Lee Bowyer has revealed his frustration as he attempts to compete in the transfer market in the run up to the new season.

In an interview with Newshopper he said: “At the moment, whenever we think we've got a player over the line - this is the most frustrating thing for me at the moment - someone just comes in and outbids us, and unfortunately that's something we can't control.

There's some good players that have slipped through our fingers but that's the hard thing to accept because I do believe, if we really had a go, then I think we could do really well in this league. I know what the situation is and I accept the situation. I'm not making any excuses, we have our budget and that's it. If someone comes and bids more and offers more then there's nothing more we can do.

It's tough because people are laughing at us. An agent would say, 'What do you have to offer for this player?' and people are laughing. I've had agents laughing, like, 'How are you meant to compete with what you're offering?'

That's the situation we're in. Whether we like it or not that's the situation but we'll just keep going and we will get people in. I know that but it's just frustrating for myself and Steve when we're working so hard and we think we've got someone and then someone just outbids us."

When asked about potential signings he answered:

"I'm not going to name names but, obviously, we're looking for midfielders. We have to replace Josh Cullen, Joe Aribo and Krystian Bielik and we need strikers. We've only got Lyle [Taylor] and Macauley [Bonne] at the moment and, for me, we need two more. We're going to try and bring in the best people that we can because we want to compete. If we can bring in the right people then I do believe that we will surprise teams, for sure.”

After his testimonial match v Aston Villa last week Chris Solly made no secret of how hard things are going to be for Charlton this season. He thanked everyone for coming to the game and issued a plea:

"It's going to be tough. Stick with us"

Meanwhile Roland Duchatelet continued on Talksport and on the club's website to shift the blame for the non sale of the club on to the EFL.  He announced that he is frustrated as he "believes the huge losses owners incur in the Championship are a clear deterrent for many candidate buyers to step in." He feels "the EFL need to take action so the financial rules are more like American sport where clubs rarely lose money, making them more attractive to purchase."

On Talksport he maintained that price is not the issue holding up the sale of the club, but the sustained losses incurred in The Championship. "I'm stuck. The people who are interested, they see that they will be stuck with it instead of me."

Charlton fans will be surprised to learn that Mehmet Dalman (Chairman of Cardiff City) was apparently unaware of potential losses in The Championship before he did due diligence on Charlton.

When asked what he would say to someone interested in buying a Championship club Duchatelet answered "Don't buy it, of course".

Hmm. Interesting sales pitch...

The full interview can be heard here:

https://talksport.com/radio/listen-again/1564477200/1564479000/