Matty Spring formerley lost soul at the Valley signed for Orient today, that makes Orients signing to date 9 Charltons a big fat zero, in fact when they report back to train tomorrow they will barely be able to put a five a side match together. Imagine your return to work after holiday and you were to find that half the staff were not there? Really fire you up and motivate you - NOT!
We are waiting on the Boro deal to go through for Bailey to know what budget we have and then hopefully we will be able to sign up a few out of contract players before it gets too late to avoid a depressing start to the season.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Yipeee, dipee do - the boys are back in town - almost
Yipee, dipee do only two days till the real footballers are back in training. We only know a handful of you and we know there will be more of you and some of you had better get ready for the valley boo, no vuvuzelas to hide behind in SE7, but we love you and we love our club and we look forward to another season of joy (a bit more this year please) and despair (a bit less this time) and the unexpected (run a way leaders by any chance?).
real players, real footballers real fans - bring it on!!!!!!
real players, real footballers real fans - bring it on!!!!!!
Monday, 28 June 2010
Cheap T shirts and memorabilia for sale
So we are out, humiliated by the hun, not another historic hard fought draw and an exit on penalties for this bunch of players, no its abject failure this time lads.
It is announced today that the FA will take two weeks to make their mind up regarding Capello’s future, what a load of bollocks, yes or no make the decision today. 24 hours ago I felt 75:25 that capello should stay now that is reversed. It is reversed because he is not the man we thought he would be, the man that took us through the qualifying rounds with ease.
In addition, this defeat throws up so many questions about our league. Along with Spain we compete as the top league in the world, but in doing so we have attracted un heard of riches. Just a few days ago I read an interesting comparison between the Premier League and the Bundesliga, maybe we should take note.
However, back to Capello, The Godfather, now the Odd father. Until we arrived here the Godfather Capello was untouchable, but this campaign has been a disastrous failure. Remember Capello stated he would only play players in form and fit. He had masterminded qualification through this policy and no man was allowed to oppose him, even showing his mettle by ripping the arm band from philandering captain.
His approach and results created a strong team spirit and amongst the team a sensible team work ethic.
But now we see a different Capello:-
1. He goes cap in hand to Carragher, Scholes and King begging them their participation in the squad, surely this undermines the squads that qualified’s self confidence and undermines self belief? To add to that Carragher cried off from international football – because he could not get in the team.
2. Will play only fit players. For a brief moment in time ledley King was fit but you did not need a crystal ball to know he was not going to stay that way.
3. There will be no prima donnas, no untouchables in Capello’s squads, well not unless you take into account Wayne Rooney. Darren Bent may not be as gifted as Rooney but he would have grafted and worked and may well have got a goal.
“Two world cups and still no goals- Rooney, Rooney”
4. Still we have match winners like – oh Joe Cole, why not play him?
5. Gerrrard knows how to play the support striker role and Rooney likes to be the lone striker, why not play players in positions we knw they thrive in.
6. Emile, ……. Emile he’s lovely, he’s cuddly but he is no goal scorer so why bring him on when we need goals. Crouch is not a prolific scorer against top international teams but he is a scorer and the germans did not look that good at the back so why not have a go.
7. No tactics changed during the games, no wily old fox manoeuvre to out wit …… well anybody.
8. Not winning would be failure --- his words not mine … failure!!!
9. If you take our last major tournament, we did not get there so it’s a big tick for Capello, but if you take Svens reign we were quarter finalists three times, two of which we only lost on penalties.
10. We are 8th in the world so quarter finals are par, last 16 is not.
I am undecided and on the other hand maybe we should keep him:-
1. He will have gained so much from this experience and not just ulcers.
2. We can’t afford to sack him having negotiated away our get out clause.
3. Can we really expect Rednap, Hodgson to do any better with the rabble we have got.
4. He is more fun to watch than Sven on the sidelines and we know where his head will be!!
5. Anyone can make a mistake, even when they are earning £6million.
6. Chopping and changing every two years won’t benefit us.
7. This was just a symptom of the malaise of English football.
It is announced today that the FA will take two weeks to make their mind up regarding Capello’s future, what a load of bollocks, yes or no make the decision today. 24 hours ago I felt 75:25 that capello should stay now that is reversed. It is reversed because he is not the man we thought he would be, the man that took us through the qualifying rounds with ease.
In addition, this defeat throws up so many questions about our league. Along with Spain we compete as the top league in the world, but in doing so we have attracted un heard of riches. Just a few days ago I read an interesting comparison between the Premier League and the Bundesliga, maybe we should take note.
However, back to Capello, The Godfather, now the Odd father. Until we arrived here the Godfather Capello was untouchable, but this campaign has been a disastrous failure. Remember Capello stated he would only play players in form and fit. He had masterminded qualification through this policy and no man was allowed to oppose him, even showing his mettle by ripping the arm band from philandering captain.
His approach and results created a strong team spirit and amongst the team a sensible team work ethic.
But now we see a different Capello:-
1. He goes cap in hand to Carragher, Scholes and King begging them their participation in the squad, surely this undermines the squads that qualified’s self confidence and undermines self belief? To add to that Carragher cried off from international football – because he could not get in the team.
2. Will play only fit players. For a brief moment in time ledley King was fit but you did not need a crystal ball to know he was not going to stay that way.
3. There will be no prima donnas, no untouchables in Capello’s squads, well not unless you take into account Wayne Rooney. Darren Bent may not be as gifted as Rooney but he would have grafted and worked and may well have got a goal.
“Two world cups and still no goals- Rooney, Rooney”
4. Still we have match winners like – oh Joe Cole, why not play him?
5. Gerrrard knows how to play the support striker role and Rooney likes to be the lone striker, why not play players in positions we knw they thrive in.
6. Emile, ……. Emile he’s lovely, he’s cuddly but he is no goal scorer so why bring him on when we need goals. Crouch is not a prolific scorer against top international teams but he is a scorer and the germans did not look that good at the back so why not have a go.
7. No tactics changed during the games, no wily old fox manoeuvre to out wit …… well anybody.
8. Not winning would be failure --- his words not mine … failure!!!
9. If you take our last major tournament, we did not get there so it’s a big tick for Capello, but if you take Svens reign we were quarter finalists three times, two of which we only lost on penalties.
10. We are 8th in the world so quarter finals are par, last 16 is not.
I am undecided and on the other hand maybe we should keep him:-
1. He will have gained so much from this experience and not just ulcers.
2. We can’t afford to sack him having negotiated away our get out clause.
3. Can we really expect Rednap, Hodgson to do any better with the rabble we have got.
4. He is more fun to watch than Sven on the sidelines and we know where his head will be!!
5. Anyone can make a mistake, even when they are earning £6million.
6. Chopping and changing every two years won’t benefit us.
7. This was just a symptom of the malaise of English football.
Thursday, 24 June 2010
OS Under threat
Airman Brown AKA Rick Everit has posted the following regarding plans for the OS and is looking for feedback from us all. I have responded on Charlton Life. Basically I love the fact that we have our own distinctive site but if moving to the Football Leagues boring generic version will add significant monies into the Club and save job (s) then reluctantly I can give no argument in its favour.
Ricks post goes as follows:-
"Someone asked recently about the promised redesign of the OS, which we all accept is now looking rather dated. The reality is that we look like being forced down a road we do not want to travel, so rather than present this as a done deal here is the situation we face.
The strong and consensus view within the club is that we want to maintain an independent site. Other than attendance at matches, it is the main point of contact for fans. It is the principle way the club communicates and it acts as our shop window. And who in the high street would deliberately set out to have a shop window that looked like all the others?
We have never seen it and don’t see it now as just another piece of inventory to sell off to the highest bidder. It is a vital part of our identity.
On the other side of the equation is Football League Interactive, a subsidiary of the Football League, which operates about 80 websites, including the sites of all other FL clubs – barring Leeds United and recent arrivals in the League from either end.
There are good reasons for this dominance and they are financial. By bringing all those clubs together, FLi is able to make an attractive pitch to advertisers and share the revenue according to size of club. More significantly, from our point of view, the League controls the rights to live action – commentary and video – and licences it in such a way that it is very difficult to escape the financial logic of handing over your website.
Two years ago, in response to the demand from fans for commentary, the club entered into a deal with FLi that enables us to stream commentary (provided by us) and match highlights (provided by them). No other club has such an arrangement outside of an FLi website and to get them to agree to this we had to accept terms that are overwhelmingly in their favour. They get the vast majority of the revenue Charlton fans pay. The contract is up and they have made clear that the terms of an extension are non-negotiable.
If we give up the independence of our site we get a more equitable share of this revenue, plus a a cut of the advertising, plus a share of the syndication money the League gets from selling the internet video rights on, for example to the BBC, based on the number of Player subscribers we have. At the moment we get a flat rate of the syndication based on League One status, although our website traffic is healthy and hasn’t fallen since we were relegated from the PL.
We would no longer have to pay hosting or design costs, although they don’t offer a shop or tickets interface and these would remain under our control.
Against this, our site would look like the other FLi sites. Our staff would still maintain the club specific content, but we would have less control of how it looks, our messages would have less prominence and there are restrictions on the ways we can prioritise our own commercial activities, for example with splash pages. In addition, the contract ties us to this arrangement until 2017. This is also non-negotiable.
There is nobody at Charlton who want to wants to go down this route, but our research suggests it is worth a minimum of £50k extra a season to do so. Given that we are faced with making people redundant to save much less than this, we have build a credible alternative financial model if we are to avoid it. That is going to need the active support of fans to achieve. Hence this post and the question - do enough of you care sufficiently to help us fund the alternative?
We have plans in place to rebuild the existing site now in a much updated and improved form and continue to host it independently, but that is a cost. The only secure way of offsetting that and matching the income stream from FLi is through subscriptions, but it would make little sense in view of the values we attach to the site to put it behind a paywall. The subscriptions need to be attached to premium content. Again the League will take a significant (but much lower) share of the income just to allow us the rights to include this live action and we would have to obtain our own match footage and edit it.
We believe the main driver of subscriptions was match commentary rather than match pictures, not least because these are also available in limited form via the BBC site.
Are we correct about this? Again, you can tell us. The simplest option would be to offer a premium content service with no commentary or match action as the League cannot demand a cut of that, but even if we offer two packages and exclude premium content from one they are likely to demand a cut of both through the terms of their licence.
Whichever route we go we are likely to focus on adding more non-match video content in order to encourage subscriptions, but to take the independent route we probably need more like 2,000 subscribers than the existing 1,200. And to stay independent we might have to push the price up, probably to £4 or £5 a month. Bear in mind also that all payments include VAT and we will incur additional hosting and bandwidth costs if we run our own premium content service.
We do have some ideas around advertising and sponsorship, but experience suggests they should be discounted for the purposes of the current calculation.
In the end, the board will have to make a decision with finance in mind. They have consistently supported our resistance to the FLI route in the past and recognise the importance of preserving our identity, but cannot be expected to do so regardless of cost.
There will be people out there who are as passionate as those of us at the club are about this, but how many of you are there?
What we didn’t want to do is end up presenting a fait accompli without canvassing opinion. Unfortunately, and whatever we might like to be different, this is the financial reality of the club’s situation and we have to deal with it. "
Ricks post goes as follows:-
"Someone asked recently about the promised redesign of the OS, which we all accept is now looking rather dated. The reality is that we look like being forced down a road we do not want to travel, so rather than present this as a done deal here is the situation we face.
The strong and consensus view within the club is that we want to maintain an independent site. Other than attendance at matches, it is the main point of contact for fans. It is the principle way the club communicates and it acts as our shop window. And who in the high street would deliberately set out to have a shop window that looked like all the others?
We have never seen it and don’t see it now as just another piece of inventory to sell off to the highest bidder. It is a vital part of our identity.
On the other side of the equation is Football League Interactive, a subsidiary of the Football League, which operates about 80 websites, including the sites of all other FL clubs – barring Leeds United and recent arrivals in the League from either end.
There are good reasons for this dominance and they are financial. By bringing all those clubs together, FLi is able to make an attractive pitch to advertisers and share the revenue according to size of club. More significantly, from our point of view, the League controls the rights to live action – commentary and video – and licences it in such a way that it is very difficult to escape the financial logic of handing over your website.
Two years ago, in response to the demand from fans for commentary, the club entered into a deal with FLi that enables us to stream commentary (provided by us) and match highlights (provided by them). No other club has such an arrangement outside of an FLi website and to get them to agree to this we had to accept terms that are overwhelmingly in their favour. They get the vast majority of the revenue Charlton fans pay. The contract is up and they have made clear that the terms of an extension are non-negotiable.
If we give up the independence of our site we get a more equitable share of this revenue, plus a a cut of the advertising, plus a share of the syndication money the League gets from selling the internet video rights on, for example to the BBC, based on the number of Player subscribers we have. At the moment we get a flat rate of the syndication based on League One status, although our website traffic is healthy and hasn’t fallen since we were relegated from the PL.
We would no longer have to pay hosting or design costs, although they don’t offer a shop or tickets interface and these would remain under our control.
Against this, our site would look like the other FLi sites. Our staff would still maintain the club specific content, but we would have less control of how it looks, our messages would have less prominence and there are restrictions on the ways we can prioritise our own commercial activities, for example with splash pages. In addition, the contract ties us to this arrangement until 2017. This is also non-negotiable.
There is nobody at Charlton who want to wants to go down this route, but our research suggests it is worth a minimum of £50k extra a season to do so. Given that we are faced with making people redundant to save much less than this, we have build a credible alternative financial model if we are to avoid it. That is going to need the active support of fans to achieve. Hence this post and the question - do enough of you care sufficiently to help us fund the alternative?
We have plans in place to rebuild the existing site now in a much updated and improved form and continue to host it independently, but that is a cost. The only secure way of offsetting that and matching the income stream from FLi is through subscriptions, but it would make little sense in view of the values we attach to the site to put it behind a paywall. The subscriptions need to be attached to premium content. Again the League will take a significant (but much lower) share of the income just to allow us the rights to include this live action and we would have to obtain our own match footage and edit it.
We believe the main driver of subscriptions was match commentary rather than match pictures, not least because these are also available in limited form via the BBC site.
Are we correct about this? Again, you can tell us. The simplest option would be to offer a premium content service with no commentary or match action as the League cannot demand a cut of that, but even if we offer two packages and exclude premium content from one they are likely to demand a cut of both through the terms of their licence.
Whichever route we go we are likely to focus on adding more non-match video content in order to encourage subscriptions, but to take the independent route we probably need more like 2,000 subscribers than the existing 1,200. And to stay independent we might have to push the price up, probably to £4 or £5 a month. Bear in mind also that all payments include VAT and we will incur additional hosting and bandwidth costs if we run our own premium content service.
We do have some ideas around advertising and sponsorship, but experience suggests they should be discounted for the purposes of the current calculation.
In the end, the board will have to make a decision with finance in mind. They have consistently supported our resistance to the FLI route in the past and recognise the importance of preserving our identity, but cannot be expected to do so regardless of cost.
There will be people out there who are as passionate as those of us at the club are about this, but how many of you are there?
What we didn’t want to do is end up presenting a fait accompli without canvassing opinion. Unfortunately, and whatever we might like to be different, this is the financial reality of the club’s situation and we have to deal with it. "
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
5 Things I like about this world cup
1. The South Africans
I love the South African team in the tunnel before their games singing and dancing and their routines during the warm up. Remind me of Fish and Bartletts influence on Charltons warm up routines. Shame they are now out.
2. The Vuvuzelas
I know its like a swarm of bees throughout the game but its Africa and its their World Cup yes they have invited us into their country and hosted us so it would be rude to be offended by it.
Also, when i was a kid there used to be motor racing at Crystal Palace and from my garden you could hear the cars and for the whole of the sunday it sounded like the Vuvuzelas so they are very nostalgic for me.
having said that some twat was blowing one down my road and frankly I could have stuck it where the sun don't shine.
3. South Africa
The backdrop to the stadiums have been fantastic. One day I will visit South Africa and enjoy it for real.
4. I hate myself for this, but
Maradonna on the touchline, yes he looks like a columbian drug dealer or pimp and we hate him for being a druggy and a cheat, but his enthusiasm and sheer joy are infectious and I find myself watching him and laughing to myself at him. I just hope soon I can laugh at his tears as Argeentina make a messi exit.
5. Capello
I don't believe that any of the top 15 footballing nations should be allowed to have a non national as manager, that said watching capello has been superb, so much passion and gesticulation, the handling of Terrygate and still keeping the players on target for qualification, he has been brilliant and when you look back at the wally with the brolly, Sven,Keegan and Hoddle. Suddenly you realise why the FA are paying so much for the guy.
I love the South African team in the tunnel before their games singing and dancing and their routines during the warm up. Remind me of Fish and Bartletts influence on Charltons warm up routines. Shame they are now out.
2. The Vuvuzelas
I know its like a swarm of bees throughout the game but its Africa and its their World Cup yes they have invited us into their country and hosted us so it would be rude to be offended by it.
Also, when i was a kid there used to be motor racing at Crystal Palace and from my garden you could hear the cars and for the whole of the sunday it sounded like the Vuvuzelas so they are very nostalgic for me.
having said that some twat was blowing one down my road and frankly I could have stuck it where the sun don't shine.
3. South Africa
The backdrop to the stadiums have been fantastic. One day I will visit South Africa and enjoy it for real.
4. I hate myself for this, but
Maradonna on the touchline, yes he looks like a columbian drug dealer or pimp and we hate him for being a druggy and a cheat, but his enthusiasm and sheer joy are infectious and I find myself watching him and laughing to myself at him. I just hope soon I can laugh at his tears as Argeentina make a messi exit.
5. Capello
I don't believe that any of the top 15 footballing nations should be allowed to have a non national as manager, that said watching capello has been superb, so much passion and gesticulation, the handling of Terrygate and still keeping the players on target for qualification, he has been brilliant and when you look back at the wally with the brolly, Sven,Keegan and Hoddle. Suddenly you realise why the FA are paying so much for the guy.
Friday, 11 June 2010
Top heavy relief
So Waggott has gone, well not quite. Timing is everything and for Peter Varney it was good, although his contribution to the success cannot be doubted, for Waggott he came on at a time when the club was in decline and failed to be able to do anything to prevent it continuing. Who knows where we would be if Varney had not left the ship when he did, but I suspect it would not have been a lot different today.
I met Waggott at City Addicks and also liased with him when a former employer of mine had 1,800 worldcup 2006 footballs for promotions in 2008. I organised for some of these to be donated to Charltons african activities and liaised with Steve about it. He seemed a nice guy. Sadly being nice does not mean you do a good job. We'll never know what his brief was and therefore we cannot really judge how effective he was. What we do know is that a club in spiralling decline and debt cannot afford to have the top heavy management to the value that is alleged or even half of it.
I wish Steve all the best and hope that he never has to put up with the vitriol that some threw his way on Charlton Life or be let down by his colleagues discussing his value in open forums.
I met Waggott at City Addicks and also liased with him when a former employer of mine had 1,800 worldcup 2006 footballs for promotions in 2008. I organised for some of these to be donated to Charltons african activities and liaised with Steve about it. He seemed a nice guy. Sadly being nice does not mean you do a good job. We'll never know what his brief was and therefore we cannot really judge how effective he was. What we do know is that a club in spiralling decline and debt cannot afford to have the top heavy management to the value that is alleged or even half of it.
I wish Steve all the best and hope that he never has to put up with the vitriol that some threw his way on Charlton Life or be let down by his colleagues discussing his value in open forums.
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