Charlton Athletic fans pull bottled water stunt in protest at owner Roland Duchatelet Duchatelet, the multimillionaire who has presided over disaster at Charlton, has rationed food and water for academy players

There have been some disastrous owners in English football over the last few years, but few have gone as far as rationing food and water for players as a cost-cutting measure.

Amazingly, that’s exactly what’s going on at Charlton at the moment. Bottled water has been restricted to first-team players only at the club’s Sparrow Lane training ground while academy players have had their free breakfasts taken away, as the Independent reported last week.

In response to that story, a club spokesperson said: “The club has become more cost conscious in order to reduce running costs and make costs more bearable for the current owner and any potential new owner. The club makes a very significant operating loss every month which is out of proportion with the occasional revenue generated by player sales intended to offset those operating losses.”

Roland Duchatelet, the multimillionaire Belgian businessman who owns Charlton, is currently in protracted talks with an Australian consortium to offload the club he bought in 2014. Under his ownership Charlton have been relegated from the Championship to League One, saddled with a calamitous transfer policy and neglected to the point that many fans have decided their only option is to boycott official merchandise and matches.

With Duchatelet now implementing extreme cost-cutting measures, Charlton fan group CARD (Coalition Against Roland Duchatelet) have taken matters into their own hands. Responsible for organising a string of demonstrations against Duchatelet’s regime over the last few years, the group have now delivered a batch of bottled water to Sparrows Lane in protest at the severe austerity he has introduced at the club.

‘Dangerous for the players’

A CARD spokesperson said: “Restricting water for young players while they are doing intensive pre-season training in the recent extraordinary temperatures is not only the latest in a long line of ridiculous decisions by Duchatelet, it’s also dangerous for the players.

“The first-team players are still being supplied with bottled water, so it’s clearly nothing to do with environmental concerns.

“The club says the decision has been taken because it needs to be more cost-conscious, but Duchatelet has been the owner for four years so he has been in charge of all the decisions that have led the club to its current position languishing in League One, and a debt of around £65m – far and away the biggest in the club’s history.”

Charlton Athletic statement

Following the CARD protest, a Charlton Athletic spokesperson told i:

“The club looked at the spend on plastic water bottles as part of a current cost analysis process. “The decision was made that given the high wastage and the environmental impact of plastic bottles the club would be better served providing water in other ways. “The club provides fresh water at the training ground, the first team have individual refillable bottles and the U23s and U18s are also provided with refillable bottles. “The solution has saved costs, reduced wastage and has environmental benefits. “This is not the only way the club are saving money by becoming more environmentally friendly. In June, the club’s electricity consumption was cut by 11% and in July by 29%. “The water sent to the training ground won’t be wasted and the plastic bottles the water came in will be recycled.”

Charlton are currently without a permanent manager – Lee Bowyer, who took charge late last season, is still technically in a caretaker role – as well as a CEO and CFO, while their squad is threadbare at best with the League One season already underway.

While one batch of bottled water isn’t likely to last long at Sparrows Lane, it represents an embarrassing reminder of how bad things have become under Duchatelet.

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