Charlton Athletic Weekly Roundup

Article by Christopher Amor

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The biggest story of the week has been the signing of Romanian forward George Tucudean from Standard Liege. The 23-year-old penned a three-year contract at The Valley and is the latest of a number of players that have made the switch from Liege to London. Few in England will know much about Tucudean, but at 6’1” it appears that the former youth international will play the target man role for the Addicks, giving Bob Peeters the option to play a more direct style should it be necessary. In other transfer news, West Ham goalkeeper Stephen Henderson is being heavily linked to both Charlton and Brighton. It is expected that the any deal will take the form of a season long loan and with Hamer leaving SE7 earlier in the summer, it is fair to say that Charlton need a new goalkeeper in the squad.

The Charlton Squad have been on their annual pre-season tour to Spain this week and even managed to pick up a 5-1 win against a Gibraltar XI side! A brace from Vetokele and goals from Harriott, Tucudean and Church helped Charlton secure a good win. Pre-season tours have become a feature of the calendar for modern football clubs in England; while the bigger clubs use the pre-season as an opportunity to strengthen their presence in alternative markets, clubs the size of ours use the period for team building and training. Given the large turnover of both coaching and playing staff at Charlton this summer, supporters will be hoping that the tour is a success and will adequately prepare the squad for another challenging season in The Championship.

The club have also announced the match day ticket pricing for the upcoming season and again ticket prices are very reasonable when compared to other clubs in The Championship. Charlton’s owners introduced a new season ticket pricing system earlier in the year that has had some successes and some failures. The £150/£175 season ticket block in the East Stand has totally sold out and will almost certainly bring a new feel to the atmosphere at the Valley in 2014/2015. However, the Crossbars package that the club offered appears to have failed, with very few fans taking up the offer of half-time access to the North stand’s hospitality lounge for an extra £10 (approximately) per game. With as many as seven different priced zones for fans to choose from, I think we can all appreciate how lucky we are to support a club that has continuously committed to providing affordable tickets to matches. Brentford have also allocated 1,580 away tickets for the opening day of the season that have gone on restricted sale to Charlton fans.

In other developments, former Addick Ricardo Fuller has signed for rivals Millwall. His time in SE7 wasn’t as successful as many had hoped and I for one am not too concerned about what he will bring to our neighbours. Yet, as the fantastic Addick’s Championship Diary blog reported, Jose Riga’s reign at Blackpool has taken another turn for the worst as the team failed to attend their pre-season tour. Blackpool reportedly have only eight players on the books and Riga has really got an unenviable job trying to keep the club in the second division given the turmoil that is occurring in the North-West. I can’t help but think, especially given the exchange of personnel between Charlton and Blackpool in the past few seasons, that what is going on at Bloomfield Road is a reminder of how bad things could of got at Charlton had events not turned out as they did.

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