Sack The Board

Wow, what a shambles, or so I hear, fortunately I am in the land of the two heads, so can’t get back to mid week games, my last game was Southampton and I left seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, it was a bloody Inter City 125!!! We're doomed, I fear.

I am sure there is not a Charlton fans who is not wringing their hands thinking where has it all gone wrong. I know fans in from Peru, Canada, Bermuda we’re all just flabergasted, in fact our flabers have never been so gasted. Wgere did it go wrong, whose fault is it? Where did it all begin?

I suppose the rot set in when on the balmy May Friday, Richard Murray asked Curbs to sign an extension to his contract and he said no, “16 years and I’ve had enough, at the end of next year I am off!”, “No!” Says Minty and shows him the front door. Was Minty wrong? Well by popular opinion on the seats of the Valley, Curbs was tired, even Deano said it, so maybe Minty was right.

After a vigorous selection process, the board offered the job to successful Preston Manager Billy Davies, who yet may tread the hollowed halls of the Valley, but in a moment of decisiveness after he accepted he turned it down. Then maybe we made a mistake, we turned to “Rocket scientist” Iain Dowie. Slagged off by the Tango man we failed to see the warnings, maybe through the conflict that had surrounded the Charlton and Palace chairman since we sent them down. But was it such a bad decision at the time, was Dowies record that bad? Reasonable with Oldham, promoted Palace after joining them in the bottom of the Championship and 10 minutes from relegation safety, before Johnny Fortune put them down, then a play off place – OK he was Palace, but you know, I’d take that – sadly the CV contravened the trades description act and what its said on the tin was not what we got. Tome this really is the beginning of the end, Curbs would never have squandered the millions he had. Whilst accused of leaving a depleted squad, curbs would have bought in new recruits in his last year that were value for money and would have had a short term resale appreciation, not halved in 5 months a la traore. He squandered the crown jewels, emptied the piggy bank and left us with nothing, not withstanding that he failed to comply with the Clubs management structure, poor results and in discipline - he had to go.

Now if the appointment of Les Reed was a mistake then it was understandable. There was no other contender out there – Pardew was pulling up trees at West Ham, Davies had dropped to the Championship and Peter Taylor was fortunately at Palace, it did not work the board played it badly and it culminated in the horror night of Wycombe. 20,000 fans chanted for Alan Pardew, beaten Cup finalist Manager, Championship play off winning manager, Division one promotion manager, how could we go wrong, the board were right to appoint him, they had no choice but to give him this ridiculous contract that rewarded him for decimating our club, he was our saviour, our messiah, and he destroyed our team.

I blame Dowie and I blame Pardew and we have sacked them both, soon we are probably going to sack Parkinson who seems to be a thoroughly decent guy, who will be a decent manager, but almost certainly not for us.

I look at the board and I look at the decisions they made and really I cannot fault the big ones with the exception of Les Reed, but even then I don’t have an alternative and nor did I then, although a different decision and appointment of a boring established manager would have prevented the destruction by Pardew. If I feel depressed, I don’t know how Minty et al must be feeling, they welcomed in their friends only to find they were a bunch of scheisters, who took away the family jewels during the night. They are a great board and a great set of Charlton Fans and I hope forour sake and for their sake our fortunes turn soon, they are too good as people for all their work to have been so cruelly destroyed by the people they trusted. There will always be a place for Curbs at the Valley, name a stand after him, but don’t ever let Pards or Dowie back through those doors and the only thing to name after them is the toilets!!!

Heard it before?

“The (ex) manager is disappointed with the board”, “The board have got it wrong”, “There is no experience there”, “We’ll be the laughing stock of South London”, “He’s not a Charlton man”, “He’s the wrong man” – sounds familiar? It should be if you were a supporter when Lennie Lawrence upped sticks and moved north (to Middlesborough, with Alan Kernaghan, the player he had been buying from Boro for Charlton but then decided he would rather keep him there – but that is an aside) and when Richard Murray, outed the managerial partnership of Curbishley and Gritt and sent a Charlton legend packing to Brighton. What followed this strange managerial partnership, for this club that did not even play at its own ground was years of improvement , off the field and on the field, under the inexperienced, non Charlton Alan Curbishley, who himself is a Charlton legend, albeit with some a grudging one.

These same things are being said today as we enter a new phase. As fans we are scarred by Curbishleys successors – Dowie, who I thought was a good appointment, which is why I am useless at Championship Manager, Reed, who was a great coach, who should never have been given the reigns and Pardew, who we all thought would be our saviour, only to find out “He was not the messiah, he’s just a naughty manager”. Of those three successors, I would forgive Les Reed, the wrong man, at the wrong time, in the wrong place- if any of us had been given the opportunity to take over the reigns at Charlton then we would have done with passion in our hearts and he was sorely let down by the players at the club, to the extent that I booed the players against Wycombe and sang “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” but never did I aim any vitriol at Uncle Les. But Dowie and Pards, for them there is nothing but contempt, if Dowie brought our house down with poor signings and inept management, Pardew has replicated him and destroyed the foundations of the club. Dowies £11 m spend in the Prem, was then enough money to allow us to tread water at mid table, but for Pards to spend the same and leaving the club staring relegation in the face then he has been profligate and criminal with our funds, hiding behind his media spin and a smooth tongue.

I coined the chant “Your worse than Iain Dowie” in the Rose of Denmark,in jest. But looking back, its true, I believe that Pardew was worse than Dowie.

So where do we go for a successor?

Some are calling for a name and lets assume that a name would come to us, presumably out of work at the moment, why would they come to a small, moneyless 2 tier outfit like us, how would that enhance their reputation and if they did come and they did succeed, how long would they stay? We can’t afford a name, either their wages or their desire to build another new team. Of course, what do we mean by a name? There is big Sam and we do not have a hope of getting him on reasonable wages or with a commitment for the future, his sole reason to come to us would be to get back in the game and get offered a better job soon after – a bit like Gary Megson at Leicester. An alternative is Billy Davies – quarter pint to his mates – and he does have his appeal, but he accepted before and then did not have the courtesy to let the club know he had changed his mind. I feel that there is still a bitter taste in the mouth of the board about this fiery Scottish jack in the box. Let’s not forget that having got promotion with Reading and West Ham and been four minutes away from being an FA Cup winning manager, not forgetting his dust up with Wenger and his bum wiggle at the cup Semi Final, Pardew was a name.

How about a return for Curbishley? I have met Curbs 3 times thanks to Championship Diary Blogger and a nicer man you could not hope to meet, and he along with Minty constructed arguably the most successful Charlton era of all time (Lennie and Jimmy Seed can argue that),but I am a firm believer of never going back. I look at Howard Kendall and how sour his return to Everton ended up. For Curbs, who must feel hard done by, following his West Spam experience, to come back to us would kill any ambition of established Prem. Management, for Curbs there are challenges that he has yet to meet before he would consider any involvement with a tier two club.

So that leaves us with the untried and the untested and because we have no money for compensation, the unemployed. What we need is a man with experience, who is still young and can display tactical nouse and may have built a reputation in the lower leagues.

There is only one person who fits this bill to any degree, that I know of. He has had two jobs in football management, in the first he got promotion and was, at the end of that season, refused permission to talk to a premiership club for their vacant position, then he joined another Club in tier two, but this did not go as well and before the season was half through he had lost his job. That’s not a bad thing for a young manager, you learn a lot through adversity. He became a coach and turned down a position of manager with a tier three club to retain his coaching role.

He is of course, Phil Parkinson. Unfortunately, for PP he is tainted with Pardews reputation and has to pick up his legacy. There is no doubt that PP has contributed to some of this situation, you cannot be in the management team without having some influence, but to what extent he was a contributor and what extent he was a dissenter we do not know. What we know is that he has more experience than Curbs had when he and Gritt took over, he even has a successful promotion campaign to his name, he has come in and made the team his own within a very short period of time. Watching on Saturday, we had shape and purpose and commitment, three characteristics that Pardews team lacked. He put out a team that kept a clean sheet, a rare feat indeed these days, he seems to have the players on his side and that maybe is where pards went wrong, he seemed to have lost the players, but never really realised it. At the moment he has done nothing to disappoint me, I came out of the valley for the first time in ages excited and exhilarated by our performance. For those that say “We did not win”, no we did not, but for an outstanding goalkeeping performance and we looked like we could, it is not often we have said and thought that.

It is a difficult week ahead for PP, another away game in the killing fields of the North West, he has to develop the players fitness, witness the decline in energy levels after the 1^st half, keep the morale up and instil steel grit and determination, it’s a hard task wether you are a name, a curbishley or a Parkinson, I have a sneaking feeling he has the ability to do, I am just not sure he has the time.

“The (ex) manager is disappointed with the board”, “The board have got it wrong”, “There is no experience there”, “We’ll be the laughing stock of South London”, “He’s not a Charlton man”, “He’s the wrong man” – sounds familiar? It should be if you were a supporter when Lennie Lawrence upped sticks and moved north (to Middlesborough, with Alan Kernaghan, the player he had been buying from Boro for Charlton but then decided he would rather keep him there – but that is an aside) and when Richard Murray, outed the managerial partnership of Curbishley and Gritt and sent a Charlton legend packing to Brighton. What followed this strange managerial partnership, for this club that did not even play at its own ground was years of improvement , off the field and on the field, until under the inexperienced, non Charlton Alan Curbishley, who himself is a Charlton legend, albeit with some a grudging one.

These same things are being said today as we enter a new phase. As fans we are scarred by Curbishleys successors – Dowie, who I thought was a good appointment, which is why I am useless at Championship Manager, Reed, who was a great coach, who should never have been given the reigns and Pardew, who we all thought would be our saviour, only to find out “He was not the messiah, he’s just a naughty manager”. Of those three successors, I would forgive Les Reed, the wrong man, at the wrong time, in the wrong place- if any of us had been given the opportunity to take over the reigns at Charlton then we would have done with passion in our hearts and he was sorely let down by the players at the club, to the extent that I booed the players against Wycombe and sang “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” but never did I aim any vitriol at Uncle Les. But Dowie and Pards, for them there is nothing but contempt, if Dowie brought our house down with poor signings and inept management, Pardew has replicated him and destroyed the foundations of the club. Dowies £11 m spend in the Prem, was then enough money to allow us to tread water at mid table, but for Pards to spend the same and leaving the club staring relegation in the face then he has been profligate and criminal with our funds, hiding behind his media spin and a smooth tongue.

I coined the chant “Your worse than Iain Dowie” in the Rose of Denmark,in jest. But looking back, its true, I believe that Pardew was worse than Dowie.

So where do we go for a successor?

Some are calling for a name and lets assume that a name would come to us, presumably out of work at the moment, why would they come to a small, moneyless 2 tier outfit like us, how would that enhance their reputation and if they did come and they did succeed, how long would they stay? We can’t afford a name, either their wages or their desire to build another new team. Of course, what do we mean by a name? There is big Sam and we do not have a hope of getting him on reasonable wages or with a commitment for the future, his sole reason to come to us would be to get back in the game and get offered a better job soon after – a bit like Gary Megson at Leicester. An alternative is Billy Davies – quarter pint to his mates – and he does have his appeal, but he accepted before and then did not have the courtesy to let the club know he had changed his mind. I feel that there is still a bitter taste in the mouth of the board about this fiery Scottish jack in the box. Let’s not forget that having got promotion with Reading and West Ham and been four minutes away from being an FA Cup winning manager, not forgetting his dust up with Wenger and his bum wiggle at the cup Semi Final, Pardew was a name.

How about a return for Curbishley? I have met Curbs 3 times thanks to Championship Diary Blogger and a nicer man you could not hope to meet, and he along with Minty constructed arguably the most successful Charlton era of all time (Lennie and Jimmy Seed can argue that),but I am a firm believer of never going back. I look at Howard Kendall and how sour his return to Everton ended up. For Curbs, who must feel hard done by, following his West Spam experience, to come back to us would kill any ambition of established Prem. Management, for Curbs there are challenges that he has yet to meet before he would consider any involvement with a tier two club.

So that leaves us with the untried and the untested and because we have no money for compensation, the unemployed. What we need is a man with experience, who is still young and can display tactical nouse and may have built a reputation in the lower leagues.

There is only one person who fits this bill to any degree, that I know of. He has had two jobs in football management, in the first he got promotion and was, at the end of that season, refused permission to talk to a premiership club for their vacant position, then he joined another Club in tier two, but this did not go as well and before the season was half through he had lost his job. That’s not a bad thing for a young manager, you learn a lot through adversity. He became a coach and turned down a position of manager with a tier three club to retain his coaching role.

He is of course, Phil Parkinson. Unfortunately, for PP he is tainted with Pardews reputation and has to pick up his legacy. There is no doubt that PP has contributed to some of this situation, you cannot be in the management team without having some influence, but to what extent he was a contributor and what extent he was a dissenter we do not know. What we know is that he has more experience than Curbs had when he and Gritt took over, he even has a successful promotion campaign to his name, he has come in and made the team his own within a very short period of time. Watching on Saturday, we had shape and purpose and commitment, three characteristics that Pardews team lacked. He put out a team that kept a clean sheet, a rare feat indeed these days, he seems to have the players on his side and that maybe is where pards went wrong, he seemed to have lost the players, but never really realised it. At the moment he has done nothing to disappoint me, I came out of the valley for the first time in ages excited and exhilarated by our performance. For those that say “We did not win”, no we did not, but for an outstanding goalkeeping performance and we looked like we could, it is not often we have said and thought that.

It is a difficult week ahead for PP, another away game in the killing fields of the North West, he has to develop the players fitness, witness the decline in energy levels after the 1^st half, keep the morale up and instil steel grit and determination, it’s a hard task wether you are a name, a curbishley or a Parkinson, I have a sneaking feeling he has the ability to do, I am just not sure he has the time.

After the darkness, comes the Parkie

Following on from the Barnsley game when I won the score prediction (1-3) at the Rose of Denmark, I was in discussion pre-match with Deepest Darkest about the next 90 minutes entertainment and proposed that if we did not win then a 5-1 defeat was highly acceptable and then maybe we would see the board act against Pardew and at a 5-2 defeat, I have to say, I did not do bad.

After the darkness comes the dawn, I won’t dwell on Pardews departure, nor yesterdays result, that will be covered by better scribes that I. But what next?

Phil Parkinson has taken over the reigns for now. He is in an ideal position from the Boards perspective, he has managerial experience, he took Colchester into the Championship and he is already contracted to the club, if a new man were to come in then there is a likelihood that Parkinson would be disposed of. Two weeks ago, Richard Murray said that the club did not have the money to get rid of Pardew, they obviously checked down the back of the sofa’s and scrapped a few barrels but can they pay off Parkie as well, baring in mind that two seasons ago we gave him a new contract to prevent him to take up the role of manager at Huddersfield. So if he has ideas that Pards would not implement, wanted to change tactics but was not allowed then I would like to see Parkie given a chance, with Kins as his number 2 and maybe Morts in as reserve team coach (After all this season he has got used to dealing with a load of girls). If he agreed with everything Pards said and cannot believe that Pards has gone, feels that it was the fans, the board and the players fault then Parkie needs to join Pards at the job centre sooner rather than later.

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.

If Championship diary say's it ...

Then Pards should be worried. Not prone to negative comments or attacking the Club, Championship Diary Blogster has suggested that maybe we would be better off with a Parkinson / Kinsella combo.

The turning of the tide against Pardew is becoming strong and soon, if he does not turn things around quickly there will be a positive Tsunami looking for his dissmissal and sod the cost.

Pards came to Charlton as a saviour, seeing out the dark days of Dowie and the confusion of Reed. His credentials were good, promotion with both Reading and West Ham and a cup winning manager, but for the final four minutes and a Gerrard strike at Cardiff. While it took Curbs 15 years to have the crowd stand and chant his name, Pards was being hailed before he joined and during the end of the season, despite ultimately failing in retaining Premiership status he showed enough for the Addickted to look forward to the season in the Championship. One wonders where it has all gone wrong.

Pards is a good front man, he says the right things, looks dapper and on the touch line and shows passion and enthusiasm - well he did when he started. His record speaks for itself, but his record seems to be counterfeit when you look at his performance since our Championship days commenced (and the Addicks Premiership diary was put into moth balls). If Ranieri was the Premierships tinker man then pards must be competing for that title within the Championship. His team selections seem baffling, dropping Gray because he was tired after scoring at Doncaster, Josh Wright dropped and out of the squad after a reasonable performance against Burnley, Moutakill and Semedo in and out of the team for little apparent reason, Varney consistently in the side as a forward when he has being doing impressions of Matty Svensson with his banjo and cows back side. he approaches tactics as a game of musical chairs, each tactical change requiring a wholesale shift of personnel as oppossed to a simple formation change. Some managers manage through motivation e.g. keegan and others through tactical nous, Pards is the former, but unfortuantely as a motivator, you have to motivate consistenly week in week out and for 90 minutes and pards seems to have lost this skill. That said he has been in this situation before with west Ham and pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

I would love to see Pards do well, our board are too decent to sack him and then force him to take them to tribunal, so I expect him to be around for a while longer, but unless results improve the atmosphere at the Valley will become more and more poisonous, directed at the manager but affecting the team, ideally the results will get better - I am not sure what he means we are a team in recovery! But if not then I am afraid he should emulate the Charlton badge, hold the handle of a sword in his fist, and fall on it, for the sake of the club and for the sake of his reputation.

Charltons Darkest Week

So Burnley leave the Valley with a point, capping what has to be Charltons darkest week. At 9.00 am last Saturday everything was rosy, we had just had the international break following a home victory over Ipswich. Whilst the up and coming away game to Cardiff was going to be tough, last seasons record against the Welshmen augered well, after that we had two home games so there was every chance of bounding up the table, plus the Dubai group were fairly assured of taking us over, bringing us riches and potential unheard of by an Addick.

What a difference a week makes! Of the 9 points available to us we have only pickled up 1 and we have lost the £50 million investment proposed to the dire world economy, if this is not our worst week ever then I would like to know what happened to the one that was (The answer is the days leading up to the almost winding up of the Club, but they ended happily, maybe it was leaving the valley but that was over a longer period and again ended up happily).

The reactions to the pulling out of Zabba dabba doo that I received were reflective of the generations that I know of Charlton supporters,

My Mother In Law who watched Sam Bartram said “I am not surprised” – The old head of Charlton, never expect it to turn out right on the night.

My Brother In Law, who I took to Charlton as a Kid “Oh bugger we could have done with the Arab money”

My other Brother In Law, who is a traditional Kentish supporter or rather the pessimistic breed of Addick “Looks like we’ll be playing Millwall next season”.

And my mate a Plymouth argyle supporter, who I converted to Charlton and is now a valley Gold member and buys the shirt when it comes out, unlike me, who waits till the new kit nears and buys it at cut down price, “Shit – a heavy blow”.

I was not at the Valley today, so I will not comment specifically on the game, except it sounded like there was some passion in the 2^nd half. Maybe, just maybe out of the darkness of this week there will be a new dawn and some form and a run, because despite everything that happens to Charlton, despite every knock as fans we take, we are optimists, we are hopeful and what that means is

WE ARE CHARLTON

Dubai, No Buy, Goodbye

Today Guernsey heard that their bid for the Youth Commonwealth games had failed, due to cost A disappointment for the residents of Guernsey, but their emotions cannot match those of Addicks fans around the world, from Leamington to Bermuda, Roehampton to Sydney, not to mention Dubai, from where Zabeel rode in on their white chargers tickled and teased us, stroked us and played us, but just as abruptly dropped us and left us.

If you read through the blogs the disappointment is almost overwhelming, “Addicks Championship Diary” says this could have been our last chance for top flight success, “Roehampton Addick” calls for Pardews head and there is more.

And yet for us, the guys and girls in the street what has changed since two three weeks ago. It’s the same team, the same manager and the same board, same opposition, same results, same prospects.

As a club we are adept at securing defeat from the jaws of victory and this must be the greatest example of this. Anfield has a sign above the players tunnel gloriously spat on by all the Wimbledon squad years back. Charlton should erect a similar sign at the Valley – This is Charlton – “leave your optimism at home”.