Alou, Alou

Indeed the experienced Alou Diarra has been signed until the end of the season and may well play tomorrow at Derby. The 33-year defensive midfielder will hopefully last a bit longer in Charlton colours than Francis Coquelin and Miloš Veljković, who for very different reasons had their stays curtailed too soon.

Diarra brings bags full of experience making his debut for French lower league club CS Louhans-Cuiseaux in 1999. He was then snapped up by Bayern Munich as a 19-year and played in their reserves before Gérard Houllier took him to Liverpool, where he never played a 1st team game. Instead being loaned to French Ligue 1 clubs for the 3 years of his contract eventually moving to Lens on a permanent in 2005.

It is in France that Diarra has spent almost all of his career despite being on Bayern Munich, Liverpool and up until recently West Ham’s books and it was at Bordeaux as a deep-lying midfielder under Laurent Blanc that he had his best seasons.

Diarra also had a very successful career for the French national team, captaining them and also playing in the 2006 World Cup Final coming on as a 56th minute sub for Patrick Vieira against Italy in Berlin.

An interesting signing with certainly a lot more pedigree than Christophe Lepoint. It will be interesting who starts out of the two tomorrow night.