The Valley Of Discontent – Charlton Athletic In Trouble

On the final day of the 2005/2006 Premier League season Charlton Athletic made the journey to Old Trafford to play Manchester United. Sitting comfortably in mid-table, the game was most notable for being Addicks manager Alan Curbishley’s final game in charge of the South East London club.

After fifteen years of steady and admirable progress he had decided to stand down, with plans to take a well-earned break from management. Curbishley ended his stint in charge as the second most successful manager in Charlton history behind Jimmy Seed.

By and large most fans were grateful to Curbishley and sad to see him go. But there also existed from some quarters a lingering undercurrent of satisfaction and even contentment that he was leaving. A section of the club’s supporters were of the opinion that, after six seasons of mid-table comfort, it was time for a change, time for a new manager with fresh ideas to take over and push the club higher up the table, towards the ultimate goal of European football. Time for a change of direction, a modern approach, a new Charlton Athletic.

Be careful what you wish for.

Fast forward three years and, following relegation in 2007, the Addicks are now bottom of the Championship. Defeat to fellow relegation candidates Nottingham Forest on 10th January leaves them seven points adrift of safety and, without a win in 17 league games, looking an increasingly likely candidate to plummet into the third tier of English football for the first time in 28 years.

If you had told the travelling supporters there to wish Curbishley farewell at Old Trafford on that cool afternoon back in May 2006 that, three years later, they would be facing the prospect of league games with Hartlepool United and Northampton Town, or London derbies at Leyton Orient and Dagenham and Redbridge instead of at Arsenal or Chelsea, you would most likely have been laughed at, cursed or derided as a Crystal Palace fan. Nonetheless, the unthinkable is rapidly becoming a reality.

So where did it all go wrong for the Addicks?

Well, rather ironically for a club with traditions of financial frugality, the roots of their downfall can be traced back to a post-Curbishley period of lavish spending that ultimately appears to have backfired. Charlton in the Premier League held a reputation for being thrifty in the transfer market, thanks to a board often reluctant to spend money.

When Iain Dowie took over from Curbishley however things changed. The club’s board decided on a break from the norm and, keen to back their man, handed Dowie a warchest of around £12 million pounds. This amount of money was the 2006/2007 season’s budget and then some.

Chairman Richard Murray was eager to consolidate Charlton’s Premier League status and secure a slice of the lucrative new TV deal that was to come into force the following year. So eager in fact that he also permitted the spending of a large chunk of the projected budget for 2007/2008, in order to provide Dowie with more dough for both transfers and increased wages. ‘It was a risk worth taking,’ Murray commented at the time. He was wrong.

No doubt a direct result of this uncharacteristic financial irresponsibility, Iain Dowie’s poor start as manager immediately got the Charlton board twitchy. With most of next season’s money spent already relegation was not an option, but that’s exactly where the club found itself as early as November – stuck in a relegation battle. Rendered jittery by the club’s shaky predicament, the board panicked. Dowie was sacked after just 15 games. His predecessor had been there for 15 years.

Overall, in 2006/2007 Charlton spent £17.5 million. That is more than was spent in the previous four years combined. This botched financial strategy aligned with the mishandled start to a season which saw the club go through three managers before Christmas cost Charlton dear, and ultimately resulted in their relegation to the Championship, from where they have struggled to return.

It was widely believed that with Alan Pardew in charge the Addicks would bounce back into the top flight at the first time of asking, but he disappointed as manager of the club he once played for and with both results and performances in steady decline was eventually sacked.

The club’s financial woes did not end there. Despite the aid of parachute payments Charlton recently announced net losses of £11.5m for the year ending June 2008 and have subsequently had to cut their cloth accordingly. Best players and high earners are now readily being auctioned off. Club captain Zheng Zhi is rumoured to be next in line for the Valley exit doors.

Financial mismanagement and poor decision-making at both board and managerial level, from 2006 to the present day, are certainly contributing factors to the Addicks current decline but there is also another, perhaps overlooked factor that has caused the club disruption.

At supporter level a deep unrest has set in. Fans in the Alan Pardew era and beyond have been gradually positioning themselves either side of the fuzzy line between getting behind a struggling team and informing players in no uncertain terms (usually via boos, jeers and angry derision) of their deep dissatisfaction. The resulting juxtaposition of feeling between these two contrasting groups has rendered the Valley a more poisonous place to be than usual.

Shortly before being sacked Pardew used his programme notes to aim s
ubtle criticism at what he perceived as a lack of support from Charlton’s home fans, and was also seen sarcastically applauding them after a 5-2 home defeat to Sheffield United that was to prove his last match in charge. All this is a great departure from the club that used to look proudly upon itself as the Charlton ‘family’.

With nineteen league games left all is not lost for the Addicks though. There are some positives to consider as they embark on the long hard escape mission. Phil Parkinson is talking optimistically, and has cited the need to instil a ‘never-say-die attitude’ if they are to escape from the dropzone. And in 16-year old Jonjo Shelvey, a young attacking midfielder you are certain to hear more of in the future, they boast at least one player blessed with the skill, swagger and, importantly, confidence to help them get points on the board.

But if Charlton Athletic wish to stay up this season they need to start racking points up sooner rather than later.

Charlton Athletic, English Championship, Rise and Fall