Its back!

Many years ago, in the second tier I watched three games in a row, as memory serves Grimsby, Port Vale and Southend, they were awful, we lost each of them and I came away thinking why do we, the fans, still come.  The next game we won gloriously and I thought to myself "thats why".  In the promotion season we went 11 wins in a row and came up against bottom place Swindon, only to lose 1-0.  This is the unpredictability of Charlton and the unpredictability of supporting the club.  More often than not when we have hyped up a game and the club have encouraged the team fans to get behind the team, the team have failed to deliver and the fans have gone home despondent - Nottingham Forest, Middlesborough etc,.

"We have our Charlton back" was sung only a few weeks ago and yesterdays performance and result underlines that.  Our time in the Premiership was an interlude in the history of the club letting fans down, we are back where we have always been, albeit one tier below our natural place in the footballing hierarchy - "hope over expectation rules".

The result yesterday hides an adequate performance. Without looking at the stats Exeter had probably 4 shots and scored three goals, we hit the bar twice and the post and had a number of penalty area scrambles, but we  lost and that defines the attitude and approach and we were not good enough.

The message boards today are much more negative about the current management, losing at Hartlepool on a cold Tuesday night,can be accepted, but losing at home in front of almost 25,000 is difficult to forgive.  Performances have not significantly improved since parkinsons days, despite the recruitment of Ecclestone and Bradley Wright Philips  and a clearly more supportive crowd.  Parkinson left us in fifth place, we're now seventh.

So doom and gloom -- not really, lets be realistic, we have a lot of points to play for.  The automatics look like they are slipping away but play offs are a realistic target.  It is clear to most of us that our central midfield is not good enough and we have the opportunity to bring in a loan to cover, also central defence, Doherty did himself few favours yesterday and it will be interesting to see if Powell brings in a loanee before Notts County or wait till the loanee could play in a play off final.

The big issue is something not surprising and that is CP's inexperience and he needs to have support particularly from Peacock to get the team back on course after a superb beginning.  CP needs to learn on the job and quickly, often more is learnt through defeat than victory and the first four games masked the issues we all knew were there.

Friday sees us away to Notts County and Paul Inces team never easy to put the train back on the rails, with Lee Hughes to torment us as he did at the Valley, despite our victory, a pitch that has a passing memory of what grass looks like and a manger who has win in his DNA.  CP's test will continue and it will be in the full glare of Sky, lets hope he passes.