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.

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.

No Place Like Home

Well for Dorothy her home in Kansas was the only place she wanted to be, but after today the Addickted cannot think of anywhere they would rather be away from. This time last week, we were glowing in the warmth of our fourth win on the spin, four clean sheets and the prospect of 4 home games in 6, a firming up of an automatic promotion place seemed a mere formality. Then we hit the rails against a better Sheffield United and today fell to a resurgent, but hardly scary Burnley.

One home defeat is bad enough, two is depressing but four out of five home games ending in defeat is beyond description and the Valley faithful are beginning to show their impatience, although it is fair to say they are still showing remarkable forbearance. The message boards are beginning to have calls for Billy Davies to replace Pardews and whilst it is premature to call for Pards head, the performances at home are placing more and more pressure on the club. This is relegation form not even mid table obscurity.

Its difficult to understand what has gone wrong, although the loss of Todorov leaves the forward line short of quality as well as number. Referees seem to be totally inept at this level, although neither today's or Tuesdays defeats are down totally to the referees decisions. I do wonder whether we have the opposite effect in the Championship, where profile clubs seem always to get the referees decisions, here it seems like a badge of honour to ignore fouls against the profile club. Today Iwelumo was constantly fouled and used as a human ladder, but the merest nudge and he would be penalised. Having said this, we need to accommodate these officials because they won't change, just for us.

Pards stated that we would get out of this division playing football the way he liked to see it played, maybe this is naive, or maybe we just don't have the personnel for that philosophy, although it seems we do not have the personnel to win dirty. Our Premiership stars are not doing the business. Reid has done ok, but I don't think he has pulled up too many trees, Ambrose continues to frustrate like Rommedahl before him he is a player who has the talent to make an impact, certainly at this level, but maybe its an attitude problem, JT who by the account of a Journo I spoke pre match has a heavily bruised leg, has performed on the odd occaision but never for a whole game, ZZ who has come to us as Chinas leading player has done ok, but is begining to drift and has missed some game turning opportunities.

The new players with the exception of Iwelumo, who seems to be playing with a multitude onjuries - broken nose and hand - have yet to take the division by storm. Moutakil has lost his place due to injury and maybe after Mills's disaster yesterday there is time for a change, Semedo has earned himself a positive reputation as a Makelele, but too often in gathering the ball he slows the momentum of the game.

As for Sam and Holland, Sam looked exciting till his ban and has not come back with the same verve and Holland, is not he player of old.

This is a strange division, everyone really does seem to be able to beat everyone else but if we are to get promotion, or even be in the play off places, we need to sort our home form, even if its a series of ugly 1-0's and maintain our away position.

Ref goes free while addicks get fined

Following the fracas in humberside the FA have fined Charlton and Hull, but of course the real culprit, the referee gets off scot free. If he had not ost control of the game then maybe the incident could have been avoided.

Being a Charlton fan its quite fun already having been fined £21,000 for indiscipline this season. Never happened in Curbs time.

McClaren the let down?

So 13 years after we failed to get to the World cup finals Scott Carson and McClaren fail to get us to the European Championships. OK its a bit harsh to blame Charlton’s latest player of the season, after all qualification is over a series of games and Scott only played in one, the last. I feel Scott is a modern day Peter Bonetti, plunged into the heat of a major tournament (in Bonetti’s case literally) with inadequate preparation and as a result disaster struck. Bonetti paid with his international career, hopefully Scott will live to fight another day.

So if it was not Scott’s fault was it all McClaren. He is reputably a great coach, but an average manager and the England job just is not the role from which a manger can develop, you have to be good when you get there. McClaren was not ready and number two’s do not always, if ever make good number ones, just ask Les Reed.

So I ask again was it McClarens fault, not really, there are many factors.

McClaren was the backroom boy of Sven and as Sven left the job of England manager under a cloud, it was always going to be the case that McClaren would be tainted by the same brush. His credibility was not enhanced by the late intervention of David Dein, rushing to Portugal for the signature of Scholari or by Brian Barwicks ridiculous claims that he was first choice. But McClaren cannot be blamed for having ambitions of being number one, but the FA can be blamed for not curbing his ambition.

The FA made the mistake, often made in business by managers, wanting to fill a place to the timetable, even when the candidate was not there. They did not want the press on their back, well they have them there now. They wanted the best, but their candidate list did not include the best (after Scholari ducked out) so instead of going back to the market to find the best, they accepted a choice from what they had – McClaren, Allardyce or Curbishley. And of those three on paper McClaren had the best rep. That though does not make him good enough. Today’s sacking of McClaren was decisive and it is years since that word and the FA have gone together – decisive clear cut and focussed, exactly what they failed to be when appointing McClaren.

SkySports are contributors to the dearth of English qualifying players in the Prem. You don’t have this problem in other leagues, of foreign players dominating. You cannot blame Sky for paying top dollar (Rouble, Yen, Euro) for the TV rights, now topped up by international TV rights and Satanta, but it is that money that is drawing in foreign players. They don’t want to play here in drizzly Britain, in Middlesborough – well not unless you are going to pay them a lot of money and the low end of the salary scale is £20 – 30,000 per week. If there was less money in the game there would, arguably, be fewer foreign players edging English youth out. Of course, the counter argument is that there would be as many foreign players, but all of a lower quality, but if they were of a lower quality then our players would be able to match them and there would be more English player able to develop to a higher level of competence than they do currently, since they spend most of their time in the stiffs.

The EU who will not allow the league to introduce a quota on the number of non English qualifying players and reject any representations from the Premier League.

The Clubs who buy the foreign players and with few exceptions nurture foreign talent even in their academies, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man U are definitely culpable. Why should our leading managers care about England, after all they are a Scot, an Israeli, a Frenchman and a Spaniard. Add to that a Swede, a Welshman, an Irish man and another Scot and the problem grows. If England are out of tournaments, then the few players that are in the first team have the summer to rest.

The Players who could not rouse themselves, who have the skill and the ability, but with so many avenues to glory do not have the heart to fight for the national cause, when they know they can go back to their clubs and fight for European glory, against teams that would match most leading national teams let alone the minnows of Israel, Serbia et al. They have heard the hype, they believed it because they must be good to be paid so much, they just forgot to make it real.

So that’s it, lets lynch McClaren, there is nothing like a good lynching, but the guy was never in with a hope, promoted beyond his capabilities into a system that is built for failure and whoever we get next, well his chances of success are slim, if he pulls it off then he will deserve his knighthood, but if he does not, if he only comes 8^th in the world, instead of wining it then, lets hope he is asbestos coated, because he’ll need to be as the lynching party ties him to the stake.

Doomsday or Salvation - the next 12 months

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.

Addicks Drop To Third

Charlton dropped back into 3rd place as West brom comprhensively defeated Coventry at the Ricoh last night, despite Kevin Philips being injured. Kiely's teammates put 4 past Dowies boys, without conceding. This following the "mosquito" executing a mid air forearm smash on a West Brom player after 10 minutes and getting sent off.

Coventry performed well in the first half depsite the numbers disadvantage, but conceded shortly after the break and the rest is history.

Meanwhile in deepest Kent, Charltons 2nd string could only draw at home to Palace, with a strike force of Izale and varney they failed to find the back of the net, which does not auger well for any injuries to Big Chris in the future.