Strange Times...

 It's been so long since I've posted anything.  So long that I wonder if the feed will even pick up this post.

The whole Timer/Paul Elliot saga along with empty grounds, the pandemic and generally odd times we are living in left me pretty uninterested with the beautiful game.

The worryingly Dowiesque nature that this season has started has pricked up my ears however, so I felt compelled to come out of my slumber and put my thoughts on here.

When he was announced I was neither over or underwhelmed by the appointment of Adkins.  Sure he did perform back to back promotions with Southampton, but since then has not achieved very much at all.  I also find his over cheerful nature, in the face of such shite performances very annoying. I get his style of man management is very much of the cup half full variety, but come on! You simply cannot polish a turd.

Defeat at a depleted Gillingham tonight shout really mean the fat lady has sung her final note, but i'm not all that sure TS has the ruthless streak to get rid of quick and admit his mistake.

One thing I do know is that historically 'Charlton People' have generally made the best managers of the Addicks not B Level 'names'.

Lets spam the EFL!

So another season over.  Probably the weirdest one in all of my 40 odd years supporting the club.

Three different owners over the course of the season!

The season halted by the Covid lock down. (Don't even get me started on Covid).

The season re-started but behind closed doors.

One and a half Charlton legends declining to come back and honor their contracts of employment (I wonder what my boss would have said to me if i'd said 'Sorry Daren i'm not going to come to work on a temporary 20% pay reduction, even if it does help the firm, save jobs and is the right thing to do?)'

The social media image of what looked like a kids sleep over picnic accompanied by something along the line of 'hankering down for transfer deadline day - it's gonna be a long night'. Sure it is Matt, cos you'll be sitting there doing fuck all squared anyway.

The revelation that we were and still are on a transfer embargo.

Nimar and Southall (the pair of arseholes, only less useful) having a very public spat on social media.

The EFL's complete ineptitude. I've met a lot of useless twats over the years.  But this lot really take the biscuit.

MP's have written to them.  CAST have been in touch.  But absolutely nothing back.

Us Charlton supporters are pretty good at taking on the establishment.  The link below is the only way for any supporter to contact the EFL (apparently this is due to the Corona virus).

https://www.efl.com/contact-form/

Just a suggestion, why not everybody use the contact box to send the EFL a message.

Subject: Have the EFL actually pass the 'fit for purpose' test themselves?

Query:  When are you lot going to pull your fingers out of your bums and either pass the current takeover of Charlton Athletic or put out a press release or respond to the two MP's who have written to you or the CAST explaining what the problem and delay is?

Lets Spam the EFL!

Oh Fluffy Dogs!!!

I've not posted for such a long time.  If i'm honest I was still enjoying the hangover from the Play Off Final and great football we were seeing at the start of the season.  Even when the injuries began to pile up and Gallagher was recalled I was still full of optimism of the fact we could at least scrape a fourth from bottom finish.  And after all we then had the team rebuild to look forward to in the Summer! Right?

Wrong it would seem.  What an absolute mess.  There have been doomsayers dotted about pretty much from the start of the takeover (if we have indeed we have been taken over - i'm that confused).  Me i'm a bit of a perpetual optimist so ignored these, and the lack of business in January (which really should have got the alarm bells ringing).

If Nimer has pulled the plug one wonders how much is in the kitty to keep the boat afloat?  My guess is that if Southall does not find investment from somewhere else then Administration and all that comes with it, including points deducted is on the horizon.

Be interesting to see what Bowyers take is on it all and what happens next.

What a load of old crap.

...Charlton enter the Twilight Zone...

Who'd have thought it? Not me that's for sure! Two games in and maximum points.

I have previously alluded to the 52 mark being the points haul required to keep us in the division, and rather fastidiously worked through the fixture list predicting where we could genuinely and historically hope to pick points up, bringing me to conclude we'd finish on 51, hopefully just enough to avoid the drop.

I'd had us gaining just the one point at home to Stoke out of our opening two weekends. How wrong was I?  Thankfully completely wrong. So we are currently tracking five points ahead of my projections already.

What struck me whilst at The Valley for our opening home game, was how improved and more self assured as a side we looked.  The new signings, even those that have been with the rest of the squad for just a few days, settling in well.  It took a while last season for Bowyers hastily assembled last minute squad to really gel and get that momentum going that saw us eventual play off winners. I'm sure that the new incoming squad members still need time to fully assimilate themselves into the Bowyer way of doing things.  Once they have, the mind boggles at what we could possibly achieve based on what we've seen so far.

Feels a bit weird being so positive in a post what with experience over recent years.  Not just about how we've started the season, but also about the transfer window itself.

Following on from Aribo's departure north of the border we saw Dijksteel go to Middlesborough. A pretty negative occurrence, and does leave right back as potentially the weakest link in the first team with a relentless schedule of games and no natural cover. However the continued rejections of  bids from Brentford, Boro (again) and apparently Bristol City for big sums of money for the services of Lyle Taylor were, to put it simply, most out of character for our current owner.

We have then gone on to make some quality loan signings, by no means are any of these guys here to make up the numbers and warm the bench.  There is real competition throughout the squad for starting places. We even had a late big money (well big for Duchalet) bid turned down for Peterborough's Ivan Toney.  The word from Bowyer was that the aim was that Toney would play alongside Taylor and wasn't planned to be a direct replacement for the Charlton idol. This would have been funded by the money received for Dijksteele.

Strange days indeed down in SE7.

As for the game itself (apologies if this is your first time reading this blog, I don't do blow for blow match reports, there are others much better at delivering that type of information), Once we'd got through the first twenty minutes or so of Stoke probing and testing us out we grew into the game. Taylor, whose attitude following on from what must have been quite a difficult and frustrating week for him, showed why he is lorded so much by the Addicks faithful.  100 per cent commitment to the cause and another tireless performance capped off with scoring our opening goal and setting up our third.

After the disappointment of conceding an equaliser, once the second half went underway we slowly worked ourselves into a position where we began to dominate the game.  When possession was lost the team to a man worked hard to regain it.  And once Aneke scored his debut goal there only looked like being one winner.

A marvellous performance was capped off for Gallagher when he finished from Taylor's lay off to see us out 3-1 winners. No weak links to report at this point.

Final word to the twelfth man. All 15 odd thousand of them.  If you compare the atmosphere to that of the Pre Bowyer days under Duchalet, it is completely different. Momentum carried through from last seasons run in combined with the players attitude and style of football we are getting to watch make The Valley an exciting place to be right now.

Lets see where we can all take this season now.

...13...it's the magic number!

It seems like such a long time since the Euphoria of May 26th.

We've seen a variety of takeover false dawns, various interviews on talksport and official club website statements from Roland Duchalet. The strange, strange man, bemoaning the EFL and blaming everyone else for his inability to find a buyer willing to pay his vastly over inflated price for the club.

We now face the beginning of the Championship campaign.  Plenty of players, key ones in last seasons team at that, have gone. However we have seen incoming, including the highly rated Connor Gallagher from Chelsea being announced today.

My personal opinion is that with the players left from last season, those that Lee Bowyer and his backroom team have bought in, and I hope three or four more quality loan signings (Bowyer and Gallen do seem to have a knack of finding loanee's who don't just make up the numbers but have a positive impact on the squad), we will be not only be alright but may surprise one or two. Hopefully starting with Blackburn Rovers.  A team whom I personally cannot stand.

I won't do an in depth preview of the season, fellow blogger 'Chicago Addick' has done that quite thoroughly here , here and  here. It is one of the toughest divisions to predict accurately, and seems to throw up 'dark horses' year after year.

Sky Sports polled supporters opinions (receiving a massive response from Charlton fans i'd assume) to compile a predicted final table for this seasons Championship, i'd be more than happy with the predicted 8th place finish for The Addicks.

The bottom line is that we are back in The Championship, after another three years stuck in the third tier.  The primary objective must be avoiding relegation.

Looking back over several seasons 52 would be the average points total required to finish fourth from bottom and avoid the dreaded drop zone. 50 has been mentioned as the target number of points.

Based on the above we need to achieve the magic number of 13 to stay up.  13 wins and 13 draws.

Looking at who we traditionally do alright against i'm predicting 12 wins and 14 drawers will see us finishing on exactly 50 points.  Which will hopefully be enough to keep us up.  Based on when the games are played against the team I think we'll pick these points up it'll be the final home game against Wigan Athletic that will see us hit the 50 mark.  My hope is that by this point we would have already 'crossed the line' by the skin of our teeth due to others falling well short of the magic 50.

October could be the toughest month of games based on my predicted results.  What will be critical to our survival is Duchalet holding his nerve and sticking with Bowyer when we do go on winless runs.  And there will be a few of these during our first season back in the division that has been our natural home over the years.

If the results go the way I think they could, throw in some surprises against the well established promotion candidates and we could see a more respectable points haul, and something closer to 56-59, which would see us well clear of the relegation places.

One thing I do know, regardless of ownership issues, regardless of a (currently) thin squad, regardless of the doom and gloom merchants, I'm excited and looking forward to the season ahead. The above is my anticipated worst case scenario.  Bring it on.

In Bowyer we trust.

Its days like these...

... they keep you coming back. Despite the club nearly liquidating back in the eighties, the nomadic years at Selhurst, various relegation dogfights, Ian Dowie and Alan Pardew, The Duchatelet years (ongoing).

Yesterday three generations of my family made the trip together to Wembley, (my first visit to the new stadium, last time I had reason to visit was 21 years ago for our last play off final).

Ironically it was a very similar experience. Until that 94th minute goal going in, just willing it all to be over, let’s just get to the final whistle so we know out fate. Good or bad. And how good was it? Bloody good. The atmosphere generated by the Charlton fans was electric, I’d say better than last time round. I’ve been told a lot by supporters of other teams how the new Wembley has no atmosphere. I’d beg to differ.

My throat is till sore and voice hoarse from all of the singing and shouting. The buzz during the walk to Wembley Park was like nothing I’ve experienced in 40 odd years of following Charlton. All the way back to Kent.

I’ve watched lots of post match footage of Bowyer and this group of players, there’s such a bond and spirit showing amongst them, whether Duchatelet stays or not if we can keep the Management team and these players together I really believe we could be on an upward curve that can take us who knows where!

Happy days!

Duchalet finally breaks... he's gone f***ng mental!

Following on from Rolands idea being floated at last nights fans forum of the EFL buying Charlton these two items have now been added to the clubs website.

Buy Charlton demands owner

Owner Overview

Okay, i couldn't say for sure that the latter is new, but I've certainly not seen it before.

It strikes me after the last few days we are entering the end game.  Whatever that may entail.  It certainly seems after events on his home soil that Duchalets staying power is finally evaporating into a desperate last attempt at proving he has not been a complete and utter fucking failure at running a football club effectively.

If we do go up this season via the play offs, what Bowyer and his back room staff and team would have pulled off would be nothing short of miraculous. (I do however feel that with all that is going on behind the scenes along with the obstructive environment that management have to work within - promotion is unlikely).

I'm at the point where Duchalet throwing the towel in, administration, points deduction and one more season in League One - under sensibly ambitious stewardship, is beginning to look appealing.

The schmuck has to go! One way or another.