The King is dead, long live the king

I come here to praise Parkie not just to bury him.  Football is a cruel profession and this was brought home to Phil Parkinson today after nigh on 2 years in charge at the Valley and barely a month after being manager of the month when his tenure of Charlton ceased.

To what was a dead Valley yesterday the whiff of departure was all around and maybe the players sensed it and helped Parkie on his way, giving the board the excuse to implement their pre ordained decision and make no mistake the decision today was not a knee jerk reaction to last nights result, but something that the new owners had decided before the takeover.

Sadly a poor performance by the man that signed his contract this season and said "Phil is a good manager and will do great things and I signed because I am hoping to be there when it happens" Christian Dailly, helped ease the implementation with a poor performance.

I'm not going to defend Parkie or rant against the decision to sack him, the board have taken over and need to do whatever they want.  This decision also allows them to curry favour with the vocal crowd and for Slater and Jiminez to make it clear that they are in charge, maybe emphasising that Murray and Kavanagh are administrative figure heads.

What I would like to cover are the positives of Phil Parkinson.  In September I was at a fans forum with Christian Dailly who has extensive experience of many managers and he had high praise indeed for Parkie and it was Parkie who convinced him to sign last summer.  I attended two of Parkies fans forums, meeting him and having a chat with him at the Bromley Addicks meeting.  Like anyone who met him, he came across as an articulate honest nice guy, very open with the fans and willing to give up his time for us.  I wonder if the new manager will emulate this or follow in Curbishley, Dowie and Prdews footsteps and become more and more remote from the fans.

Parkie joined us at the commencement of our decline under Pardew and during this time had the opportunity to join Huddersfield, but turned it down just before his introductory press conference for a higher salary at Charlton and the promise of a potential crack at the management position in the future - no one expected Pardew to be loyal.

His period of time as Pardews assistant has perhaps been the burden that he has had to carry throughout his period with us.  Closely associated  with Pardew he lacked any of the smugness and arrogance of the man and if he had resemblance to any addick manager it has to be Curbs who also spent club money as if it were his own, would set up his teams not to lose before worrying about winning and  lacked a personality.  And like Curbs he divided fans in equal parts.  It was not just during his last season that fans wanted Curbs out, from the day that Gritt was ousted there were some that resented him and felt he was too West Ham for us.

Parkie was too Pardew and has been continually held responsible for our successive relegations, it did not help that Murray said his appointment would be based on results and whilst performances improved results didn't.  Yet still he was appointed and relegation followed.

So what positives apart from a nice guy can I say about Parkie?  I think there is a lot and under different circumstances he would have been seen positively by many of the "haters"

As Murray stated, Parkie has worked his socks off for the club, never took the players running or got them lost pre match, he has pieced together a challenging team on a shoe string budget and brought in some quality signings and whilst people will point out the failures when you have no money and you are shopping at Lidl every buy is a risk.  It is pointed out that he had one of the squads on the biggest wage budgets in the division, but I would argue that Pardews contracts were vastly over the top and that created difficulties for Parkinson to get rid of overpaid under performers - Moutakill is an example, still without  a club having been released in the Summer,or McLeod now at bottomof the league club Barnet.

We got to the play offs last season and you cannot really blame a manager when your star player creates the opposition aggregate equaliser and then hits his penalty more like a try conversion than a shot on goal.

This season has seen a good points total achieved but poor performances and last night was the final straw for many.  He has brought stability to a club in free fall, re built foundations and we have held our position in the division,there has been no indication that this has been temporary and we are well on course for another crack at the play offs and with a little momentum we could make automatics and this in a world where Southampton,    Huddersfield and Brighton have been able to splash greater cash resources than us.

Since his tenure began 2 years ago Parkie has never had any certainty or stability.  Forgetting his care taking period, he has been faced constantly with the potential takeovers and went for long periods not even knowing that he had a job, particularly through the summer of 2009, at this time there was little or no backing from the board and rumours that board members were looking to oust him were rife.  He has then spent much of time being told that he has only held his job because we have not been able to afford to get rid of him.  On top of that he has had the constant fans sniping.  Under all this pressure one wonders if we ever saw the best of Phil, based on many peoples views probably not.

Lets also not forget that Phil built a new squad in the summer of 2010, a squad that is now sitting a few points off the automatics and could have been with a win yesterday could be sitting in second, one wonders if the owners would still have got rid of him then

Whatever the future holds for us and Parkie he can walk out of the Valley with his head held high and I hope he finds a new role soon.  Good luck Phil and all the best for the future.