Charlton squad impacted by Covid rise
Nigel Adkins, several members of staff and players were each impacted by Covid last week meaning they had top self-isolate away front the rest of the squad and missed the pre-season run-out at Dartford.
Cases in the UK are surging as it fully opens tomorrow with the Delta variant spreading across Europe and countries arguing over who and who cannot enter.
Nigel Adkins is double vaccinated and asymptomatic, but Alex Gilbey has not been so lucky.
It does ask the question, if he and all of the other players have been double jabbed. Most of them are too young to already have had both jabs, but one would think that their continual close contact with others would have meant they’d been offered vaccines early.
It is not known if other players and staff have tested positive or are isolated due to being contact-traced.
Once again yesterday’s line up had no Ryan Inniss included, who like Gilbey has missed all three of the pre-season friendlies thus far. It is fair to wonder if the big center-half also has Covid. Craig MacGillivray and Ben Watson were also absent yesterday as was Ronnie Schwartz, who may or may not be in the country.
I make it we are down net 10 players on what finished last season. Yesterday’s starting XI screamed lack of quality and depth with Nathan Harness, James Vennings and Deji Elerewe all starting with an array of other youngsters on the bench.
I make this a big week for Nigel in the transfer market, all of which will probably have to be done from the sanctuary of his back garden.
Chicago Addick 
Lets hope there is some movement on transfers this week,as at this moment in time the squad is woefully lacking in quality. and quantity,Start of the new season just 20 days away.
Worring times CA, as so far we are way behind all the other teams in bringing new players in, though the press and Charlton keep more or less advising Stockley, Adams, and Famewo are new additions, but they were all here last year. The only two new players are Dobson and replacing Amos with the Portsmouth goalie, with even two of our best forwards last season in Millar and Aneke yet to be replaced!
In terms of hoping to compete against the like of Wigan and Ipswich to obtain an automatic place, we are streets behind, both in quality and numbers and with the current squad it would be extremely doubtful if we even finished in the top six. By the looks of things we will be lucky that Inniss is even fit for the start so we will be back to Pearce playing regular as the Captain again, even slower than last season and giving away his needless free kicks and penalties.
I sincerely hope I am wrong, but at present it doesn’t look good, Chris Powell had almost a complete new team by now before the season started when we comfortably won this division!
Mike and Greg 2000 per cent agree with you and the situation more than worrying indeed,
We need more quality but that costs and no doubt we will get in a few freebies and past it injury-prone players looking for an easy payday
The need for quality technical players is paramount. Stockley and Jayesimi are strong powerful players but not great technically. Although Stockley has aerial ability and will score goals I am concerned that he is limited both on the ground and back to goal, so a striker but not a genuine No.9. I think our defence options look good but reinforcements are needed in midfield and up front. Washington and Davison looked to have a good understanding so could prove a useful pairing if Stockley was unavailable.
Hopefully there will be two or three full signings and three or four quality loans.
Ryan Inniss was late back to training (no idea why) and he only started full training on Tuesday so missed the Welling and Celtic friendlies – whether he was self-isolating and therefore missed Dartford or he didn’t play because his fitness wasn’t up to scratch I’ve no idea.
Ronnie Schwarz recently got married – so he’s been MIA, that may be a convenient excuse for seeking alternative employment or not, again, no idea.
Currently the defence looks reasonably sorted with good options available as first and second choice in all areas other than left-back. We have two defensive midfield choices signed up and enough forwards assuming Josh Davison starts the season off with us. Ashley Maynard-Brewer is in Tokyo with the Australian football squad. The transfer window doesn’t close for ages yet.
But we are light in the attacking midfield slots – DJ has scored a couple of goals in pre-season and looks sharp, Morgan has got some game time but with Gilbey self-isolating we need some back up.
We still have three weeks to the first league game so I’m not panicking yet – although we’ve got Akin Famewo in on-loan we should still get at least three more loans in. Teams like to get some pre-season out of their players before lending them out so my guess (based on nothing but sheer optimism) is that we’ve identified who we want/will be getting but can’t announce those signings just yet. We also need a few more full signings and there are two ways to look at this – we are negotiating hard with players who maybe are being persuaded to drop down a division – but the deal has to be right or we are chasing players who simply don’t want to play in L1 and we are wasting time on them. Either way we are not splashing cash around, other than Jayden Stockley we haven’t paid big transfer fees so I’m assuming that TS and NA etc are not going down the living the dream route and landing the club with debt in a rush to get players in.
So, I’d like to see a LB and CB in plus three/four midfielders and a goal scoring number 9 – around seven players in total. We can and should make more use of the U23 Academy side – Charlie Barker needs a few first team games under his belt, Aaron Henry will be a first team starter in a season or so and needs to be blooded in a few league games and there are one or two others who could step up and we’ll see how they fare. NA is keen on developing the Academy set up after all.
Further to my previous comment I am concerned that both the first team and U23s squads are out of balance in defence and midfield. Both squads have a severe imbalance relating to right and left sided players .Whilst there are numerous right sided players there are few natural left sided players, I can only name four i.e. Pearce, Purrington, Famewo and Rody who is an unknown quantity. Such a pity that we could not persuade Mingi to stay as I rated him a definite prospect.