As a Charlton fan, I have never been more dissillusioned than I am now.
Most clubs - more so Charlton than many others - have a symbiotic relationship with their fans. The fans pick through every iota of news, gossip, rumour and fact and make the most of it, bigging their team up and looking forward. And the club strives to make progress, taking account of the majority of fans' views, doing the right thing; and doing it the right way. That's what normally happens. That's what used to happen. Not any more. And worse than that, right now, I just don't care.
I don't care who gets picked at the weekend. Don't care how long Keith Peacock stays in charge. Don't care how we get on against the Spuds. Don't care who takes over as manager.
A few months ago, I was a shareholder and a fan. Someone who cared probably more than he ought to about the fate and future of the club. But now, with the self-imposed mess Charlton are now in, I really am not sure I can be bothered with it any more.
It'll pass. Won't it?
Comments
It's only been a week since we were taken over so I'd give it a bit more time if I were you or at least until the new appointment has been made! I mean for pity's sake it sound slike you gave PP 2 years so why not give the new owners a little time too.
Learn this:
Nothing that this Club does will ever be easy. Nor will it generally make sense. Nor will it bear any real resemblance to your hopes and dreams.
But, as the true fan, you will feed off this misery. You will resolve to stay with it so that you and the Club can come through the other side into the glorious, sunlit future where Charlton win the Champions League and offer fans free half-time beer and a freshly-ironed programme.
You say that you don't care about Sunday. Trust me - you will. Your stomach will knot just the same as always. You will search out updates and tweets. Your heart will soar when we take the lead ... then plummet as we concede 7 (yes, seven) hotly-disputed and grossly-unfair goals.
But above all else, you will rejoice in being part of a community that is proud of SE7 and all that our Club's history and fine standing offers.
You are Charlton, Chizz. Not the Board. Not the owners. Not the players.
You.
This is the most positive Ive felt about the direction of the club since tbh.
Keep the faith Chizz it will get better for all of us.
New owners -- new manager---new era
If it turns out they are wrong and you are right, I shall at the appropriate moment eat a large slice of humble pie, of course. But I don't think it will happen. For the first time in 3/4 seasons, I feel hopeful that we are not in an inescapable downwards slide and the rot has finally been stopped...
I'm one of the most pessimistic people I know but I have to say the last week has lifted my mood hugely and in hindsight I think that's as much an indication of just how depressed I was about where our club was going as it is about where we might go under new ownership. Yes, it might all go belly up. It's a possibility, agreed. But equally it might all work out as well in which case we'll all look back on the dark days of the last few years, like we do at other periods in our history, with a certain sense of pride that we were still there for our club when it needed our support most.
Apart from losing all their best players, then they got taken over by a Swiss billionaire who pumped a lot of money into the club outspending every club in the division. Strange how things improved after that.
I dont however really remember us be so consistently poor at playing the beautiful game...its been a chore watching our home games this season in general, and Ive defiently turned up out of loyalty more than getting those butterflies I used to get on match days. Lets hope this is a turning point and 2011 is the start of something special.
there is a lot of you just wait and see merchants on here
either put it out there for everyone or put it to bed
Nowdays we get information within minutes of it becoming public rather than having to call club call for £27 a minute or wait til you saw your mates in the know down the pub at games.
With that comes speculation, rumours and all the "what ifs" and every possibility of everything is analysed and disected before anything actually happens.
Its great in loads of ways that you can connect to a vast array of the Charlton community and speak with folk you'd probably never chat to otherwise at the touch of a button but it does have some negative aspects particularly i think in that people often communicate in a way that maybe they wouldnt in an equally passionate way down the pub .
Never got that Amiga.
''Well Lennie, is everyone looking forward to Saturday's game?''
And that was one of his more incisive questions!
Hopefully Chizz will be back here in a day or two, answering his own question and reassuring us that the black mood has indeed passed.
Take care, Chizz.
spot on
the old charlton died when we got back to the prem as champions from the chumpionship. we sold our soul to the devil and in return we got rewarded with i cant remember if it was 6 or 7 seasons in the big league, dining at the tables and beating them to their dinner at times against arguably the best teams in europe and you could say the world.
we sacked Dowie,Reed in 1 season like it was nothing and no reasons given that was by a man i trust and respect. We got pardew we gave him time for his 2year plan it didnt work we sacked him, we gave parkinson a chance 2years later and a league lower he gets sacked
whats the big deal i dont get it at all
Do we really have to get to the stage where we have to analyse and be critical of other people's posts ?
IA, i enjoy your inputs, but from an outsider view they are increasingly becoming laced with sarcasm and picking the pieces out of other people's views. You put forward your own views eloquently enough, you don't need to do the other things, and reading it detracts from whatever it is you put forward.
Please lets all just have a bit more respect for other people's contributions, whether you agree / disagree with them. Its not a competition.
How is this week's dismissal any less moral than than Les "real proper Charlton man" Reed's.
Varney and Murray will have had involvement or at least awareness in both. If we hadnt got humilated again on Monday then perhaps it would have been different but maybe a decision was taken that rather than giving Parkinson any more of Charlton's money it would be better allocated to someone else in the transfer window.
I can relate a lot to what you are feeling. I've growingly felt we've been losing our unique identity amid the downturn, and i've a concern our integrity is starting to diminish as well. Some people will be pleased with that as they despise the 'nice' Charlton approach, others not so much so. I'm in the latter group.
Truly awful being away from The Valley, but at least the players gave their best, whatever the ground we were playing at & conjured up some magical memories over that particular time period. Victories over Man Utd, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, & Play-Off joy. For all the crap tied to having no ground, the club refused to die, the team & manager were fighters, & there was a great spirit within the die-hard ranks who braved the trip to Selhurchwitz every other week. Never want to leave The Valley again though, that's for sure!
exactly - and that is why we should now be happy - we've stopped treading water and now we can start striving for something again.
I guess I am the only person bothered that we don't know who owns our club. We might not have liked Fryer but at least we knew who he was. So, yeah, I'm worried. Oh, and we've all been lied to by the bloke in charge, which is nice. My guess, for which I have no evidence at all, is that everyone knew the writing on the wall before Monday evening and the players couldn't be bothered playing for a boss they knew was on his toes.
An owner we don't know, managed by Dennis Wise. Living the dream.