Saturday 23 November 2013

Takeover to bring new pressures!?

Its always dangerous to talk about new ownership before it has happened but hope and speculation is part of being a Charlton fan.

Message boards are rife with speculation about a move to the Peninsular, before the ink has touched the paper let alone dried.  A leading light from the Back to The Valley campaign is demanding business plans from mysterious future owners and fans who have no qualms about moving alike.

Our possible new owners are going to British or Amercian (is there a difference these days), Property developers / entertainment moguls ... time will tell, if they are anything other than another set of mythical beings.  From some though the new unknown owners seem to be worse than the erstwhile villains of the peace Slater and Jimminez.  Of course they will be held responsible for any move, these creatures of the night are easily blamed from all ills including apparently this includes global warming and the Brinks Mat robbery.

But what about pressures on the playing staff and management?

CP will be aware that he gained his position from a manager in similar circumstances - players preforming above expectations, no money, shopping for players in Lidl,  except the club were 2 points off the  play offs,

According to the SLP CP will be able to bring in players on loan and there will be pressure on him to move us away from the relegation zone, in the short term and possibly get us competing for the play offs in the spring.  CP's reciod with loanees is not great - Nouble, Ecclestone, Frimpong and now Sordell and Stewart.  There will be pressure on him to have expensive investments playing week in week out.  As new players come in her will also need to motivate the current squad, whose team spirit has enabled a quality Div 1 team achieve 9th in the Championship last season.

And what of the players.  Jackson, Kermogant et al are out of contract ... some will say that the players will be spurred on to play for a new contract and that is how some will react, others may feel that there is no way that they will get a contract, after all how many of our squad would we want to keep if we had money - Kermogant, Jackson, Stephens (who may not want a contract), Wiggins.

For the future CP is going to have objectives to achieve that he has not had since his first full season and in, possibly, American owners a stronger demand for a return on their investment.

If we have new owners there are going to be strong pressures that we have not faced for a while ... its going to be an interesting ride.