Four CAS Trust members met Matthew Pennycook (MP for Greenwich) on January 21st in a meeting organised by local journalist Darryl Chamberlain (author of the excellent article "How Roland Duchatelet and Katrien Meire are killing Charlton Athletic" which can be read here.

Our meeting was timely as Matthew was due to meet Katrien Meire the following day along with his Eltham colleague (and Shadow Sports Minister) Clive Efford.

Our meeting gave us the opportunity to brief Matthew on the reasons for the high level of dismay and alienation currently felt by many supporters. We are confident that we were able to assist him to ask some pointed and rigorous questions about the club's presentation of the current situation.

After meeting Katrien Meire, Matthew subsequently released a statement stating that the following points of concern were raised:

• While the club does have a positive vision for the future, including but not limited to its commitment to affordable football, investment in the academy and its community programme, there is a widespread perception that it is poorly executed.
• The manner in which decisions appear to be made about the choice of managers exacerbates the feeling among fans that the owner - Roland Duchatelet - is remote from the day-to-day running of the club and that the management is chaotic.
• Roland Duchatelet is perceived by many fans as not being emotionally invested in the club.
• If the relationship with supporters is to be rebuilt, the club's owner and its senior management team should think again about how they can engage meaningfully with supporters and supporters' representatives in ways that go beyond the current quarterly meeting of the fans forum.

In further correspondence after the meeting Matthew stressed that he had asked the club to give serious consideration to the fact that:

• The current discontent is likely to grow unless Roland Duchatelet proves to supporters that his commitment to the club is genuine by improving his engagement
• Although results on the pitch are an aggravating factor the problems go beyond that alone. To turn the situation around the regime needs to respect the existing culture of the club, properly engage with fans and put a renewed focus on the team and good management.

The MPs have made it clear that they are more than happy to continue a dialogue following their "full and frank" discussion with Ms Meire.