that attracted him to the club. Developing young players was very much the Standard Liege model. You couldn't buy success. Richard Murray made the point that with the greater financial stability RD had bought, it would no longer be necessary to sell promising players early because of financial pressures, citing the case of Carl Jenkinson. Players would be able to develop their potential at Charlton in the first team, enabling their full value to be realised when they were sold.

RD has good English, but is very softly spoken. One thing he is keen on is enhancing the match day experience through 'side events' at games, although he didn't give any examples. He was also keen to see that tickets did not become too expensive.

He was quite guarded in his comments on Chris Powell, saying that he still did not know him that well. However, he said that he was a very good coach and a great personality. There was a need to improve a little bit on some positions in the team and that was what he had been mainly talking to Chris Powell about.

Katrien Meire came across as a rather engaging personality. She implied that one thing that she picked up on was that internal communication was not all that it should be and information about what was not going well had not been reached the top level of the club. Thus she was encouraging staff to drop by informally to discuss problems, as well as instituting a weekly staff meeting. She would also be working with Chris Powell on strengthening for next season.

It all seemed quite sensible and prudent to me, although I know that some fans are worried about the resurrection of Richard Murray. My hunch is that the key person in all this will be Katrien Meire who is clearly very smart.