Steve Claridge faux pas

Does anyone listen to 5 Live’s Monday Night Club? I am a regular podcast listener and the show accompanies me to and from work in the early part of the week and it is usually a very enjoyable indepth conversation. It’s just that last night, the studio which included regular host Mark Chapman, Ian Dennis and Steve Claridge broke away from banging on about Leeds’ woes for a minute and started talking about the Addicks.

Claridge mentioned that “someone got a text from Chris Powell the other day and said that he and the people that are bringing the players in are not in complete harmony.” Claridge has a big mouth although he patently stops himself from continuing the story. Clearly CP needs to be careful who he texts, then again if he fears for his job, which he must do, what does it really matter?

Powell is pretty astute, although he must be living under a huge cloud of stress. He is also unlikely to walk. Proud and determined, those of us that support him, just wish that he can get a break and turn our situation around as he integrates new players and builds a new system with Poyet and Cousins at the heart of it.

Still, the club have announced that Chris will join Katrien Meire and Richard Murray for a Valley Q&A on March 6th for VIP season ticket holders and Richard Murray, hailed as the voice of the board, will also meet fans at The Counting House pub in the City this Thursday. Next week Powell and Alex Dyer are at Bromley Addicks (8pm, 20th Feb, Bromley Conservative Club).

Belgium football writer John Chapman wrote an interesting article for When Saturday Comes. The name of agent Dudu Dahan was introduced to the wider world outside of Belgium and Israel. With a name like that, this could almost be a wind-up, but sadly we all need to wake up.

Dahan is an agent to a whole host of Israeli players and Liege manager Guy Luzon, who he sat next to when Luzon was introduced to the Belgium media as the new Standard manager last summer (photo).

Dahan has been solely responsible for the influx of Israeli’s into the Belgium ProLeague and is a close aide of Roland Duchatelet, and judging by his Twitter page appears to retweet every Standard Liege official tweet.

Duchatelet is less of football man than I thought, and I would think defers a lot of his transfer and loan decisions to Dahan. I wonder how many times Chris Powell has taken a call from him since the turn of the year?