Dean Kiely Gutted For Us

Talking to BBC Deano had nothing but praise for the club he loves.

I spent six-and-half years at Charlton and it is heartbreaking to see them go down.

I'm a footballer, a commodity, a piece of meat, call it what you will, but at Charlton they care about their commodities, they care about their players and as a player it is few and far between that you get that feeling at a club.

The disappointment I feel is that I contributed in cementing Charlton a place in the Premiership, but as it stands there's an awful lot of rebuilding to do.

The problems they have had this season go back further than the managers who have been there in the last year - Iain Dowie, Les Reed and Alan Pardew.

Alan Curbishley had been their 15 years, but as players we all knew that his time had come and he went on auto-pilot towards the end of his tenure at the Valley.

I hope next season we see a side with young, hungry players who want to succeed and want to climb the ladder.

When people sit down in the cold light of day in boardrooms this summer they need to come up with a fresh side for next year.

There will be a cull of players and I hope Pardew brings in the right type of players, Charlton-type players.

People like myself, Steve Brown, Richard Rufus, Mark Kinsella, Clive Mendonca... people they say were good players were also good people. This football club has always had a lot of good people in and around it.

It's not all about the 90 minutes on a Saturday. From Monday to Friday you have to have an empathy and a feeling for the people you're playing with and the teams I played in at Charlton spent time together and we cared about each other.

That showed in our finishes in the top-flight which were good for a team like Charlton.

I've been away for a couple of years but my disappointment shows the feeling I have for the club.

I'm very fortunate that I count Peter Varney, the Charlton chief executive, as a very good friend and I was on the phone to him before the game and he was outlining how much relegation costs.

They will get £11m from parachute payments, but that is far outweighed by how much they will lose from not being in the Premiership.

That makes things very difficult and it will not be easy to come back up straight away.

There are a lot of decisions to be made, but Varney, chairman Richard Murray and the board of directors make the right decisions more often than not.

You won't see Charlton spiralling out of all proportion and going down, down, down like a Leeds or teams like that because they run things properly and have a solid base.

As for foreign investment, I can see the attraction but I'm not too sure.


Spot on Deano! You will always be a hero here

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