Charlton boss Lee Bowyer says now is not the time to discuss his future as Addicks drop back into League One

BY LOUIS MENDEZ

Lee Bowyer says now is not the time to talk about his future as defeat at Elland road meant Charlton were relegated straight back to League One – the result of what Bowyer slammed as “cutting corners.”

The Addicks boss has had to contend with the club lurching from ownership crisis to ownership crisis as a never-ending cycle of boardroom squabbling and uncertainty made his job “impossible.”  The season has ended in a return to the third-tier of English football following the 4-0 loss at Champions Leeds and positive results elsewhere for Luton and Barnsley.

The 43-year-old still has three years to run on his contract but reports did emerge recently suggesting the club would let him go for a £750k compensation fee.

He has been linked with various vacancies at other clubs during his tenure at The Valley, with his former side Birmingham the latest said to be interested in him.

His current club are still under a transfer embargo with the latest owners to rock up at The Valley still yet to be approved by the EFL – months down the line –  and the Addicks boss wouldn’t be drawn on his future in the immediate aftermath of the South Londoners’ relegation.

“I don’t think it’s the time to talk about whether other clubs will be interested in myself,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s the right time to talk about things like that. I’ve been loyal, I know that. I’ve definitely been loyal. I could have left on more than one occasion. I’m glad I stayed. We’ll have to see what happens in the summer.

“There’s a hell of a lot of things that I’ve not been happy with. More things of late, recently, have happened that’s even made me even more so not happy with things that are happening here. I love the club and I’ve been loyal. I gave my all right until the end there, [Barnsley] scored with a minute to go. But now is not the time to talk about my situation. At the end of the day, we’ve got relegated and we’re going to League One. That’s not good.

“If you cut corners, then this is what happens. There’s only so many things you can do. You can cut corners for so long but this what happens when you cut corners. Even then, we still fought to the last day. We should have still been safe, I believe that. With the group of players we’ve got, we should have still been safe, but that didn’t happen. With the chances we’ve created in the games of late, we should have won at least two of them, probably three of them. Decisions that went against us, [referees chief] Alan Wiley apologised to me again on Monday.

“What I do know if that we’re still under an embargo. I don’t know what is going to happen there. Again, it’s too early to start talking about [which players] are going and who is staying. There’s going to be a lot of them that will go. To try and work miracles again like we did last summer, in half the time. I don’t know if it’s even going to be possible to bring in enough players. Again, that’s if we’re allowed to. I don’t know what happening behind the scenes. You know a lot of the stuff that’s been going on, it’s just crazy, it’s not normal.”