Goalkeeper in on loan
Capped 43 times by the Philippines, Enfield born goalkeeper Neil Etheridge has joined Charlton on loan from Oldham Athletic until the end of the year. You may remember he was with us in March 2011 when at Fulham, but Mark Hughes recalled him after just a week.
Etheridge has a Filipino mother and Ben Roberts has obviously been following the 24-year old’s progress, which took him from Fulham to Oldham in the summer after making just 1 appearance in 8 years at Craven Cottage, despite being highly rated.
Strangely he made his only appearance for the Latics the other night, and I noticed he apologized to Oldham fans for the second goal on his Twitter page! Reading the report the JPT tie ended in penalty heartache for Oldham who lost 10-9 to Preston, with Etheridge also missing a penalty!!
It also looks from a tweet today that he won’t be returning to Boundary Park, so maybe a move to Charlton has a chance of becoming permanent.
All in all, I would think he must be quite surprised to end up at The Valley this afternoon on loan deadline day and it also brings into question how long the Addicks expect to be without Stephen Henderson.
Bob Peeters said today that Henderson will also miss Saturday’s game at Ipswich and Nick Pope will continue with probably Etheridge on the bench.
Also today Harry Lennon went to Gillingham on a youth loan until January 3rd.
On a busy day I see that Matt Smith’s spell at Fulham has ended with the former Leeds lump moving to Bristol City on loan. Smith got sent off on his debut under Felix Magath. Blackpool made two loan signings, Wolves defender Kevin Foley and Palace midfielder Stuart O’Keefe, thought to have been a Charlton target.
Palace also let midfielder Adlene Guedioura go out on loan to Watford. I liked the look of the Algerian when he was at Forest.
Chris O’Grady was definitely a Duchatelet target and turned us down in the summer because he didn’t want to move south. Ironically like Dale Stephens he ended up on the south coast with Brighton, on a lot more wages, but was today shipped out to Sheffield United on loan.
Rotherham made three loan signings. Man U youngster Reece James, ex-United youth striker Tom Lawrence joined from Leicester and defender Scott Wootton from Leeds and finally Saturday’s opponents Ipswich signed Leeds United forward Noel Hunt on loan and defender Sean St Ledger on a short-term contract.
Chicago Addick 
I cannot make any sense of our strategy. We have only one proper striker, who is unfit, we have scored only 9 goals in the last 11 games and we have let half the clubs in the division get ahead of us in the loan stakes over the past month or so.
I am beginning to feel that the owner would rather we were not challenging for promotion as it does not fit with his overall plan.
Agreed, there has been a lot of strikers on the loan circle this window. I think simply that Roland won’t pay the money, whether to a club, player or agent. Coquelin is an exception, but Arsenal must be paying a substantial part of his wages and Etheridge probably cost nothing.
Re not challenging for promotion. I don’t believe what you say to be the case, but I was a little worried about how satisfied he was with 22 points. Maybe he would prefer to see steadier progress.
I’d be interested to see how Katrien and Bob push him in January because they have both stated publicly that he will provide additions if we are ‘challenging.’
Apropos of nothing, Matt Smith is the son of my GP, who was also a footballer back in the day!
I think Bob has made it quite clear he is not going for just any old striker and we know enough about Roland to know he doesn’t believe in paying over the odds. We’re still within touching distance of the play offs and with only two defeats so far, this is a fine foundation to push on in the second half of the season. Remember this time last year anyone? We lost 0-1 at home to Ipswich and had 17 points from 17 games, leaving us in 20th place.
Ok, so it was 0-1 again, but we are somewhat better placed than this time last season. Come on, Bob, we need to score with some of these chances..