A trip to The Valley in the week before Christmas to play our friends at Charlton in the League Cup… what’s not to like (what could possibly go wrong)? Charlton away matchday preview, with a contribution from Charlton ‘zine My Only Desire.

There’s a long-lasting and meaningful relationship between Charlton Athletic and BHAFC - a common enemy can only help but foster the ties - and on our previous visit to The Valley some of us stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Charlton’s supporters, disenchanted with the grim ownership of Roland Duchâtelet and trying to do something about it. And this latest Charlton V Brighton fixture will play out against a backdrop of protest, dissent and concern.

Direct action, meaningful protest - we’re here for you, comrades, and always will be.

However, it would seem that Charlton’s current worries are less centred on existential threat and the fear of going under, and more around mismanagement.

You should always be suspicious of someone who isn’t a fan of your football club purchasing your beloved football club. And in Charlton’s case, that’s the utterly ridiculous Thomas Sandgaard.

Rockstar. Inventor. Entrepreneur. Prick. Or so goes the opening line of his risible twitter bio.

If you are not familiar with this person, well Thomas Sandgaard is the Danish-American Founder and CEO of private investment group Sandgaard Capital, and the man who decided to purchase Charlton Athletic in 2020 just for the bantz.

‘a friend asked, have you thought about owning an English fodbold club? And I thought, ya, tak, that could be one of the most positive things that I could ever be a part of’

But it gets worse, because in addition to mismanaging Charlton, Thomas Sandgaard is the founder, co-producer, and self-anointed guitar hero of his very own rock band: Sandgaard (yes really).

If you’re looking for a mid 90s frat-boy US stadium rock parody act to play your wedding, then look no further than Sandgaard.

From the clumsy soft-metal iconography, the pseudo-profound lyrics ‘magnetic energy… sparks my insanity… pulling me into another… all love-hate, there’s no other’ to the band’s setup: drums, bass, vocals, band CEO and paymaster Thomas Sandgaard on guitar (plus a professional musician to actually play the guitar parts), Thomas and his bandmates (employees?) are near faultless.

I look at people like Thomas Sandgaard, MBA Business Studies types, and I see people who have mistaken their ability to read a balance sheet and accrue massive personal wealth for possessing creativity, intelligence and charisma.

The tech bros in their Birkenstocks and gilets, who believe an unconventional wardrobe - their words not mine - adds colour and personality to a humdrum life of algorithms, programming, and cold shit coffee.

I guess none of that would matter too much if he was capable or willing to run his football club competently.

Here’s what our friends at Charlton ‘zine My Only Desire have to say about the man, and the current situation at Charlton:

Our biggest problem right now is Thomas Sandgaard’s ambitionless change of strategy. After two years of trumpeting promotion, he told us at the start of year three that his strategic focus had changed and the priority was now ‘financial break-even’.

This was a big deal. Gone was the ‘football is easy’ gloat or the ambition of ‘Premier League in five years’. Even ‘blowing League One apart’ was forgotten. His break-even in two seasons plan is now two-and-a-half seasons and you know where that is heading. We simply cannot trim half the running costs on a £16m turnover. Most of that is playing and back-room staff costs as well as rent to Duchatelet and matchday costs which are unavoidable in running a football club. Playing budget is the big ticket item but we have already seen the consequences of cutting those and there is no-way he can get anywhere near the £8m number he seeks.

So, his only other way out is revenue generation but that looks as forlorn as his cost-cutting options. Barring a sudden prolonged change in form, gate money won’t change and it’s not a major revenue in any event. A failure to gain promotion will mean a fourth successive season in League One under Sandgaard. Continuation of his break-even strategy will condemn us to a fifth, and each year we become less competitive. Changing the manager without changing the budget is simply another spin of the roulette wheel.

We have to hope and pray that ongoing takeover activity in the background can deliver and relieve us of Sandgaard and his lack of ambition.

The build up to this fixture featured an interjection from Peter Varney, Charlton’s Chief Executive from the good times, with a coded hint that an interested party was planning to attend the game, so please, dear fans, try and at least look interested.

He also disclosed, bravely, that he follows the doctrines of well-known philosopher and lifestyle guru Jim Davidson.

Is it unfair of me to think that a signed Jim Davidson portrait is just the sort of trophy our own mustard-wearing fun-zealot would love to display on his home office wall? I have him down as a Michael McIntyre man, but for gentlemen of a certain vintage, one can never be certain.

Whether this call-to-arms has made much difference to the apathy and insouciance that seems to have settled across Charlton’s fanbase, we’ll discover on the night.

But before the match, we have ourselves a decision to make. What with it being this strange work-leisure week, the pre-Christmas period where most people have been paid twice but the official Christmas work related celebrations have wrapped up for the season, what do we think constitutes an acceptable, and sensible, pub meeting time on Wednesday?

4pm, 3pm, earlier? Whatever time things commence. i’m going for drinks around London Bridge and then a train across to Charlton before kick off.

In pre-covid times when planning a trip to Charlton I'd have said head straight to the once mighty but now shuttered Antigallican, the massive away pub right by Charlton station.

The Antigallican was a classic of its type, and a much-loved fixture on the away boozer circuit (by me anyway). No tables or chairs - cleared away to create extra space (handy with a massive away following) lots and lots of staff, and an extremely limited selection of drinks to speed up service: one draught lager, one draught bitter, and one draught cider.

Who wants 26 craft ales from 16 different micro-breweries when you can smash down £3.50 pints of John Smiths or Carling before a game?

And with more than 6,000 of us in attendance, the Antigallican’s large empty spaces would have come in handy.

It’s a mark of our current status that taking 6,000 away feels fairly routine. It’s also a mark of our status, and of our success, that we now have a World Cup winner in the squad. A World Cup winner who would have been awarded player-of-the-match in the World Cup final if it wasn’t for the highest paid player in the world scoring a hattrick, and the second highest paid player in the world scoring twice to win the thing.

One of these players was purchased for £160m, one of them recently signed a contract valued at £94m, and one of them was purchased for just £12m.

Both Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi are effectively employees of Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, whereas Alexi Mac Allister receives his remuneration from Uncle Tony’s payroll. Something to cling on to, perhaps, for anybody feeling guilty about watching matches broadcast from Qatar’s grisly haunted graveyard stadiums.

But the lesson to be learnt from Alexi Mac Allister’s ascent is that Tony Bloom’s player recruitment and development programme is working like no other in English football right now. It’s a thing of beauty, and built to last - most certainly robust enough to withstand the loss of the grey man and his angry little troll friend.

A grandiose claim, no doubt, but one that’s backed up by the most recent evidence available to us: Alexis’ sensational performance in the World Cup final and the golden medal he’ll be bringing back to the Amex with him.

Tony’s top-ten strategy isn’t to finish in the top ten every season for the sake of doing so, it’s to create a launchpad for something more exciting: trophies, glory, European football.

On Wednesday night we gather again, finally (it’s been so long hasn’t it), for the latest instalment of our first cup run post top-ten league finish. Last season’s ninth place finish wasn’t the end, it was the beginning.

And here we are having knocked out Arsenal, with a game against struggling League One opposition to reach the quarter-finals of the League Cup. Exciting times.

In our season 2022/23 opening preview piece (Man U away, fuck yeah), we heralded Deniz Undav as the season’s best signing. Not our best, but the best in the Premier League. He was prophesied as the coming of an XG saviour, the man to lead us on a righteous European journey. And in an act of dogmatic faith we’re standing squarely behind this.

Selling Neal Maupay has definitely helped our XG quest this season (1 goal in 10 games and counting for Everton, £10m in the bank, Bloom strikes again), but to reach our holy lands - Plovdiv, Brest, Tirana, and the post-industrial delights of Eindhoven - we’re going to need somebody to start banging in more goals, and a League Cup tie against League One opposition is just the occasion for Deniz Undav to prove that he’s The One.

We may not win a cup this season (we may not even get past Charlton) or next season, or even the season after that (and Deniz Undav could well end up being a waste of £6m).

But would you bet against The Lizard, the man who has just signed Messi’s long-term replacement in the Argentina team, Facundo Buonanotte, for just £6m, delivering us Ryanair flights and Thursday night football? Cup quarter finals, cup semi finals, and even, one-day soon, victorious cup final afternoons.

As for Charlton, I hope their destiny doesn’t involve League Two football (nor do I hope it’s the next round of the League Cup, but that goes without saying), and they manage to find an owner who cares more about running Charlton Athletic than indulging their Chris Cornell fantasies.

I look forward to meeting them in the Premier League in the near future.

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