Worse than Ian Dowie

This was the chant in The Rose of Denmark pre match yesterday, before an abject display at the Valley. There is no greater insult for a Charlton manager. Dowie at least looked like he knew what he was doing, maybe it was not working but there was a structure to the team and consistency of selection. With Pardews teams it is a lottery guessing between selections, his claim that Cranie is one of four automatic choices, this must be a contractual obligation, because it cannot be based on performance.

Barnsley came yesterday with a reasonable level of recent form, but overall a poor team, with the only star a journey man striker John Macken who departed with two further career goals. The good news of course was that returning Addick Jamal Campbell-Ryce failed to find the back of the net. In these dark days at the Valley we need to clutch at big and small victories (there are more of the latter) whenever they come our way.

Yesterday has to be the low and we cannot go lower, the team lacked passion,motivation, direction and leadership both on the field and off- the only thing we had was effort and even that was in short supply. Mark Hudson is one of the few successes of Pardews regime far better player than the man he replaced, but having taken on the Captaincy his leadership skills on the park seem to have deserted him, Whereas McArthy would shout, cajole and scream Hudson no longer talks on the pitch, its just a shame that McArthy's skill could not match up to his leadership ability. Ambrose is a senior player, yesterday he did nothing, he looks like he is on the train to Ipswich two months early. As Rommedahl was to our Premiership debacle, Ambrose is becoming our Championship jonah. We need leadership, one thing Pards got right yesterday was that we have a young team on the pitch - young players need support, when Josh Wright made a mistake not one of the senior players spoke to him ,it was left to Basey to gee him up,Basey a kid himself. This is the problem, we have the players but the team spirit, the life blood of Lennie Lawrence and Curbishley teams is gone and that is not the responsibility of the players it is what managers are paid for and if Pards can't do it, then we need someone who can by the next home game.