Non-Executive Chairman Gavin Carter joined the CharltonTV monthly panel's end-of-season special to discuss the club’s plans and priorities over the summer.
Carter outlined that the club’s objective for their second season in the Sky Bet Championship is to keep moving forward and building on the foundations that have already been put in place.
"We’ve got a five-year plan," he explained. "We had one before in League One, we executed that ahead of schedule so we reset the five-year plan. The first year we’ve achieved our objective.
"We got more fans in the stadium than we had targeted, which is great, so thank you to everybody. Already we’ve generated more revenue from [2026/27] season tickets than we did all of last season - we’re ahead on season tickets which is fantastic because we can’t execute this plan without the supporters. The second year of the plan is to continue to build.
"We have a lot of work to do. As you can see from the player released list, there are not many players that are out of contract. We've got to look at the squad. If we're going to bring in players then we've got to move some players on, which isn’t easy.
"Commercial revenues are doing well, well up on last year. We’ve got a couple of things which we’ll be announcing shortly in terms of partnerships which is exciting. Next year we want to be even more competitive than we were this year in the Championship. The play-offs coming down to eighth position, so a third of the league now has an opportunity to compete to go to the Premier League - that's exciting for us. We’re managing expectations and next year is another year where we're going to build. We’re going to keep improving all aspects of the football club."
CharltonTV host Scott Minto asked Carter how he believes the ownership group and the Board need to approach the club’s summer business.
"I think you have to be pretty ruthless and this is tough. It's a great group of players that have got us this far and there are a lot of youngsters in there as well who have been with us for a long time. There's a team there which is making the choice about what the squad needs to be," he said.
"Players are under contract which is great. When Global Football Partners came in, the squad was in a terrible state in terms of contracts. Players weren’t under contract, so assets were leaving without being monetised. People didn’t want to play here and now they want to play here.
"We believe we have some assets there and we know where we need to strengthen. We will be ruthless. There are some obvious positions we need to strengthen where we had loan players come in for the second half of the season.
"We need more up front. We didn’t score enough goals this year and that's painfully obvious. In the middle of the park, we don’t just want to rely on Sonny Carey. We need to make sure that we’re carrying the ball and we’re what Nathan [Jones] wants us to be - fluid and aggressive.
"But I don’t think there is one area of the pitch we can’t improve. That has got to be the mentality. But there were clearly some areas of the squad, where there were loan players, that we would like to bring in squad players for next season," he added.
The club appointed Richard Law to the club's board as a Non-Executive Director earlier this month and Carter explained what he'll bring to Charlton.
He said: "You’ve got to strengthen the squad, you’ve got to strengthen the Board, so we’ve added another independent director here, someone that clearly has a lot of experience and knows what elite looks like. Part of our vision statement is to be elite and Richard is someone who knows what good looks like. He’s been around and he’s got a very international view on things. We’ve been expanding the recruitment team - Collins [Sichenje] is a good example that we brought in from Serbia. We want to look more internationally and he’s someone that can bring experience of what international trading looks like.
"Dick’s role isn’t to select or choose players. He, like me, will look at governance structures and make sure we're doing what the process says we should do. It's about assuring that those processes are being undertaken."
Supporters can watch the full CharltonTV show below...
