Defiance
A pretty defiant press conference from Nigel Adkins yesterday, and who would blame him on the back of the best 45 minutes, by far, we have seen us this season, plus a valuable point.
Question is, is this the start of a journey or are we on the night bus to nowhere. That used to be the N199 🚌, not sure it still is.
Anyway I’m doing a good job of being an under-pressure football manager and changing the subject. Actually, I’m going to do it again,. Why do the CAFC comms’ teams only allow one in house ‘journalist’ to ask Nigel questions?
Alley-oop’s the American’s call it.
And, whilst we are here. We all love a bit of Scott Minto, but he is hardly putting Nigel under the spotlight after games. I swear Bowyer had a much tougher time of it, and he hadn’t swallowed a book of idioms. Probably doesn’t know what an idiom is.
There is certainly a little less of the ‘birds are singing and the sun is shining’ about Nige these days, but he is of course correct, you can’t beat experience, but you also can’t dwell on past competencies and methods. The game has moved on. A lot.
Thomas bought that experience, and, well plenty of sales pitches, nothing wrong with that, they speak the same language, yet I suspect TS does not want to be forced into reversing his decision.
I get it, but I can’t stop thinking about what Steve Evans said the other night.
Evans is rarely mentioned in the same breath as coaches at the cutting edge of football management, although to be fair to the big fella, he has been working in the game continuously for close to 20-years and won a few trophies.
Ignoring the bravado Evans made some very good points about Adkins and our squad.
“They [Charlton] are always going to cause you problems. Their starting 11 are frightening, never mind their 28, 29-man squad…we were looking at their options tonight. That’s what happens when you manage a big club.”
This journey Nigel is taking us on needs an ambition, a desire and a roadmap. He has the tools, he has the qualifications, he is extremely likeable, but has he really what it takes.
Get behind them tomorrow if you are going. COYR.
Chicago Addick 
There’s a Taxi on its way for Nigel and it’s now reached Floyd road.
CA that’s more or less what I intimated on my last post about Scott Minto pussyfooting around and only really honing in on the good points with Adkins, but never questioning, for instance after the Gillingham game, why we were so dreadful in the second half and why was there no change in formation to counter Gillinghams change of tactics?
So lets hope he can really be Mr Positivity after the game and we come away from the ground all smiling after a good win and and a great display. As this afternoon, nothing but a win and playing to a better standard, like the first half on Tuesday will be good enough. Just scrapping a win with poor play or a drab draw or lose, he has to go, no more excuses, please Mr Adkins, just take the walk away from the Valley and do us all a favour! As time is quickley ticking by.
I know. Your comment got me thinking about it and why the club manage Adkins’ interactions so carefully.
Today must be a make or break game for Adkins,even though Thomas seems to still be backing him.If we lose we will be at least eight points behind the sixth placed team,with nine games played out of forty-six……that will be a fifth of the season gone.
We have decent individual players to compete in this league,but we need someone canny
with modern tactics at the helm,to get the best out of the squad we have.
So far that man is not Adkins.
Scott’s sycophancy towards NA is as nauseating as NA’s “birds are singing, sun is shining, good energy in this honest, talented, hard-working group of professionals” nonsense. Much prefer to have honesty and transparency from the club hierarchy and PR people any day but it seems in short supply. Eventually, people will see it for what it is and vote with their feet. Fans are not stupid and they can (largely) see through the smokescreen of NA’s praise each game for the supporters to deflect criticism from some really embarrassing performances. First half at Gillingham l thought Charlton had turned a corner then they slump back into their bad old ways. Is it really too much to ask for a consistently good performance over 90 minutes?