Leyton Orient 1 Charlton Athletic 0
Indefensible that. Another display devoid of idea, organization, threat or care.
And afterwards again Michael Appleton passed blame onto the players. I suspect keeping telling them that they are not good enough and need to be replaced or kicked out in January is taking its toll.
Leyton Orient offered little, but were organized and physical and of course they scored late on helped by six individual errors of judgement and basic defending from us. Six.
Appleton who does great work on the grass according the footballing sage Andy Scott clearly does it late at night when these players are in bed. I know we were comparing him to Holden, but when he came he showed some tactical acumen and wasn’t afraid to make mercurial changes during games.
He now looks lost, unable to motivate, plays players out of position and is ruining young players’ confidence. All the while wishing the last six weeks away under the fallacy that the January transfer was going to propel us to promotion.
We were truly dire today when only a win would do, and that is no wins in four league games and two pitiful cup exits. Four clean sheets in thirty league and cup games!
Another sell-out away end showed a lot of vitriol towards the players and the manager as they left the field. It is the least they deserved.
None of that lot are fit to tie this man’s boots:
MoM: The least bad? Dobson.
Appleton of my eye: Has spent the last six weeks talking about the transfer window. Will he still be here to see it?
Elsewhere: Now looking at the bottom where Cheltenham climbed off it after beating Shrewsbury. Reading are 4th bottom grabbing a draw at Peterborough, Fleetwood and Carlisle drew 1-1 and make up the bottom 4. Exeter beat Wycombe 1-0.
I’m seething and really angry that we once again conceeded a late goal….how many more times can Appleton and our defence allow it to happen ?
Appleton is the manager and seems bereft of ideas and strategies to deal with this continual issue.
We are dropping down the table and I’m certain that some if the squad have downed tools…..an indication that they are not convinced about Appletons tactics.
Again Louie Watson was benched until he was given a chance way too late in the game.
Has Dobbo and CBT decided that they have lost faith in Appleton as many fans are thinking the same.
Nothing has been heard from the SMT…why ?
Steve Brown is totally right and why oh why has Scott tapped into his wealth of knowledge regarding defending skills ?
Mystic Meg may have the answer as I can’t see any reason not to.
He’s at The Valley most weeks on Charlton TV….and his opinions are always spot on.
My God, I really didn’t think we could get any worse……how wrong I was. Conceding late again, and 90 mins without any (it seems,) game plan…..even Alfie May is catching the ‘can’t be arsed’ bug. Then we have to be subjected to Appleton’s drivel. He doesn’t seem to realise that the buck stops with him !!!!
Mr Motivator and charmless geek has clearly “lost the dressing room.” I cant think of any other reason why people earning £5k plus a week cant be arsed to put in a shift for just 3 hours a week. I know I was motivated when I earned a six figure salary. The body language is appalling, and even die hard operator Alfie May looked like he had reached the end of his patience. He must truly be wondering what the hell he signed up to.
Next up B Rovers, who just beat Pompey.
Happy days.
I have to say looking at the present scenario, Appleton appears to be no better than Holden! He may have had less losses, but most are just draws and the manner of his play is very similar, slow to get the ball forward, no change in tactics, brings subs on too late and continues to play certain favourites no matter how bad they play each week and same old excuses after the game! Plus the continual errors conceding poor goals in nearly every game and he has had actually more players at his disposal.
It appears there is no way we are going to get into the play offs no matter what bull…. he gives about new signings in January, as we will probably lose a couple of our best players and quite frankly what decent player would want to come to us at present, unless a bucket full of money is thrown at them and their agents? It currently doesn’t bode well for the future.
Agreed Mike. At least Holden had a personality though. Here’s a question…..How long will he last after the transfer window if we recruit the usual bunch of loans/kids and ‘left overs’ that have made up our incomings in previous years ?
Hi CA,
I give Appleton a month.!!!
What player would want to come to us.?
The fans are now booing at half time and louder at full time.
What a 🎪
To be honest hes nailed it with the players,I really think we have an inflated opinion on the majority of our squad. They aren’t good enough, there’s maybe 2 players who would make a championship squad with the rest floating around L2 standard. We are punching at our weight mid to low table L1 team. Stop dreaming about playoffs
Just waffle. These are the same players that led us to the sacking of Holden and who haven’t been capable of a play-off push the last couple of seasons, and you blame the new manager? Parachuted in after a month and who hasn’t had a transfer window to himself? Rubbish analysis
I think people are mostly commenting on the organisation, tactics and game plans of the manager, or rather the lack of them. Granted, he hasn’t yet had his own transfer window, but do you really think the upcoming one will be any different from the previous six or seven. After all, it will be overseen by Andy Scott and Co. so Appleton is likely to have little say on who is recruited. Along with that, we are quite likely to lose a couple of the better players in the squad.
Appleton will have some influence over transfers in January. He may not get the final say, but they’ll listen to his input. People seem to forget that the last few transfer windows were under different owners! Yes Scott was around last January but the new recruitment department wasn’t. We are a club still in transition and i’m quite excited to see who we bring in with the new owners fully in situ.
Regarding Appleton’s tactics I think we should remember he hasn’t even had a preseason to work with the players! What chance has he had yet to imprint his new ideas (on a threadbare squad)? We’re a long way off the end goal but at least we’re harder to beat, unlike a couple of years ago
In the event we take a beating at Bristol R. tomorrow (Friday) The Owners (whoever they are) will face quite a conundrum.
Do they stick with Appleton and let him bring in his choice of players in January.
Or do they sack him and let the new manager have the window.
If they stick with Appleton, then let him down with the transfer situation, we’ll carry on as a hopeless lower League one team for the remainder of the season.
My thoughts are, for what they are worth. They’ll likely stick with Appleton regardless of Friday’s result. Then mess up the window with no player of any decent quality coming in. Just the usual last day 11:59 PM panic loans. In which case Appleton has hinted he wouldn’t be happy……..
January is going to be interesting, one way or another.
The other conundrum Daggs is that if the MT fire Appleton then that is two glaring and expensive errors of judgment in a year. Yet, if they do sack him then they can at least have a scapegoat as Holden became after he was turned on.
If they give Appleton the window (and I believe they should) then the pressure is huge to give him the right players to at least get him to challenge to keep the season alive as Bowyer did after Adkins was sacked. And also a basis for summer window and next season. Like Bowyer.
But how much influence does Appleton have in the window, how much will the owners finance it, who will be sold, who will want to come to a mid table L1 club and are we going to end up with a mismatch of signings and Appleton doesn’t deliver gets the sack and we are on rinse and repeat in June.
Conundrum is one word for it.
Hi CA. Hope you have had a splendid Christmas, apart from the football of course. Just fighting my way to the surface of all the doom and gloom with a couple of questions for you – a Christmas quiz if you like.
1. I was under the impression that we were swimming in analysts at the Club these days – how difficult is it to get all their data and work out what the difference was between the Barnsley performance and the Burton one? What are they being paid for? Actually, we could all save the club the money as we all know the answer. It was about tempo and desire – these players are perfectly capable of playing well enough in this division despite what you all say.
2. When people talk of ‘the owners’ sacking Scott/Appleton who the hell are they talking about? And the assumption that goes along with that is that they even give a toss. I doubt they could name many of our players – except the ones they are going to sell and get money for.
3. Do you honestly believe that CBT and Dobbo owe us anything? You could argue that about CBT I guess given his erratic performances, but poor old Dobbo. He actually deserves to play at a Club where the fans don’t boo him.
Chin up CA – it will get better one day.
A very nice Christmas thank you LP.
1. Good question
2. Agreed. Our Management Team actually picked the owners and not the other way around.
3. I don’t think fans boo Dobbo, but agree you wouldn’t blame them for moving.
Living far from the Valley these days I most certainly didn’t go to the Orient for any Christmas cheer. In fact, I wasn’t even prepared to fork out £10 to watch the game on Charlton TV. I did, however, watch a couple of minutes of the Sky Lowlights of the game. All I saw was the Charlton midfield and defence parting like the Red Sea every time the red shirts of Orient came forward… Yes, it’s ok for defenders to track a player to choose the optimum time to make an effective tackle, but how often did they just follow the man with the ball and just let him make his pass on the edge of our box? Far too many b*@@#y times, and from one of them came their goal…
If Appleton thinks the dross that he manages (with him being the top ‘drosser’ at the moment) can reach the play-offs then he really must be living on a different planet to the rest of us.
But enough gloom and doom for now as we reach out to the new year I will leave you CA with a cracker-like thought….
Why don’t you ever see a Charlton player walking a dog?
Because they can’t hold a lead……. Boom Boom
Happy new year one and all – it will be if we finish 20th or above… that’s about the level of our ambition at the moment.
That goal was one of the worst I’ve seen us concede – sure there have been worse individual errors – but the missed headers, the half-arsed punch clear, CBT not managing to get a foot on the ball while attempting to shield his man away from the ball, Edun’s decision to go to the ground and leave the back-door open and then a player was left unmarked that was more than a stream of mistakes -it highlighted the lack of communication and leadership in the team.
Elsewhere there were too many touches when we had the ball, too many sideways passes and long-balls were hopeful rather than targeted.
Ok, we’ve got a few players out injured, but what was Appleton doing playing a centre-forward wide right, a winger at number 10 and our other dedicated winger on the bench? The subs he made were too late – what did he see in the first 70 minutes that made him think that keeping with the starting XI was going to yield results?
A lot of attacking intent was directed at CBT – but he had little or no back-up, time and again when he had the ball he was double marked, former Addick Darren Pratley came over to stop him running inside, forcing him wide to put crosses over for our 5ft 9 centre-forward. No-one was making runs to take Pratley away from him or act as a release.
I hope that this was a bad result and the players stand up and take some responsibility.
SP – are we any better than we were under Holden?
MA’s best patch also came when he had a fully fit squad which Holden never did.
We have a weak squad with little or no depth to it and no real bench options – Tedic is our only other senior striker and there’s only Terell Thomas as a senior centre back and he’s really only a back-up. A manager needs options on the bench and it’s telling that MA’s spell of form ended when the injuries mounted up. It also seemed to end after Anthony Hayes left the club which might (or might not) be a factor.
Both managers have struggled with what they had and I’m sure MA is frustrated with the limitations of the squad size but what I don’t see is evidence of a strategy with him, we like to build from the back for example which is modern and something every team now likes to do that, but who is tasked with carrying the ball out of defence and looking for the next pass/link with midfield? Who collects the ball and takes it forward?
I thought it unfair to sack DH when so many first team players were injured and others not fully fit but there were apparently arguments behind the scenes and talk of rifts with one or two players.
I don’t want to see MA sacked if only because I’ve had enough of changing managers so frequently – experience tells me we’ll be here debating what went wrong all over again.