Roland Duchâtelet is no stranger to protests. In 2013 a group of Standard Liège fans staged assorted demonstrations and tried to make merry in his offices, in objection to the way he was running their club, and on that occasion they seemed to catch his attention. “I’m not perfect,” he said in response, “but now we understand each other better and that’s why we have signed a charter that stipulates that fans will have a say in issues that closely affect them such as facilities and ticket prices.”

Supporters of Charlton will hope he is similarly amenable to the voice of the people this weekend, when a protest is planned against their owner at the game against Nottingham Forest. That the Addicks are next to bottom of the Championship and have not won a game in six weeks is only half the point. The fans who plan to demonstrate are watching their club crumble before their very eyes and the man they blame is Duchâtelet.

It is easy to see why they think that way, too. In October the manager Guy Luzon, a Tiggerish presence on the touchline but a limited coach, was dismissed; not an unreasonable call on the face of things, as they were in the bottom three having lost seven of their previous nine. But 10 weeks and 11 games later a permanent replacement has still not been appointed. Luzon followed club hero Chris Powell, José Riga and Bob Peeters as managers sacked by Duchâtelet since he arrived in January 2014, and Karel Fraeye, formerly Riga’s assistant but whose previous managerial experience extended to the Belgian third division, has been the interim head coach for over two months.

As well as having no permanent manager, they have no chief scout and no director of football, leading one to wonder who is signing players and feeding into a recruitment strategy that could at best be described as curious. This summer the defender Zakarya Bergdich was signed with a degree of fanfare from Real Valladolid but has played only 27 minutes under Fraeye and may move on in January. Most bafflingly, the mercurial Tony Watt, a sometimes inconsistent but often threatening attacker, was loaned to Cardiff in November and will probably also be sold now the transfer window is open.

Duchâtelet, in the early days of his tenure, tried to fill the squad with players from his network of clubs, of which Liège was one but also included teams in Hungary, Spain and Germany. The trouble was that many of these players were, not to put too fine a point on it, awful, which has meant they have been over-reliant on a collection of promising but raw youth team graduates.

However, these youngsters will not be around for long. Recently the chief executive, Katrien Meire, stated that the club’s business model was based on developing these young players and selling them on, with Diego Poyet and Joe Gomez already flogged to the Premier League as part of that approach. This is not the most revolutionary way of surviving in the Football League, but the way Charlton are going about it seems flawed. The general mismanagement of the rest of the squad means these youngsters are often thrown in before they are ready, thus stunting their development and decreasing their appeal and value for bigger and more monied clubs. The 18-year-old Karlan Ahearne-Grant, who started the season well but has since faded, is a case in point.

Equally, it is hardly an approach to get fans particularly excited and Meire’s admission was part of an interesting approach to PR. She recently called some unhappy Charlton fans “weird” for thinking they had a “sense of ownership” of the club, sniggered at their protests and compared them with patrons of a cinema – probably not the wisest move.

There is also a significant whiff of shambles to the way the club is run. Some season tickets were not posted out until the day before the first game of the season, while it was recently announced the ticket office itself would be closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays, for reasons unclear. To add to the sense that clown music could well be the prevailing soundtrack in SE7, the Voice of the Valley fanzine recently reported that an NHS call centre is now being housed in the ticket office. Other wheezes have included a surreal caper which offered fans a chance to watch games from a sofa at the side of the touchline, and a supposed CCTV clip of a couple having sex on the halfway line, which turned out to be a publicity stunt for their pitch hire scheme.

What is particularly frustrating for their fans is that there is hope on the horizon in the shape of the former chief executive Peter Varney. “Back in August I was in a position to introduce an investor to Charlton with a deal that would, I believe, have been good for the current owner and good for the club,” wrote Varney in the latest edition of Voice of the Valley. “The owner will one day come to realise how his asset is being depreciated day-by-day. With a £7m reduction in income staring him in the face should relegation happen, he will need to have a good business plan going forward. Hopefully, there are three weaker teams in the division this season.”

However, both Duchâtelet and Meire have ignored his overtures, cancelling three meetings over the last few months (details of which can be seen in Varney’s emails) and showing little inclination either to sell or to accept any real investment. While there is a danger of an “anyone but Duchâtelet” atmosphere taking over and the fans backing any alternative, it is vexing that they will not even entertain Varney’s overtures.

With a substandard set of players, a tactically naive temporary coach with no sign of a permanent one being appointed, shambolic organisation and an owner who does not seem keen on accepting help, it is no surprise that the Charlton fans are taking action. If things do not change, Charlton are doomed to relegation, the fear being that they will not return any time soon.

The hope is that Duchâtelet will pay attention to the protests before it is too late. The fear is that, since he has not watched a game at The Valley in over a year and seems to display naked contempt for the club’s support, he will simply ignore them.