The departure of Jimmy Seed

We are all familiar with the concept of ‘spin’ in the media, but it is not a new development.  Back in the 1950s the narrative given to the media was often an attempt to divert attention from the real story.   This was certainly the case when Jimmy Seed was removed as Charlton manager in September 1956.

 The standard story, as reproduced in the Birmingham Daily Gazette of 4 September ran as follows: ‘Mr Jimmy Seed, faithful guardian of Charlton Athletic affairs for almost a quarter of a century, is no longer Master of the Valley.  After 23 years as manager, the longest of any First Division chief, Mr Seed has retired.’

The club statement referred to the retirement of Mr J. Seed.  The paper commented, ‘Sad, so sad. It was “Good Old Jimmy” when he led them from the Third Division to the First in the course of two seasons in the 1930s; when he piloted the club to Wembley; and when he sold Eddie Firmani for £35,000.  Now with Charlton beaten by Sunderland on Saturday, bottom of the First Division, having lost all five games and conceded 19 goals, it is “Mr J. Seed”’.

In other words, the paper was far from convinced by the club’s account.   However, a director speaking on behalf of the board said: ‘We are parting on very friendly terms, and I think that Mr. Seed has been wanting to get out of football for some time.  We have absolutely no one in mind as a successor [untrue], but obviously we will have to consider it.’

 ‘After saying farewell to the directors, Mr Seed said “I am a very tired man.  I have had 25 years of football, and the responsibility has become too great.  It had got to the stage where I could not sleep at night.  I am 61, heading for 62, and I decided it was time to quit.  There has been no row of any description at Charlton.  I took the decision on the spur of the moment.”’   Well, it is true that it was a shock.  He had just been expecting a pep talk.

“I have some wonderful friends at The Valley and that will always be my home.  Although I am quitting football altogether, I will always be ready to help Charlton in any way I can.  Charlton’s bad start this season has influenced the decision.  When a club’s playing fortunes are at a low ebb, the responsibility is even greater.”   In other words, he was hinting that he had been edged out.  A lesson my uncle taught me in his Lakedale Road newsagents was always to ‘read between the lines’ of any story, what today we might call the subtext.

The report continued, ‘Running Charlton has been just about the most difficult job in First Division football.  Money has never been plentiful and, despite any amount of bright, attractive football, Charlton have never had the stars to lure the people away from Arsenal, Tottenham, and Chelsea.’ As I have argued in an earlier article for VOTB, there was a missed opportunity after the Second World War to make Charlton the South London equivalent of Arsenal.

The article concluded, ‘The Seed policy has been simple.  “Give me a good fellow with a fair amount of skill and we will make him happy at The Valley, he once told me.”  [The writer was Alan Willliams].  Now all that is past and with Sam Bartram also departed, The Valley will never be the same.  The only survivor of the great Charlton trio is trainer Jimmy Trotter,’ the article noted significantly.

Journalists immediately started to look round for a successor and the DailyMirror confidently declared, ‘The man to whom Charlton will almost certainly offer the job as Jimmy Seed’s successor is Sam Bartram.  Sam, goalkeeper almost throughout the whole of Jimmy Seed’s career, retired last season after a record number of games to take over the managership of Third Division North Yotk City.  His entire playing life of twenty-two years was spent at The Valley, where he was probably the most popular personality the club ever had.’

‘If he had not been offered the York job, he would still be playing and the Charlton directors told him that when he decided to retire they would find a job for him.  [Yes, but in a more junior role than manager]. With that in mind Sam studied managership under Jimmy Seed and knows Charlton, the club, the players and the staff better than anyone else.’

‘When I rang him at York last night after his team had beaten Carlisle 2-0 and told him that Jimmy Seed had retired he said: “Oh, I’m sorry, but I’m not surprised.  I think that it is a great pity that Jimmy Seed, the man to whom I owe so much, should go out of the game but I know he has had ever increasing worries.  There will never be another Jimmy Seed, and everything I learned as a player and of the duties of a manager, I owe to him.”’

‘I asked Sam whether he would be interested in taking over at The Valley, where he spent so many happy years, and where he has literally thousands of friends.  “No comment,” he replied.  But he added: “Naturally when has spent so long in one place, a large part of one’s heart is always there.”’ In other words, I am a candidate and you know where you can find me.

In what appears in retrospect to be a deliberate diversionary tactic, a subsequent report stated, ‘A quiet group of players stood round the billiard table in the Charlton team room when director David Clark walked in for a pep talk.  “Listen, chaps, he said [adopting an appropriate mode of address for the worthy artisans], “Mr Seed’s retirement come as a shock to all of us” as pigs flew past the window.  “But I want you to know that the directors have complete faith in you.  We are convinced that you can find your true form and take us away from the bottom of the table.”’   This no doubt gave a great boost to morale.

Mr Clark told the Mirror ‘”We are in no rush to find a successor to Jimmy Seed.  A stranger might be a good idea.  After all, that’s what Jimmy Seed was.”’  This was one way of saying ‘We’re not having Bartram’, but it was also a way of deflecting attention from the planned appointment of Jimmy Trotter, immortalised through the name of Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses.   However, it took nine days to confirm Trotter’s appointment. The Sunday morning gatherings of Charlton fans in my uncle’s newsagents were the 1950s equivalent of a message board and a recurrent theme was the ill feeling between Seed and Trotter.

The first chapter of The Jimmy Seed Story, published in 1958, is entitled ‘Sacked!’  After the 8-1 defeat at Sunderland, Jimmy Seed was summoned to the offices of chairman Sammy Gliksten in Hanover Square.  He was told, ‘we think the time has come for us to part … you are getting old.  You aren’t well, and we think in your interests, as well as those of the club, we should get a younger man to take your place.’  Trotter was three years younger.  A press statement was prepared to record Seed’s ‘retirement’ with fourteen months left on his contract.  His pay off was £6,000 (£142,000 in today’s prices).  His salary after the war was £2,000 (around £75,000 today) plus a car.

Jimmy Trotter then arrived.  ‘I never gave it a thought that Jimmy would take my place.’  Jimmy Trotter didn’t say much as the bus crawled through the rush hour to Charing Cross.  Seed drove him home from the ground.  He then spent three hours reflecting in his office before his wife summoned him home to their detached house opposite a golf course in Bromley to deal with the reporters.

Charlton were relegated at the end of the season with just 22 points, seven behind Cardiff City.  In January 1958 Jimmy Seed became manager of Millwall until July 1959.  He was a director from 1960 until his death in 1966 at the age of 71. Trotter, was a good trainer and a decent individual, but he was not cut out for the manager’s job.  He was dismissed in October 1961, receiving a £5,000 pay off (just over £100,000 in today’s prices).  He died in 1985, aged 86.

In his book, The Football Manager: a History Neil Carter argues that ‘Under Jimmy Seed, Charlton were criticised for playing negative football.’  His tactical plan involved an inside forward dropping back into defence.   He also saw centre halves as purely defensive.  Carter does, however, credit Seed with being one of the first of a breed of modern managers who established decision-making autonomy from the board and created sophisticated scouting systems.

Jimmy Seed’s contribution to the club is recognised in his name on the away stand.  The momentum evident in the club immediately before and after the Second World War could have been maintained if the owners hadn’t tightened the purse strings.

 

Crowds at The Valley

Season tickets for next season are being sold rapidly as hope returns to The Valley.   An appropriate time to look at the subject of attendances at Charlton.

If one looks at historic attendances, what is surprising is the amount of variation around the average.  In 1953-4, the season in which I started watching Charlton, the lowest attendance was against Sheffield United (who finished third from bottom), 16,845.   Attendances at midweek games tended to be lower, with only 18,208 watching the Thursday game against Preston North End despite the attractions of seeing star player Tom Finney.   Nevertheless, the opening game of the season was on a Wednesday against Sunderland and attracted just under 50,000.  

The highest attendance was 60,259 to see the 1-5 defeat by Arsenal which no doubt included many away supporters.   The prospect of seeing Stanley Matthews play brought in 56,664 against Blackpool, but league leaders Wolves drew only 35,595.  Attendances fell away towards the end of the season with Charlton drifting towards a ninth place finish and only 19,111 saw the final home game against Manchester United on Easter Monday.

Charlton’s average attendances for league games peaked at 40,216 in 1949 when little alternative entertainment was available.  They fell under 10,000 in 1979 to 9,563.  After the return to The Valley, ‘Target 10.000’ was achieved in 1995 with an average of 10,211.   The peak average attendance in the Premier League was 26,403 in 2005.   From 18,499 in 2013 attendances fell away, with a particularly sharp drop from 15,362 in 2016 to 11,162 in 2017.

It should be emphasised that attendance figures have never been that reliable.  Attendances have long been inflated in the United States because they help to attract commercial sponsors or avoid the loss of a franchise. This practice has spread to the UK, in part because of American investors in football.

In the past attendances often understated the crowd. First, some clubs creamed off some of the gate money so they would not have pay 'entertainment' tax on it. In the days when the away team got a share of the proceeds, this would mean less money for them. (The newspapers used to publish gate receipts as well as attendances, but the figures were not reliable). Second, gatemen had various fiddles such as letting pals in at half price and pocketing the money. Third, at most grounds, certainly at Charlton, there were ways for youngsters to get in without paying. Some of the really big Valley attendance figures may understate the size of the crowd.

Clubs do have to count season ticket holders whether they are there or not because of the levy they pay on attendance to the Football League.   Normally reliable sources estimate that 15 per cent of Charlton season ticket holders do not turn up to Saturday matches and that figure could well double for midweek games.

Entertainment tax

I know that memory can play tricks and when one checks something against some kind of public record one finds out that one was wrong.  However, I do have some almost photographic memories of some personal incidents at The Valley.  I was standing on the East Terrace with my father in the mid 1950s and he pointed out someone standing in the director’s box opposite surveying the crowd.

I can’t remember his exact words after all this time and it was something on the lines of ‘That’s Stanley Gliksten the chairman. He’s trying to work out what the gate is today and what the takings will be.’

 

There was some suspicion among football fans generally that the full takings were not disclosed, not that I am implying that this happened at Charlton.  Both fans and owners resented the ‘entertainment tax’ which was introduced originally in 1916 and finally abolished in 1960.  It principally applied to cinemas, but also for a time to football.  Given that matches were often played on waterlogged, muddy pitches by players well below today’s standards of fitness, it was a misnomer if there ever was.

However, when it was removed for the ‘cheaper stands’ in 1947, only 10 per cent of clubs were estimated to have passed the reduction on to fans, according to the then MP for Gravesend.  In an earlier intervention, he claimed that Charlton were only admitting a small proportion of fans at the adjusted ‘popular side’ prices.  

It was subsequently alleged by another MP that Charlton were one of the clubs continuing to fail to do this, but the Chancellor’s rather mystifying reply was that they had a Scottish manager!   This was both inaccurate and referred to a popular myth about Scots being tight fisted.  In any event Jimmy Seed responded that the club had received few letters of complaint and most fans were happy to pay a higher price than elsewhere.

The Blame Game

In this VOTV article I looked at the causes of Charlton's decline after what was arguably their most successful period, before and after the Second World War.   Opportunities to build the club were missed. Alan Curbishley got us back to the top flight, but the board appeared to have done no succession planning and Iain Dowie was appointed as manager.   We were told it was rocket science, but the rocket soon crashed to the ground.

In the first season that I watched Charlton in 1953-4, they finished ninth in the top flight.  The previous season they had finished 5^th.  With the FA Cup victory a recent memory, they could credibly claim to be a major force in English football.   Although attendances fluctuated much more than they do today, the opening game of the season attracted just fewer than 50,000 to The Valley.

The next season, however, saw a slump to lower mid-table mediocrity.   The 1955-6 season saw a marginal improvement to 14^th, but still only five points off relegation.   In 1956/7 the club lost 29 matches and finished bottom of the First Division.   Next season they failed to get the one point they needed in the last game of the season to secure an immediate return to the top flight, losing 3-4 at home to Blackburn Rovers.

So who or what can be blamed?   There are at least three possible candidates.   Step forward, Adolf Hitler.   I am not implying that Charlton’s fans or players were intimidated by the German führer       Consider, however, Charlton’s record before the Second World War.  In their first season in the first division they finished three points behind title winners Manchester City.   Next season, once again the sixth best supported club in Division 1, they finished fourth.   In the final pre-war season of 1938-39, they finished third.    In other words, this was a team seriously in contention for title honours.

During the war, players were not getting really competitive matches on a sustained basis.   Even so, some players clearly hit their peak during the war.         In 1945/46 they finished third in the Football League South and lost to Derby County in the FA Cup final.   In 1946/47, they won the FA Cup, but finished 19^th in the league.   They did respectably well in the next two seasons, but came perilously close to relegation in 1949/50.  

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the momentum of the pre-war years had been lost and that if the war had not intervened, they might have won the title.   However, despite online videos spoofing Hitler’s frustration at being unable to get tickets for Charlton v. Millwall, it is doubtful whether doing Charlton down constituted one of his war aims.

The next candidates are the owners of the day, the Glikstens.   To be fair, they rescued the club in 1932 when it was at a low ebb.   They made an initial cash injection of £100,000 spent on ground improvements and the team (just under £6m at today’s prices).  They turned the sandbank opposite the main stand into the East Terrace at a cost of £5,000 (£310,000 in today’s prices).  They appointed Jimmy Seed as manager andhe  oversaw the rise of the club from the third division to the first division, the first time this had happened in football history.   There is much to their credit.

However, there were limits to how far they were prepared to invest in the club.   In his autobiography, Jimmy Seed recalls that when Charlton were promoted to the first division, he tried to get the Glikstens to build a new stand at the club.   In return they wanted a guarantee that Charlton would stay up for three seasons which Seed felt unable to give.   

Seed argued with some justification, ‘I’m sure we lost many potential season ticket holders through lack of covered and seated accommodation.’   Even well after the war the stand regularly sold out, although the far from comfortable seats were three-and-a-half times the cost of the most expensive place on the terraces.

The Glikstens were also cautious about investing in players.   Seed had the possibility of signing Stanley Matthews for £13,000 (just over three quarters of a million at today’s prices).   The deal didn’t go through, but Albert Gliksten insisted that it would have been money down the drain.   As Seed points out, Matthews would have boosted gates and made Charlton a more glamorous team. 

A third culprit was changing demography.  In the 1930s the area was developing, but by the 1950s people were moving out into area, particularly into Kent.   A related factor was the decline of industries along the bank of the Thames.   Up until the late 1950s, most people used to work on Saturday mornings.   There was nothing more natural or convenient than to have a pint or two after work and then go to the game.   But Saturday morning working came to an end and the factories started to shed workers or close.

Jimmy Seed thought that Charlton’s poor transport links were also a factor with Chelsea and Arsenal benefitting from the proximity of tube stations.  He thought that the end of the trams in 1952 hit Charlton because they provided a convenient and efficient shuttle service to get fans to and from the games.   However, that may have been a coincidence rather than a cause of decline.

Whatever the reasons the club continued to decline both in terms of attendances and playing performance.   In 1984 they went into administration and nearly disappeared altogether.   Early in the 1984/85 season with The Valley becoming dilapidated to the point of being unsafe they moved to play home games at Crystal Palace’s ground.    The intention of the owners at the time was to merge the club into Crystal Palace which would have meant its disappearance.   Despite playing at Selhust Park, Charlton returned to the then first division.

However fans were determined to get back to The Valley despite opposition from the local council and nearby residents.   They formed their own political party, the Valley Party, and contested the local elections, securing the defeat of the chairman of the Planning Committee.   The council capitulated and with new owners the club returned to The Valley in December 1992.

A lot of work had to be done to rebuild the ground but in 1998 they were promoted to the Premier League through a dramatic play off final against Sunderland.   They were relegated the following season, but returned as Football League champions.   They were relegated in 2007 and then had a succession of below par owners.The first ones were interested in developing The Valley for housing, moving the club to a new and smaller stadium in North Greenwich.  

Belgian multi-millionaire Roland Duchâtelet then made a series of eccentric decisions that saw the club relegated to League One.  Promoted in 2019 through another play off final win against Sunderland, the club was sold to interests from Abu Dhabi but a civil war then broke out among the new directors which ended with the police removing the chairman from The Valley.  He was found to have spent money on a luxury flat and cars.  In the present crisis the future is very uncertain with administration a real possibility.   The fans may have to mobilise again.

Since this article was written Thomas Sandgaard has taken over and there is the prospect of a brighter future - in the longer run, if fans are patient.