Chief executive discusses bosses

Four managers have worked under you since 1997. What have they been like as individuals?

They are all different. The time when we had three in one year wasn't the greatest because Les Reed was a friend and still is.

He had been the coach when we first came up through the play-offs in 1998, so it was a particularly difficult period.

Obviously the one I was closest to of all the managers was Alan Curbishley because I worked with him for so long.

Not only did I work with him, there was the play-off final, the Championship and seven years in the Premier League.

He is the greatest football manager this club has ever had. People will say to you as a journalist it was Jimmy Seed, but with all due respect to his era, the demands on a Premiership manager in the modern game are particularly hard.

There is the finances, you've got to be fitter and the tactics are more important in games so I think Curbs did a fantastic job here and I feel he hasn't done too badly where he is now either.

What was your reaction when Alan Curbishley told you he wanted to leave?

It was a shock because myself, Richard Murray and Curbs were like the main team at the club.

We had always talked about how we were going to do everything and generally speaking, it had always gone according to how we planned.

Exhausted is a strong word to describe Alan in his last year here, but there are a lot of demands on managers. They are the focal point of everything and you've only got to look at the newspapers nowadays.

I think he needed a break, so I understand all the reasons because it is where I am myself now.

Iain Dowie was finally appointed to take over from Alan but only lasted 15 games. What happened?

First of all, we completed a long process to replace Curbs and both Richard and I thought we had the right man in Billy Davies.

Billy Davies is the only person who knows why, after being offered a very lucrative contract here, he decided not to come.

We had gone through that process and interviewed him once and then he came to a board meeting where he was interviewed a second time.

The board all liked him and as far as we were concerned at the end of the meeting, we had gone away and he was the Charlton manager.

I went home to my wife that night and told her we had appointed Billy Davies today and it would all be announced on Wednesday.

Suddenly we were in a position where he has not taken it and we didn't really have a second choice from our list.

For lots of reasons we didn't think people we had interviewed were right for Charlton.

Dowie was very impressive in his interview, but he spent a lot of money which Richard had made available.

To be fair, those signings didn't work whether it was Traore, Diawara or Amdy Faye.

Andy Reid was injured for a long period of time, although he subsequently came good, but in the main those signings didn't work which was probably Iain's problem.

He had followed someone who had always kept Charlton in a healthy position in the Premier League.

It was always going to be difficult for whoever took over from Alan Curbishley.

He needed the signings to work and the signings didn't work.

We found ourselves down at the bottom of the league, so the board took the decision to make the change.

There are other factors, but the problem is it is an ongoing situation so I'm not going to be able to go into that yet.

There will be some kind of closure on that whole era within the next three to six months.

You mentioned Les Reed earlier on and he was replaced by Alan Pardew. What is your relationship like the current boss?

Managers are all different in their styles. Alan is very popular with the players for example.

He has had a difficult job because we were in a difficult position when he came in and he nearly kept us up.

One or two things didn't go our way and when you look at the key points we could have made up, the decision of Liverpool to field a youth and reserve side at Fulham was really hard to take.

I don't criticise Liverpool because I know why they did it and the Champions League is the big prize.

But for those of us down the bottom, Fulham were the ones who were in freefall.

We finished second from bottom so we can't have any complaints to say we would have stayed up in perhaps the way Sheffield United could argue it.

Then there was the West Ham situation with Tevez which was all very complicated.

At the end of the day, it is right to say the teams who don't get the right number of points do go down and you get what you deserve overall in the season.

But Alan's record from when he took over until the end of the season wasn't bottom three form.

Perhaps if Alan had been in charge a little bit earlier, then I don't think we would have gone down. I think we would be a different club to perhaps where we are today.

Why are you leaving?

Eleven years is a long time and I've done a lot of things here.

When you are doing stuff like building stands, the hours are quite long and the demands on people running football clubs now are quite intense.

It is almost like a seven day a week job.

I just got to the point where now seemed a good time to go and I wanted to take a break from it all.

The fans don't see it because they go off and have their summer, but the close season is actually more busy for those of us involved in the non-football side than perhaps the earlier parts of the season because of all the commercial deals and transfers.

I wanted a break from it all and it is very amicable as shown by the fact I'm serving a six-month notice before handing it all over.

From the football club's point of view, there comes a time where it is good to get someone in who has got fresh eyes on what is going on.

There is a lot going on in the south east with the Thames Gateway and Charlton have got to take advantage of all the things which are happening, so it probably works out best for both sides.

Will you miss the job?

Of course. It is very rare where you get the chance to work in something you have a passion for.

I speak to a lot of my friends and they are like: "God I've got work this week".

It isn't like that because there always seems to be something going on in football with it being quite fast moving and energetic.

I don't quite know how I'm going to go from where I was to suddenly not doing anything because I usually get restless after about 10 days on holiday.

There are no immediate plans. I laugh when I get letters from fans telling me they know what I'm going to be doing.

I'm determined I am going to finish this off professionally and then take a break, but who knows what is in the future.

It is dangerous to start saying I'm going to do this or that because you've got to have your health first.

And your advice for your successor Steve Waggott?

The biggest thing in this job is to be absolutely clear on what you want to achieve and focus yourself on it.

Don't be distracted by short term reactions to what you want to do and the best example is the period when we went up, came down and went immediately back up again.

There was a huge amount of stick flying around because we didn't stay up the first time, but we had a focused position on what we wanted to do.

We felt we would be much stronger when we came down if we waited and used the money to invest when we were back.

This decision delivered the success but at the time, you could have easily been distracted by all the criticism saying we should have got more players in in January and had a better go at staying in the Premier League.

There are a lot of people with a lot of opinions around football clubs and you've got to go for your targets and not just be put off by short term reactions.