I was talking to a fellow addick yesterday and he suggested that he was enjoying the Championship so much that he would be happy for us to just miss out this year and get promoted in 2008 / 2009. I then decided to paint him the scenario, what I would call the dooms day scenario and as there is nothing else going on Charlton wise, other than our loanees doing particularly well Dickson and James Walker both scoring in the Yeovil Gillingham game, I thought why not bang it out on the blog.
Lets assume that we miss the automatics, but finish third and are drawn to play 6th place Ipswich. Ipswich have only dropped points against Watford and West Brom during the season at home and after the first leg we find ourselves facing a 3-0 deficit. Outplaying Ipswich in the second leg at the Valley, we lead 2-0 with 10 minutes to go and we bombard the Ipswich goal but to no avail and they get a late goal, so it ends 2-1 and we have another exciting year in the Championship to look forward to.
As the players leave the pitch, And Reid shakes Alan Pardews and reminds him that he was promised a premiership move if the addicks failed to go straight up.
Meanwhile, Richard Murray takes a call in the board room, its Randy Lerner from Aston Villa, "Martins taking over the running of your English team after McClaren failed to progress through the 1st round of the Euro's, so we would like like to speak to Alan Purrdoo."
O'Neil takes over at the FA, within a week, Pards enforces his contract get out clause and is announced as the new Villa manager, Murray announces the promotion of Phil Parkinson to First Team Head Coach.
"Phil was always the power behind Alan and we look forward to being in a new tier of football next season." Says Murray.
Meanwhile bids are coming in for ZZ, JT and Ambrose all of whom make it clear that they are too good for the Championship. Murray allocates all of the £4 million received in transfer fees to rebuilding the team. Danny Mills, whose loan from City was extended to the end of the season leaves the Club to join newly promoted Ipswich on a freebie. Izale McLeod is released on a free transfer to recently relegated Milwall and both James Walker and Chris Dickson make up the strike force at Charlton alongside Luke Varney and Chris Iwelumo. Bhougehrra leaves the club to return to Algeria. Kelly Youga replaces the retired Cory Gibbs to compete with Thatcher and Bassey for the left back position.
In his first act Parkinson announces that Paddy McCarthy will be match day captain, whilst Matty Holland takes the club captaincy. Chris Powell relinquishes playing to concentrate on coaching the youngsters as Steve Gritt moves to 3rd division Gillingham as Manager.Parkinson brings in some promising young players from Millwall and Gillinham to bolster his midfield and to play alongside Semedo, Racon, Holland and Sam. A late bid for Sam from an unknown Premiership team is received but turned down, but Sam is unsettled and does not reproduce his pre season form and eventually is dropped.
Throughout the season, their last with the parachute money, Charlton remain in the top ten, securing a play off place for the 2nd season running, but again falling at the 1st hurdle.
Without the parachute money Murray announces further cuts are going to be required and key players sold. By the middle of the next season Charlton are 15th, six points from the bottom of the table ....
The alternative is that we get immediate promotion, probably through the playoffs. Lakshmi Mittal steel magnet one of the top ten richest men in the world negotiates with Murray to buy the club, siting a great desire for India to be involved in the Premier League. Mittal has been looking for the right club for some time, he is a family man and sees a synergy amongst the values he holds and Murrays. After spending £30 million on his daughters wedding, a £35 million present to his son of a Football Club to run seems only fair. Mittal is also irked by the refusal of Birmingham to have sold to him a year earlier and looks forward to one day playing them and beating them for their insult.
Who knows if either of the above two scenarios will play out, failure to be promoted would be close to disaster and yet promotion could lead to a season long embarrassment, if we were to remain on the current financial footing. Lakshmi Mittal was looking at buying Birmingham and he is very rich, India is developing its football pedigree, from a very low base and recent Premier League Clubs - Man U, Chelsea - have sent delegations to develop the training aspects of the game there and the Indian National Coach is English. Premier League Football is watched by millions live every Saturday ... it could happen and who would complain when we could have bhaji and a pint on the Valley concourse.
2 comments:
Strangely enough I’m the structural engineer that looks after Lakshmi Mittal London properties and have mentioned to him before about buying Charlton however, he has always said that he is not interested in football, even following the reports in the newspapers.
If getting promoted was to mean more of what we endured in the last couple of seasons then I would rather stay in the Chamionship, despite the financial problems this would cause. However if we could get some massive cash investment and consequently improve the squad and play some decent football in the Premiership, then I'm all for it.
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