Thursday 6 December 2007

Homeward bound

Most of the Addickted would give away our record on the road and swap it for our home record. When was the last season we had a decent home record, not last, that's for sure. I remember the first season after promotion and fortress Valley.

You have to look down the Championship table to 10th place Burnley (remember them?) to find a team with a worse home record than Charlton. Teams that get their away form and their home form in sync either get promoted or relegated. We have yet to get our home form to sync with our away form and whilst no one else at the top of the Championship is suffering as we are, at home, they are achieving the odd weird home results WBA and Watford in the last week are a prime example.

Whilst most fans will look at the club and talk about our defensive failings we actually are the third best team defensively in the division and it is not the two clubs above us that are leading the way, no its Wolves and Leicester. Our failings are not our own onion bag but the oppositions. Charlton lie 7th equal in the goal scoring stakes. West Brom have already hit the back of the net 40 times to our 27, Watford, Stoke, Ipswich and Colchester have all surpassed 30 goals, Plymouth are the other team above us with 28 goals.

This Saturday Ipswich come to the Valley, with our home record and their away record a cast iron draw seems to be on the cards. Its a game steeped with recent history, they came and spoiled our Championship party winning 3-1 - Andy Hunt scoring late on for us and two season later they took a 2-0 lead in the first 10 minutes - through Marcus Bent, if I recall - only for a sterling fight back and victory 3-2. Strikes by Robinson, Euell and Parker. if we could get a match like that then Saturday should be a good game. Semedo and Mills are on 4 yellows, whilst Lloyd Sam will start a one match ban after this Saturday, his second ban of the season.

We can't be so bad this weekends as we were against Burnley so I am going for a 4-4-2 winning formation.

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Message Boards

Its quite poignant that Ben Hayes - Supporters Director recently wrote about Message Boards and mentioned Covered End Choir which having taken over from Netaddicks on the Rivals hosted site, owned by Sky, was making rapid progress under the administration of the hard working Paul May. Paul took over the site when Trevor took netaddicks away to be hosted by Clubfanzine (its a murky world of different hosts), citing forthcoming changes.

Paul has done great work increasing the information value of the site and bringing old and new posters to Rivals.net. As a reward Rivals have introduced their new, jumbled, confusing site totally ruining Pauls previous work. It is difficult to work out how to post messages and new threads, so the average of 70 postings a day has gone down to 12 so for today and that includes two from a Palace fan so that does not even count. It looks like I'll be spending more time looking for useful employment now, which can't be a bad thing.

Over the next few days, I am sure Charlton life and netaddicks.com are going to see an increase in traffic and Rivals, who have changed all boards across the league, a sharp decline.

It is strange how the technology of the web has changed our expectations, when I was living in Humberside, when Charlton were promoted to the old 1st Division top flight, a message board was something you had in your kitchen and a Charlton message board was something your mate in Charlton had in his kitchen. Now it seems its the font of all knowledge, ludicrous rumour and a place to vent your spleen whether you are in SE7, Exeter or even Peru about all things Charlton. It will be interesting to see how Murdoch's SS react to the negative response to their re launch, but in its present form I can't see too many posters going back. If that is the case then I'll miss Covered End Choir, although the immigration debates will be happily confined to the dust bin.

Whatever the outcome a big thanks is due to Paul may also known as Reams of Verse.