Former England Goalkeeper David James excited by women

David James has always been a supporter of Womens football and on the opening day of the Womens World Cup has called for more exposure of the game and not in the way that Sepp Blatter suggested a few years back.

To coincide with the tournament James has written a thoughtful article in the Guardian about Womens football.

Later today (Monday) England take on Mexico and it is a game worth watching.  if you are a guy who chants "You're not fit to iron my shirt", you need to re evaluate the womens game, not as a comparison with the mens but as a sport on its own to be judged on its own merits.

Avoiding Relegation - The River Plate way

Perhaps if when we left the Prem, instead of applauding our players we had reacted like this then Pardew, Varney, McCleod, Weaver etc,. May have been too scared to allow us to do the same in the Championship.



Of course, it did not actually work for River Plate who were relegated for the first time in their history.

dr Kish and the League One Monster

Laegue One Monster wakes!

Dr Kish's recent article / blog post tickled me as it opened with the line - "The League One monster begins to wake from its hibernation" it sent me back 20 or so years when my kids were toddlers and I read them bedtime stories.  My favorite was by Tony Ross and called "I'm coming to get you!"

The story goes :-

"After wreaking havoc on the planets of its own galaxy, a hungry monster sets off in its spaceship for a pretty blue planet called Earth. A little boy called Tommy Brown, who is particularly scared of monsters, is singled out for a visit..."


Now if you know the story you'll understand my analogy with The League One Monster, if you don't and you have kids or grand kids buy the book, its cheap at Amazon, yes Dr Kish, I know you have grandchildren, follow the link!!

Englands Route To Glory Blocked

Last night the Spanish made it a hat-trick - World Cup, European Nations Cup and U21 and on top of that Barcelona have made a clean sweep of the Champions league.  In the past we have seen the Portuguese develop a team at youth level and seen it develop through the different age levels of football to be, if not world beaters, a country that out punches its weight as a footballing nation.

I love English football I want it to succeed at all levels, but I see the Premier League putting up barriers and psychological hurdles created all the time.

England have U21's capable of certainly being in the same final as Spain, it could be argued that we should have beaten them in the 1st match as their goal was a hand ball (that said they had so much possession it led to Pearce saying that if we had so much possession we would have won 5-0 - but we did not Stuart, that is the problem).

England perform badly in tournaments, we go into a tournament expecting to be disappointed, added to that for something like the U21's we tell the players going into the tournament that they are not even the first choice.  Wilshire and Wallcott would have made a massive difference but they were too tired.  Too tired to be part of and key to a successful tournament side.

In club football it is often said that teams don't know how to win trophies until they win that first one be it a Europa league or a League or FA Cup.  Until then their credentials to go on to better things is questionable.

If we were to send an U21 team to a tournament which they believed they could win because the squad members were not merely replacements for tired first choices and the team had the belief that they had match winning players and it was worth turning up, their mentality would be so much stronger for the tournament (Not conceding a wining position to a losing one in  the last minute) and by wining it they would have the experience and taste for success unlike any England team above youth level for many years.


It is about time that the U21's were taken seriously with key squad members being available when the senior squad was not playing and they were primed for success not managed to failure.

A day to remember

Sparrows Lane was busy today, as Terry Racon was clearing his locker the protracted purchase of Paul Hayes was completed, along with Xabi Alonso's brother and ex Arsenal Youth captain Cedric Evina.

For us Addicks it was an exciting day in SE7.

The loss of Racon is no great loss and goes alongside Rommedahl and Ambrose as players who have failed to live up to their undoubted potential.  Ambrose can be exonerated to an extent as he was played out of position and it was only when he played for Warnock that he actually played the role he was good at.

The next departure is due to be Jose Semedo, another player that I think we have been over hyping.  There are two venues on his menu, Palace or Wednesday, the latter being where apparently he has relatives.

So much for Racon and Semedo's protestations only weeks ago that they loved the club and wanted to spend the rest of their career with the Addicks.  I can only assume that they saw Powell and Slater throwing Jenkinson to the wolves after he refused to sign a new contract and thought better of revealing their hand whilst the vitriol of the crowd could reign down on them before the end of the season.

Apparently from a radio interview we are due another six signings imminently so we should be looking forward to an intersting times leading up to 1st July.

They were the worst of times and well the worst of times.....

This is the first part of the review of the season from H2V. 2 further parts maybe forthcoming in the next couple of weeks. In this part I concentrate on the season up to January.

It has been the worst season that charlton fans have endured in my lifetime no bones about that.  Having missed out on Wembley last season, we at least expected a play off place this year, but as is the way with Charlton, we conspired to machine gun ourselves in the foot. In the summer two core players, Bailey and Sam left.  Bailey for over £1 m. Even his biggest fans were surprised at that fee.  Unfortunately this windfall was not available for squad reinforcement but for maintaining the clubs liquidity.

It all started if not well then ok. For the fourth year running the opening game hosted a promoted side and like last year against Wycombe we picked up 3 points.

The pre January period was marked by continued skirmishes between.the anti parkinson and pro parkinson brigade. And the question of achievement versus performance. 

In the summer parkinson had put together a team from virtually nothing - a nominal fee for Abbot and £35,000 for Francis - neither of whom could be said to be an overwhelming success. The big money went on Benson, although his fee and wages over the life of his contract were said to match the investment into any other member of the squad.

As we can subsequently, see from the efforts of others, parkinson seems to have assembled a talentless group which he was able to mould into something resembling a team that could challenge. The problem being that when all parts were not in tune  "the wheels of the bus fell off".

I have no doubt that the highlight of the season did not occur on the pitch but in the board room. The way was paved by Richard Murray taking over debt that were not waived or postponed in the summer. And then slater and jimminez came on the scene leading their band of unknown investors to rescue us from almost certain administration. According to Varney we would not have survived to the end of the season. So a debt of gratitude is owed to the new owners. Their first meaningful act of ownership was to dismiss the division one manager of the month.

I have argued that the sacking of Parkinson was a matter of when and never if.  Sadly for him, his team gave an abject performance against bottom placed Swindon and Slater moved the next day in the best interests of ensuring promotion this year.

The demise of Parkinson was swift and brutal, there were rumours that there was an argument amongst the board after the game and later Richard Murray is alleged to have said that he would not have sacked Parkinson.

I have made it clear that I liked parkinson and thought that he was a capable manager. Other feel he was useless and only here because even the clubs cat was too expensive and it is true to say that he was lucky to have a job after we were relegated. His record of 28 games, 4 wins,11 draws and 13 defeats is indefensible in a results business. However, many people argue that Chris Powell should currently be judged on performance not results. This being the case Parkie took a dispirited low morale disorganized team and improved their performance making them difficult to beat, as testified by the last 10 games (W2 D 6 L 2) of the Championship relegation season. What he did not do was make them winners and for that many fans never forgave him.

The highlights of Parkinsons last season were Peterborough away a victory nobody can claim as anything other than superb, maybe the highlight of his reign, running alongside the 5-1 demolition of MK Dons the previous season.  Other highlights were the 3-0 away demolition of Swindon, but overall players such as Wagstaff, Lee Martin Benson, Akpoe failed to deliver and the wheels fell off against Wallsall, Brighton and Swindon and the worse thing about this were the glory games were away and the failures at home.

Ultimately, despite getting us to the play offs last season and 5^th this season and only 2 points off the automatics Parkinson was unable to win over the majority of the fans, despite his successes, the fans were unwilling to accept or understand the constraints that led to dour but winning football or that he had been part of the Pardew regime.  His mere presence became divisive and it is for that reason, I believe that the new owners were never going to keep him in place.

In January, 5^th in the table 2 points off automatics we could argue we had had an ok season  and were on course for at least the play offs and then the balloon burst…..

The next posting will be the rest of the season and the final part will be the future….

The end Is Nigh...

Well in fact it was nigh a few weeks ago, when the club gave up on promotion.  it is bordering on criminal that we are not even in with a shout for a play off place with 6 games still to play for.  We should not be seeing the players setting up their deck chairs.  I'm not blaming, Parkinson or Powell or Slatter or Murray - but I do blame THE CLUB.  With six games to go Orient, Rochdale, Exeter, Bournemouth are all ahead of us in the table - it is scandalous how THE CLUB have let a promising situation turn into disaster.

Half yearly season tickets were sold on the basis of promise and what a waste they were, not taking away any of the pain that full season Season Ticket holders have had to endure.

So thats it for me this season, I'll go to the games - Huddersfield, Rochdale and Hartlepool, but it will be with a heavy heart thinking of what might have been, but as for this blog, I'll do an end of season piece maybe but until then I will concentrate on another blog which I am developing away from football.

See you in May!!!!