At last someone has broken ranks with the gloom and doom narrative about Charlton favoured by journos. When Saturday Comes remains one of the more intelligent football publications and although this piece was written as a preview for last Saturday's match, it does make some interesting general points, not least that Roland has a long-term strategy, whether you agree with it or not: Crisis? What Crisis
5 comments:
Don`t show this to BA or he may just have to start thinking about that bottle of wine !
I agree with the headline comment that CAFC is not a club in crisis. RD has manifestly brought financial stability, invested in the ground and re-instated the playing surface. He is committed to continuing Charlton's fine youth development history and wants to improve the level of support at the Valley. New players have been signed who seem in prospect at least to offer some optimism for the new season. This picture fits quite comfortably within a traditional model of single football club ownership and how such ownership might,at least in part,accord with the aspirations of the fans. However the key principles of network strategy and how they might potentially affect CAFC remain a mystery. What little RD has said in relation to network strategy combined with the largely ineffective contribution (at a critical time)of the players that he sent to CAFC have so far not made a convincing football case for his network model.
I liked the reference to Charlton fans being clueless .. if the majority of those on Twitter are anything to go by the author is spot on. Many are seeking issues to criticise the new owner when they just don't exist. What comes in the future no-one knows but for now my glass is more than half full...
If we are a club in crisis, goodness knows how we should have been described during the last few months of the tenure of our last owners. Clueless? As I have said elsewhere on this site recently, we really do have no idea what our current owner really intends to do, but we are no worse off than the fans of any club in that respect. We can only judge RD by his actions and, on that basis, we have little to worry about at the moment
I would agree with Terry Ryall that there is still a lot with don't know about the network model and I think this is in part because the vision is a utopian one. Indeed, this reflects the kind of stance that Roland took in his largely unsuccessful venture into politics. The model he has in mind is the Erasmus system for university students, but that is an exchange system with some European funding for administration. You could loan players without a network. I think that the lack of a 'convincing football case' arises from the fact that this is largely a politically driven model. Even so, 'the January six' may be a one off panic move and Astrid was of some use.
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