Nothing Much To Say

There's not a lot to be said today. To really appreciate what has been thrown away since the takeover, in such a casual, careless and indifferent fashion, you would have to have been an Addick through most if not all of the period since our relegation from the Premiership. Five seasons of miserable failure (relegation, failure to rebound, relegation, failure to rebound, then just misery in the third flight) and then some light with the appointment of Sir Chris, greater hope with the putting together of a new team, delight as that time stormed to the title, in a fashion which had us all singing 'we've got our Charlton back', and confirmation of success as we cemented a place back in the Championship - and kept the spirit reinjected into the club, epitomised by that night against Cardiff - and started to dream of better (sooner or later). To have thrown all of that away is unforgivable.

We can of course accept that the turn back down began with the previous owners' cutting off of funding, leaving Powell and the team to struggle on manfully, on a swamp of a pitch. We can also appreciate that any new owner might have seen the club at the time of the purchase as failing and in need of fundamental change, being around the bottom of the Championship and cash-strapped. If they had bothered to ask and to listen they would have learnt better. The crime is that they didn't care and subsequently pressed ahead with hairbrained schemes that were highly unlikely to succeed, in the process discarding all that was positive, including the goodwill of supporters which was theirs in abundance when they bought our club. That's gone, and there's no shared future.

Ms Meire's statement following last night's game is only relevant to the extent that she did not avail herself of the opportunity to announce her resignation. I would only add that to say "we apologies for our mistakes and NOW need to learn from them ..." is appalling. The time to learn from them is long gone, you have shown you are not capable of doing that. As for "we want to work together with our supporters ....", you have had ample time to do that and have consistently opposed meaningful exchange, the chance for input from people who had only the club's best interests at heart from which you could have benefited. Instead your first 'too clever by half' attempt at deception was that post-Sir Chris sacking statement promising dialogue when there was the time only for the promise to be broken. That she can issue statements on behalf of Charlton Athletic is an ongoing insult.

Johnnie Jackson's statement does indeed strike the right tone, talking about the need to "recreate some of the spirit" that we had in the promotion season. However, that simply isn't possible with this owner - unless there is the sort of real U-turn that might suggest he is after all capable of learning from mistakes. We need some reason to believe in that. Jackson talked of trying to give us some hope for next season in the final three games. Quite frankly we could win all of them 9-0 and it wouldn't mean a jot as the team on the pitch is hardly going to be similar come August. In any event the remainder of the season is all about what more can be done to nudge our owner in the direction of selling up.

I'm not privy to inside information regarding the club and have no idea if there are genuine potential buyers, if there are such buyers and negotiations are ongoing, or if the asking price being circulated reflects less an acceptance on the part of Duchatelet of a need to move on than a statement of 'I'll only sell if someone pays a truly absurd price, one that means I can walk away without failure written across my back'. Of course I hope there is a sale, then we can start to look forward again (and get a season ticket).

In the interim, come Saturday it will be time to ensure that the voices calling for a change in ownership are fully supported. As ever, protests within the law and within the boundaries of decent behaviour; we want our Charlton back. But louder than ever. Of course if we were just customers we wouldn't be that bothered, we could always find another place to watch football.