This is it

My son and I landed at Gatwick this morning after a lovely couple of weeks together in Bermuda. We have timed our trip back to the UK in order that we can be present at the inauguration of what we all hope is a brand new chapter in the history of our great football club.

Chris Powell and the owners have done everything any fan could have asked of them after years of despair where Charlton have for past seven years finished in a lower league position than the season previous. Powell has single-handedly disassembled the squad that he inherited last January and created a whole new team and fashioned, or at least began to fashion, his own style of play, one a lot more attractive than what we were used to.

In what has been hands down the most exciting summer and pre-season for a couple of decades the strength of overwhelming support for our manager is palatable. 15 new players have signed and 15 have moved on in an incredible summer of activity at The Valley. Only two players that started last season’s opener against Bournemouth will run out of the tunnel tomorrow, although both Hollands and Wiggins were on the opposing side.

The players I suspect will be given time to settle, to gel, to impress but will the manager? You play a lot of games in this division, often twice a week and Southampton proved that a slow start is not a call for alarm bells to be rung. The players will carry Powell’s torch but the spotlight is truly on him, and there will be very few excuses from now on in.

However, let me say that without a point to play for since the first week of May, Chris Powell has impressed me immensely this summer. He clearly had a plan, one that Slater and Jimenez have bought into and although when Alonso and Evina signed I wrote that I thought Jeff Vetere had already become very influential behind the scenes, but I’m not so sure now. What I mean by that is that Vetere is and will become more and more influential in the signing of players, particularly younger ones but Hughes, Hollands, Green, Stephens, Hamer, these are Powell’s players.

Sure, all 15 players might end up being cack, but Powell’s initiative and determination and persuasive powers in the player market that he has dealt in has been excellent. His dealing with the likes of Dailly and Elliot may have surprised a few people that believe Chris Powell is the nicest man in the world. His offloading of Racon and Semedo showed that Powell knows at least on paper what he has to do to rebuild the team and the club and his involvement in developing, promoting and signing young players is admirable.

What we wouldn’t do to carry this man around on our shoulders at the end of the season in delirium but if by Christmas we don’t see performances, potential and desire, probably over results then it will be time to say farewell. I truly hope that doesn’t happen and my son and I will be in the Covered End tomorrow ready to support the manager and every player to the hilt, to do our bit.

Come on you reds!