Paul Benson to Notts County
It is being widely rumoured that Charlton have accepted an offer of £150,000 from Notts County for Paul Benson. Of course he has to want to leave and agree terms, which team mates McCormack and Francis couldn’t do last week.
This is disappointing news to me. I was always supportive of Benno and his actual goalscoring ratio (1 every 4) wasn’t too bad considering our below average season and the fact that rarely from what I could see did we ever get a decent cross into him.
Therefore I assumed that this was one of the reasons for signing his old wide man team-mate Danny Green, and I was happy to see this combination work last night in the friendly at Aldershot.
Why would we want to sell him? Is Powell just trying to offload all of Parky’s signings or has he better options lined up? If Benno goes that leaves us with just two senior strikers – Hayes and BWP. Rather concerning and under Mr Motivator Martin Allen I can see Benno flourishing up at Meadow Lane.
Benson might think it’s best to cut his losses, Addicks fans didn’t appear to take to him and he was pursued of Twitter by idiots, which was a shame because he came across really geniune and humourous.
Replacement names in the frame are Rotherham’s Adam Le Fondre and Norwich City’s Aaron Wilbraham.
Perhaps of course we haven’t got as much money as the early trading made us think. If you consider we got a million for Carl Jenkinson and then have offloaded three of our most expensive earners in Semedo, Racon and Dailly, the budhet might well be more Rochdale than Southampton. Alan McCormack has now also left the club, by ‘mutual consent’ strangely and I am sure at some point Simon Francis, who has been ‘awarded’ the number 34 shirt will also agree a deal with Bournemouth when he realises it is his only real option.
So, the squad numbers have been released, which always interests me. As I mentioned Francis has been given the last but not least number 34 shirt, Benno 14, Danny Green 7 and Johnnie Jackson 4 and has been made captain, which is a good choice in my opionion. Never a quiet moment.
Chicago Addick 
I did see van Benson as BWP’s back-up ths season, and that may yet still happen (as you say). The main crux of this story though is the entire disbandment of the Essex-contigent (Benson, Francis, McOxo, Fry, and Jackson), a clique which undoubtedly hurt Charlton last year. With Jackson the only one likely to be retained (and even he was rumoured to be off a week or so back…), Powell has been very hard-line, which few thought he was capable of. There are still a couple of weeks to go til the first league game, and then another thee weeks till the end of the transfer window, so I expect there to be plenty more rumour, in-comings, and outgoings before then. COYR!
where can we view the squad numbers?
“Powell has been very hard-lined.”
You know what Pedro I was thinking that this morning. Out of his assumed character. The club sport’s scientist also got the tin-tac and I understand he has taken a hard line with Dailly and rumours persist that Doherty will also leave despite being under contract.
If both Doherty and Dailly leave, I am less than confident about our a back four pairing keeping things tight throughout the season.
They both look decent players on the ground but I’m not convinced that together they will dominate things at the back.
With Dailly (or even Doherty’s) support perhaps they could.
I’m a Mambo fan in terms of future potential but the club seem to have concluded that it is too early to fully blood him; and they may be right.
The prioity is to spend any available money to fund useful additions up front, but no point unless we can make the back leakproof, for which I cannot imagine we want to buy any new players.
Alf – you can’t. I got sent them from a mate, who apparently had some inside knowledge and I’ve seen them twice more since I blogged it. Nothing on OS and therefore not official.