League 1: How 'model club' Charlton Athletic fell into disrepair

Fans of Charlton Athletic are another set of supporters starting the new season with emotions that fall somewhat short of enthusiasm.

Just as Hull City fans are disillusioned with their club’s approach to the new Premier League season, Addicks fans similarly view the coming League One campaign with trepidation.

Their opening weekend saw the club slump to a 2-0 defeat away at Bury – a rude awakening to their new life in the third tier. Then, on Sunday night, they heard that chief executive Katrien Meire had been appointed as an English Football League representative to the FA Council.

That would be the same chief executive who has presided over the club’s decline, has been accused by the supporter base on more than one occasion of lying to them, and who compared protesting Charlton fans with racists – an accusation that is the subject of an official complaint to the FA.

The appointment attracted criticism beyond the ranks of the Charlton faithful, with journalist Glenn Moore posting this on his Twitter feed.

The Charlton Athletic Supporters’ Trust (CAS Trust) told us: “We have just learnt that Katrien Meire has been appointed to the FA Council as an EFL representative. We still await a reply from the FA to our complaint relating to her comments made in May.

"When it comes to matters of proper football governance, it seems blatantly clear that the FA has no regard whatsoever for the opinions of fans or - as Katrien might prefer to call us - customers.”

The continuing travails at the London club are all the sadder because of the place the club occupies in the history of football, and of fan involvement in clubs.

By 1984 the club had been run so poorly its very survival was in question. It went into administration in 1984 and was reformed, but in 1985 was forced to leave its ground The Valley, and share with Crystal Palace. Supporters fought a long, smart campaign to save their club and return home.

Initially ridiculed and dismissed, they got their way after the Back to the Valley party they formed to stand in the 1990 local elections polled over 14,000 votes and frightened the life out of the local political establishment.

The club returned to the Valley in 1992, and the fans’ role was recognised through the establishment of an elected supporter director on the board. That role was discontinued in 2008 and replaced with a fans forum.

And so we come to the present. A present in which once again a proud club is on its knees due to poor executive decisions, and one where once again the very fans who saved the club are being dismissed for attempting to change things.

Owner Roland Duchatelet, who bought the club in 2014, appears to see Charlton’s future as one of a network of clubs feeding players to the big fish. His involvement at other clubs such as Standard Liege in Belgium has also prompted widespread fan opposition as he’s tried to implement his ideas there. Fan protests here have been dismissed in contemptuous terms by the regime.

In fact, Duchatelet even had his employees publish a statement from RD himself onto the official club website which accused the supporters of wanting the club to fail, merely because they opposed his leadership. That statement caused their newly-appointed head of communications to resign with immediate effect, and is still online here.

Writer and Addicks fan Charlie Connelly, in a powerfully-written blog post, eloquently sets out the case against the current regime, saying that “everything the fans hold dear has been systematically dismantled, to such an extent one suspects it’s a wilful attempt to reduce Charlton Athletic to a soulless husk.

"It’s as if Duchatelet and his people want to cleanse Charlton Athletic of everything that’s gone before and create an entirely new club with a new set of spectators that happens to have the same name and plays at the same ground.”

The club’s current owners underestimate Charlton fans at their peril.

As Connelly says: “The decade and a half in the sun we enjoyed around the turn of the millennium can’t hide the fact that we’re kinda used to the club being run by crackpots and hence we’re well equipped for it.”

None of this stopped yet another lazy and ill-informed item on BBC Radio Five Live last week in which presenter Mark Clemmit labeled fan protests “dangerous for the sporting integrity of the competition”. CAS Trust wrote to Clemmit disputing his assertion.

It said: “Roland Duchatelet has previously stated that he does not care about winning and he shows utter contempt for football fans. That is the real story at Charlton Athletic. It’s been commented on repeatedly by past players and managers, also covered extensively by many other media outlets, including Owen Gibson of the Guardian, Oliver Kay of the Times and your colleague Phil Parry at BBC London.”

Clemmit has subsequently taken some of the fans’ points on board, but not yet in quite so public a forum as the one in which he made his original comments.

It’s a familiar story. Many inside the game still see fans as an irritant – unreasonable, demanding, unaware of the realities of football life. No one could claim fans are perfect, and in fact few fans do, but the lazy dismissal of even their right to pass comment on those who gain temporary stewardship of their clubs is all the more galling when set against the repeated failures of business ‘experts’ such as Roland Duchatelet.

As CAS Trust said: “We are now in the midst of a battle for the very heart and soul of our football club. We are deeply concerned at the state of the club. We see beyond the superficial charm and platitudes of the CEO. We had hoped that reporters for the BBC would do likewise.”

So next time you see a fan protest at Charlton, or indeed any club, take some time to find out why it is happening.

For Charlton’s fans, it’s going to be a long season.