Charlton’s Ben Garner wants to repeat Swindon trick and overachieve with budget available

Charlton boss Ben Garner wants to repeat what he achieved at Swindon Town last season by overachieving with the budget he’s been handed in SE7.

The Addicks chief reached the League Two play-offs with the Robins despite arriving to find just six players contracted at the County Ground shortly before the start of the campaign.

Garner’s new side belied the odds to beat Derby County at The Valley despite a difficult first-half on Saturday and he hopes to continue to put aside clubs with more financial clout.

Owner Thomas Sandgaard revealed in May that Charlton operated with the third-highest budget in League One last season and that he expected to be within that ballpark again for 2022/23.

“I’ve got a budget that I’ve been asked to work towards this season and it’s a healthy budget,” explained Garner.

“It’s a competitive budget in this division. But it’s certainly not near what I would say were the top two or three teams in this division, budget-wise. It’s nowhere near that. But it’s competitive and we want to perform as best we can with the budget we’ve got.

“For example, Derby. Everyone will be aware they will have a very big budget in this division. We’ve beaten Derby, we’ve shown we can do that. We have to do that against every team we play.

“If you look across seasons over a long period of time, generally your budget is the biggest indicator of where you will finish in the league. The more money you’ve got, the better chance you’ve got of finishing higher up the league, The lower the amount you’ve got, the more likely you are to finish at the bottom.

“For me, I worked under an embargo [at Swindon] last season with one of the smallest budgets in League Two. We overachieved there last season, I want to overachieve on what our budget is this season.”