GFP mark one year as Charlton Athletic ownership group – Charlie Methven on implementing changes, player wage budget and transfer business

BY RICHARD CAWLEY
richard@slpmedia.co.uk

Global Football Partners passed the one-year mark as owners of Charlton Athletic on Sunday, but chief executive Charlie Methven thinks supporters should judge their running of the club from January onwards.

GFP’s purchase of the Addicks was a protracted affair which also saw Thomas Sandgaard attempt to renege on his deal, originally agreed with Methven’s group in January 2023, and instead look to sell to American Marc Spiegel.

But the transaction for the League One club was back on from June and completed on July 21.

That first season for GFP? Challenging.

Dean Holden was the first EFL boss to lose his job, sacked before the end of August. Michael Appleton lasted until late January with a 12-game winless run spelling the end. But against that unsettling backdrop there have also been changes which hint at a brighter future.

Nathan Jones was a statement appointment as boss after Appleton’s axing with Will Abbott joining as director of performance services after serving his notice period at Brighton.

“When we came in, late July 2023, it was extremely frustrating that the EFL approval process took two months even though we were the most straightforward approval anyway because the major shareholders and myself have all owned football clubs before – either here or a highly-regulated environment like the US,” Methven told the South London Press.  “But we understand and respect the process that needs to be followed

“It was extremely frustrating watching the meat of the transfer window pass by and the players, who one would have been interested in, sign for rival clubs – so when you do come in then you’re basically into the loan market.

“As it turns out the loan players that we signed were not effective. The loan market is extremely difficult – if you get one out of three right you are doing well.

“We knew quite early on this was going to be tough. While we were fully prepared that the full turnaround process was going to be a two-to-three-year job, that is going to be much easier in the short term if you do okay on the pitch.

“And so starting off with five defeats on the bounce, after the opening-day win, didn’t give much space to get on with doing the real hard grind, grunt work we knew needed to be done.

“We were straight into changes of manager and all sorts of upheaval.

“There was bad luck along the way of course – Miles Leaburn, both in the start of pre-season and the start of November, was the subject of two horrific tackles that should’ve been sending offs. Having Miles fully fit over that period probably would have made a big difference, as he would to any team.

“It was a period of frustration but if one were to spot the silver lining in the cloud, one would look back and say as a result of the troubles and problems then at least we were under no illusions about the extent of the change required.

“It told us this requires more change – and quicker than we had perhaps originally envisaged.

“September, October, November and also, to a degree, December had various different departments compiling lists of ‘this is the change that needs to happen’.

“From January onwards, those are the changes that have been implemented.”

Charlton did not win a league match for three months until a 2-1 victory at Derby in February 2024.

Jones steered the Addicks to a 14-game unbeaten run – 10 of those draws – as they pulled clear of relegation danger.

Methven, who was a part owner of Sunderland and held the role of executive director, recently told a sponsors’ breakfast held on the day the new fixtures were announced that the side’s form “fell off a cliff like I’ve never seen before”.

Asked about that comment, he added: “If you speak to the technical people they will say that the players weren’t fit at the start of the season.

“When the new head coach (Appleton) came in he had to embark on a crash course to get them fit. The problem with performing that manoeuvre while also playing matches is the players are not yet conditioned to take that amount of work – so there was inevitable fatiguing and strains.

“Not long after the new head coach came in the form improved very significantly but once the injuries came it fell off a cliff. What was clear is that fundamentally the injuries were as a result of desperately trying to play catch-up on the fitness.

“This is the vortex into which the men’s side of the club was sunk during that July to November and December period.

“In retrospect it was a wake-up call about what was needed to turn Charlton into a fully-functioning professional football club. Before you go on to become outstanding and elite, first of all you have got to be able to get players fit and keep them fit. There are some basics that have to be done before you can honestly look yourself in the mirror and say that you are a functioning organisation.

“That was the work we had to do in January, to lay the foundations for more interesting stuff later on. Sorting out the various physical side of the club – how Charlton deals with the performance aspects as a whole. This also includes players coming out of the academy and all that type of stuff, was deemed to be the most important thing to fix in the entire club.

“The level of leadership and authority that Will has brought to those areas of the club are one of those deeply unsexy building blocks that serious football clubs build off.”

Both The Valley pitch and the playing surface at the Addicks’s Sparrows Lane training ground have been relaid.

“It is an extremly expensive exercise – £450,000 I believe – to redo all the training pitches,” said Methven.

“The assessment of Will Abbott and his team is that one of the reasons the club has endured so many soft tissue injuries is because of the uneven nature of the training pitches, because they hadn’t been fully looked after for a long period of time. They needed to be dug up, otherwise it may be difficult to prevent the same kind of injuries happening again and again.

“The Valley used to be a state-of-the-art stadium but had clearly been  left largely unaltered for more than 15-20 years and was in bad need of being brought up to speed.

“That is a gradual programme of cap x (capital expenditure) over one-year, two years and three years – we’ve got it all drawn out.

“There was some essential things needing to be done. The underpinnings of the pitch weren’t right – so we took the decision that rather than just replacing it we’d go the whole hog and do one of the super, state-of-the-art pitches to make sure that was not something that held the club back in the years to come and enabled us to play women’s matches there.

“Also the fan experience has moved on in the last 15 years. The amount of clubs who have better fanzones and proper beer pouring facilities.

“If you don’t keep up with the times, and preferably pushing beyond that – as Charlton once were – then the club as a whole starts to suffer.

“It’s so easy to say that one particular thing doesn’t stop us winning matches but when you add all the things together than it adds to an air of decrepitude – and decrepitude stops an elite culture from forming.

“It’s not about throwing money around willy-nilly all over the place, that isn’t required, but when players get signed and come through the doors of the training ground or The Valley, you need to have a sense that this is a place where things are done properly.  That raises everyone’s standards.”

Charlton are gearing up for their fifth campaign in England’s third tier.

Last season’s 16th-place was their worst finish in 98 years but Jones’ impact – coupled with seven new signings in the current transfer window – means that there is optimism in the boardroom and also from many of those fans who will be in the stands.

“I am very confident that Charlton are going to start to perform in the way their playing budget indicates they should,” said Methven.

“That is the basics for a board of directors to try and ensure – that the money spent at least enables what might be called par performance.

“For quite a few years Charlton have been spending quite a lot of money on their men’s first-team – they are normally in the top four or five spenders in League One in terms of wages and transfer fees – but that has not resulted in a top-four or five performance level.

“It’s a game and a sport – impact injuries can happen that are not anything to do with strains or soft-tissue injuries. But I believe there is an organisation and leadership on the playing side of the club now which compares very favourably to other League One clubs I’ve been involved with.

“We’re still quite early in the journey. So the development of that culture that sees everything done well, all of the time as a matter of course, is something I’d expect us to improve year on year.

“We are in a good state of progress for one year on.”

While Charlton should be stronger and more settled this time around, the division is also arguably stronger.

Birmingham City are seriously splashing the cash, including signing League One Golden Boot winner Alfie May from the Addicks,  while heavily bankrolled Wrexham have won promotion.

That’s before you throw Rotherham, Blackpool, Bolton or Huddersfield into the equation.

“Birmingham are a freak one-off case,” said Methven. “The rest of the top five or six have roughly comparable budgets. Birmingham have a budget about twice the size of the rest of ours because the commercial revenues that they have engendered since the takeover  through association with famous owners and truly vast season ticket sales. I believe they have sold something like 16,000 or 17,000 season tickets.

“When it comes to allowable budgets under SCMP (salary cost management protocol) and sheer cash to spend then Birmingham are well ahead of the other clubs in this league. But, as I know to my cost at Sunderland, that doesn’t automatically mean you win every game. You still have to do the right things and spend the money correctly.

“Our budget is highly competitive in this division – as is indicated by the type of players we’ve been able to sign. There are ones that Nathan wasn’t necessarily sure he’d be able to sign. Players who are genuine Championship players and played a lot of games there, not just been there as a sub.

“The view of the football department as a whole was that we had a lot of young players with a lot of ability but we needed to have some structure and leadership around them.”

May’s sale to the Blues came with the blessing of Jones. The Welshman has moved to bring in Gassan Ahadme and Matty Godden from Ipswich Town and Coventry City respectively.

Tyreece Campbell is also firmly viewed as a central striker and not in the wide role he has played in recent seasons.

“It’s our job as a board to set budgets – it’s not our job to dictate to the football department which players they should be signing or keeping,” said Methven. “When the football department said it (May) was a deal they wanted to do – because it would enable them to do other things they really wanted to do and it was all within budget – then at board level that is within their mandate.

“One thing we’ve been very clear about right from the very start is that football decisions need to be made by football people, within the parameters laid down by business people, in terms of budget. That is a division which works well.

“You’ve got Jim Rodwell, as chairman, overseeing the football department. Jim is a very experienced football club executive but also a former professional footballer himself.

“You’ve got him, Andy (Scott, technical director) and Nathan – these are all very experienced people.

“It’s not my role or the financial director’s role to dictate to football people how they should spend their football budget, just like it wouldn’t be their role to dictate to me how I organise the infrastructure redevelopment at The Valley.

“But we all have interesting discussions where we explain to other senior people why we are doing things – open ourselves to question and challenge – because we’re all sensible adults. There is room for questioning – but not for direction.

“Those of us on the board, with the exception of Jim, do not direct football strategy.”

Methven was recently appointed as chief executive but his focus is on the non-footballing side of the business.  Rodwell, managing director and chairman, is in charge of football operations at the League One outfit’s Sparrows Lane training ground.

There were a number of changes made by GFP in late June in terms of the structure.

Methven was due to move to Eltham on Thursday.

“I’m really looking forward to it – commuting has been pretty brutal,” he said earlier this week. “Right between the training ground and The Valley which means if I do need to go and see Jim about something it is relatively straightforward to nip over.

“The vast majority of my time will be spent at The Valley. We’re actually refurbishing and redeveloping the offices at The Valley which have been stuck in something of a timewarp and weren’t a great environment to work in for our office staff.

“We are a reasonably experienced ownership group in that I was involved in several clubs, ownership and board level; Gabriel Brener and Josh Friedman were the owners of the Houston Dynamos before coming over to England. Hiro (Ono), the chief executive of ACA Football Partners obviously owns football clubs elsewhere.

“Our view as a group was to take our time and have a proper look under the bonnet. Let’s not wade straight in there and start throwing our weight around, making big decisions, because unpicking those decisions and sorting them out if we have to do it in the future will be a really painful and expensive exercise. So let’s take our time and work out a plan that is a plan for Charlton, as opposed to a plan which is pre-fabricated about how to run a football club.

“The plan we have developed is very particular to Charlton. And, I guess, once we had spent three or four months looking under the bonnet, then you have to come up with the plan. That was really drawn up in November and December. Then the discussions started about structure. How do we implement the plan and ensure we have round pegs in round holes? People who actually have a strong chance and track record of implementing the plan – that have a CV that suggests they should be able to, would be able to, implement that plan.

“We wanted to build something that could last here and be fit for purpose, not just for a few months or for a year. My fellow owners asked I take over the running of the business side of the club, as I did at Sunderland. I was very happy to accept because ultimately when you take on the responsibility of being an owner of these clubs these are precious things – social instititutions. You have a huge contribution to make, not just to your local community but tens of thousands of people for whom that football club is a very important part of their life.

“The vast majority of my work is to focus on the business. Not only does the club need to perform better on the pitch, it also needs to lose less money. We are heavily focused at the moment on revenues. We don’t think there is a vast amount to be cut. There’s just a lot more revenue that needs to be raised.

“We need a much more active commercial department which I’ve now put in place and is starting to bear fruit. We need to become much better at marketing, ticket-wise, to our local communities rather than just relying on our historic fanbase. The historic fanbase is fantastic but that is no excuse not to constantly go and look for more…to add to it.

“We need to become smarter at things like attracting conferences and events to The Valley – working harder on attracting more people to come to women’s games. All of these belts and braces things that if you don’t end up doing them, you end up losing a whole lot of money. Building a revenue base is built off five, 10, 15 things.

“We’ve just taken the club shop back in-house – which is a huge piece of work. It’s not just walking into the shop one day and saying: ‘We’re going to take this over’. You have to develop your own software systems, e-tailing, your cash reconciliations.

“We believe we are more or less going to double retail revenues this year by being much more flexible and responsive to our fans’ needs.

“Every bit of the operation you start to bring up to maximum capacity is what makes you stronger, more organic, more sustainable and just better as an organisation.”

MAIN PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD