Stay Away Chrissy

There is much euphoria over the reported talks with Chris Powell and the potential that he may come back to the Valley as manager.

The man is one of the nicest guys you could ever meet and I met him on one occaision and the memory of his last game at the Valley and his goal and that beaming smile,helps me smile too.

The man is a legend!

I have seen what the crowd can do to their managers when the chips are down, I saw them screaming at Charlton supporter Les Reed as he ineptly managed the team, attemtping to accost Parkie during the Brighton defeat.  The fans have become a fickle lot at the Valley.

I have great memories of Chris Powell.  All Primeministers leave office in failure, all football managers leave football clubs in tears - I would hate the long term legacy of Chris Powell at Charlton to be "Not Good Enough".

Conspiracy Theory?

I was firmly of the view that Phil Parkinson was going to go whatever the results, the players and Christian Dailly made it easier for the board to make that change after his first match under the takeover.

Apparently after the game there was heated discussion amongst board members (rumour and speculation), so maybe the departure was brought forward.  One positive (from my point of view, I realise that others feel Parkies departure was a massive positive for the club) was that the new Board had a vision and that they would be decisive and ruthless in executing it there and then. 

That was nearly two weeks ago, still we have no manager, Eddie Howe being the only name that was firmly in the frame and he backed away from South London. 

So if my conspiracy against Parkie theory is true then why was an instant replacement not lined up and why did we suffer the ignominy of a 33 year old novice turning us down, after all we are on the up, unlike Palace who are looking down and going down.

Was the sacking of Parkinson a knee jerk reaction to a poor result, with a a feeble excuse of results not being good enough since an 11 match un beaten run and over a period of postponed games in December.  The implications, if this is the case, are that we are going to be on a roller coaster where the board react to the manager on a match to match basis and increasingly interfere with the team.

I hope that the decision was based up on a plan, which maybe was brought forward and hence the mess we are in, otherwise the financial stability that this anonymous group have brought in will be undermined by short term over reaction to events of each day.

Phil Has His Say

Phil Parkinson is disappointed to have been shown the door at Charlton, but has vowed to return to the dug out. Continued.......http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11719_6635089,00.html

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.

Who are you! Who are you?

Well its done, for the time being talk of takeover  is kicked into touch and we can focus on the action on the pitch.

For some the fly in the ointment is who exactly now owns us, because it does not appear as if Jiminez and Slater do.  Addicks Championship Diary covers these two in detail.  A number of addicks fans have had the takeover euphoria dampened by the lack of knowledge of who the people are who have invested their hard earned sheckles into the club, but you have to counter this with the fact that we are now solvent the ever on going threat of administration is gone for the foreseeable future and that the management of the club continues to be overseen at least by the existing management in Murray and Kavanagh, plus fans favourite Peter "Reg" Varney, who has effectively steered this bus in to the end of its journey.

Now the hard work begins for the new management and for the fans.  We need to give them time to settle be clear about what they want to do and then implement it. In time we may see this as a fantastic move, alternatively it may just be a stay of execution, but that is for future judgement.  The immediate as ever is what concerns us the fans.

It has been implied that January will see new funds made available to Parkie and they will be considering his requirements.  This is a big make or break time for Parkie, he will be relieved that Murray is at the helm,or at least close to it, as he has always retained his support.  However he needs to be very careful about his recruitment plans not just who he brings in but how that effects the current squad.  One of Parkies successes has been to forge a strong team spirit - the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Bringing players in on higher wages when some of the current squad took drops in wages will cause problems, so there is a delicate tight rope to walk. 

Suddenly we no longer have to shop for players in Aldi and whilst Harrods may still remain a dream, Sainsbury's does appear to be an option.  Jimminez may give us contacts that Parkie does not have as we bring players in from clubs above us as oppossed to the likes of benson from below.

Jimminez maybe the clue to our ownership, as it was during the Zabeel purchase that he left Newcastle to broker the deal between them and Charlton.  Zabeel were notably uncomfortable with the publicity surrounding their bid, so it would not be surprising if they were behind this having hidden their identity behind a swiss based company.

A word of praise for Richard Murray who could have allowed us to go into administration but has fought hard   to retain our solvency.  On balance Murrays tenure has been temendous for Charlotn, sadly marred by the last few years, since he politely showed Curbs the door.  He has paid heavily for the subsequent mistakes but I hope that this will sweeten the bitter pill.

Here is to a successful New Year!

  

A cruel December

We thought after a strong November that the gelling of the squad was complete and the platform for promotion had ben built, but the curse of the Manager of the Month award, the winter weather and poor form has seen us drop out of the JPT Trophy and fail to match a result from the previous season.

So we finish the year one point down on where we were agaisnt the similar opposition last season in a league that is distinctly ordinary compared to last season with a better balanced side but reduced quality.

January is going to be a critical month, the next two games generated just one point last season, so there is a chance to catch up.  Swindon was the notorious game where we had two players sent off but Llerra came in with a last minute equaliser, one of those games that can be pointed to as points lost that would have put us into the automatics, we were so dominant before the second sending off.

As I talk rumours are that the takeover will be complete today and that will herald a new era for the club, whether it will herald new players time will only tell.  I would like to see a strong central midfielder to come in, someone with Championship experience if not Premiership, a midfield Christian Dailly, a striker.  I'd be happy to see Llerra or Fortune to be released or even both of them and a new player brought in.

For those of you old enough to remember, we need someone to come in who will galvanise our promotion campaign as did Jim Melrose all thsoe years ago in the mid '80's.

Happy New Year

readers and may 2011 be a return to championship fortunes for the Addicks 



 

Lets see in five years

If everything has gone to plan then the 24th will be the end of Rchard Murray's ownership and literally the baton will be passed on to new owners.  The only thing near to a guarantee is that not every body will be happy on the fans side of the fence.

I am amazed that there has not been a sniff of who is behind Peter "Reg " Varney.  Sightings of Dennis Wise at the Valley maybe a clue, although it may have just been a youth player being mistaken.

I was speaking to a fellow supporter this morning who wanted it to be anyone but Wise and this led to a brief chat and a realisation that whoever is the new custodian of our  obsession, they won't be good enough and that we cannot judge them on reputation alone  but on their actions and those actions over a reasonable period of time.

Takeovers are notorious for ending in tears, I was at Hillsborough when an American was hailed as their saviour only a few years ago and of course they barely avoided a winding up order before Miljan Mandic came in to buy them on the cheap, another club he has beem assoicated with are Portsmouth, which he sold on only for Rednap and the new succession of owners bankrupted them and there is Chelsea where bates sold on to Abramovich in a friendly sale only now to take every opportunity to slate the current ownership, take note Richard Murray.

Richard Murray has done everything possible within the context of our recent past to make Charlton saleable in a reasonable condition and kept us out of administration.  This is so different from  his early Charlton involvement when he was raising money not to save the club but to fund the flames and momentum of success.  Success to establish the valley, once Richard Alwen had got us there,  success of winning the playoff final and success of returning to the Premier and staying there for so long.  The last few years it has simply been a success to stay afloat.

Whoever is in charge tomorrow has big shoes to fill and there will be accusations of "lack of investment in the team", but we will now have business men running the club with their wallet and not their heart, unless they are charlton, accusations that they are not true charlton, accusations that they are foreign and do not understand the game (reference Sam Allardyce), accusations that they are British / local and don't have enough money and accusations that they are Dennis Wise / Peter Risdale.

Whoever Santa brings us on Christmas Eve we cannot judge their worth to the club for maybe years to come because its not what they do this week, its what they do in the coming years the stability, order and success that will count.

One final point, Santa brought us a present on Christmas Eve before and we applauded and thought our dreams had come true.  That present had a smile like a cheshire cat and by the time we were able to look back on his legacy our club was broke, in more ways than one.  This time Santa we are looking for a present that may not match our Christmas list like before but has longevity and lasting quality that will do what it says on the tin.