Foremost among them, he acknowledges, was a flawed recruitment policy which has left the club on course for successive A-League wooden spoons.
The axing of coach Mike Mulvey after the shocking 8-2 weekend home loss to Wellington will, Charlesworth hopes, at least draw a line in the sand.
But, as the owner of a club in crisis, he refused to lay the them blame at the feet of others for the Mariners’ woes.
“The buck stops with me ... there are no excuses for what has happened and you have to hang your head in shame,” said the Englishman, who rescued the Mariners from oblivion six years ago only to endure seemingly endless turbulence ever since.
“I must take the blame. That’s my job. Our recruitment has been poor and lots of mistakes have been made.
“I made appointments and that’s where I take the responsibility.
“I don’t have a problem with doing that, and letting people know that.”
Despite a hail-storm of criticism, Charlesworth insists, though, that the club can - and will be - turned around.
And he has this message to those who say he should sell up and hand the reins to fresh blood: “Anybody who knows someone prepared to come and invest in a club in Gosford, please let me know.
“It’s a very difficult sell. The club was six or seven million dollars in debt when I took over.
“We got it back on track but are still losing between one and two million dollars a year.
“We want to know how the new independent league structure will look, and that’s around the corner.
“In six years nobody has come forward who wants to invest in this club to the extent of guaranteeing its existence on the Central Coast.
“Talk of buyers knocking on the door is twaddle. It’s as real as the Russians who were supposedly interested seven years or so ago.
“Buyers don’t want to invest on the Central Coast. If it was Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne that’s a different story.
“Everybody wants to buy a football club but nobody has got any money.
“But if somebody can come forward with the sort of money that a license is worth these days (in excess of $12 million) then come and talk to me. But they’re not.
“I’ve always been open to investment - the door is always open both for minority or majority stakes.
“There isn’t a privately owned club anywhere that isn’t for sale (to the right bidder).”
Charlesworth will be back in Australia next week for talks with sporting director Mike Phelan, otherwise engaged these days as the interim assistant to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United, but available for a whirlwind trip Down Under during the international break.
Newly-appointed directors Anton Tagliaferro, the owner of a club in Malta, and Accenture consultant Kamran Kahn will also be at the summit along with CEO Shaun Mielekamp.
High on the agenda will be the appointment of a sixth coach in five-and-half years.
“We’re determined to get things right both on and off the field. And we’re not just going to give up,” added Charlesworth.
“Despite the current situation. I am confident things will change for the better with the right approach and commitment.
“There’s no point in hiding anything ... this season has been a disaster, as was last season.
“But the beauty of football is that you construct a new team that’s suddenly competitive and in six months time off we go.
“We need to get our recruitment right and put a good manager in place. There’s a lot of resource around the football department right now and has been over the past six months.
“On the business side of things we want to see a fully independent A-League and a Gosford council which is on side (in terms of the leasing arrangement for Central Coast Stadium).
“There’s no point in me trying to prop this up. Everybody on the Central Coast needs to get behind this.
“We’re not fighting a losing battle ... we’re just fighting a battle.
“We’ve spent more than we’d ever done this year. We just got it badly wrong.
“We need to get our recruitment spot on next year and a huge amount of resources will be going into that.
“I’m really upset over what’s happened but I’m genuinely hopeful for the future.”
