Ready or not
105 days will have passed since the final game of last season and Saturday’s opening day of the new one.
We had the World Cup in the middle, but it’s been a long wait, and although the EFL tried, last week’s Carabao Cup game still didn’t feel like the beginning of the season.
So, here we are then. Ready or not, the new Championship season is upon us.
I’ve done a little reading this week and started to wade through the numerous podcasts and it sounds as if a lot of clubs right down the pyramid had a summer window disrupted, so with still more than two weeks to go before the deadline I think we can expect plenty of activity.
The challenge of The Championship becomes harder still. More money has been spent, especially now with the dream of the Premier League extending to 8th place, and the experts and bookies have us down for a relegation dogfight.
For those of you that subscribe to Rich Cawley’s Substack then you may have already read my prognosis of the upcoming season, which I was invited to do alongside Addick luminaries. If you don’t subscribe, then you really should.
I will below attempt to add a bit more timber to my predictions on Rich’s article.
I think we should be under no illusion that this season will be difficult. There will be some bitter pills to swallow on day’s and night’s following games, but I expect again that Jones will have us competing in almost every match. Patience and togetherness will be imperative and I hope again that we all stick together because where we are now is a damn better place to be than where we’ve teetered for many pre season’s in the last 10 to 15 years.
The team build is and was always going to be an evolution and not revolution. I believe we have yet to see the ruthlessness that we were promised but there is still time, and players that we warmed to will no doubt leave in this window.
We haven’t signed that next level creative midfielder but I am looking forward to seeing Chalobah and Ouma play together, but I do suspect we will still see Coventry and Docherty, who I think Jones will want to keep around the place, at least until January.
Goalkeeper is an issue, which as we heard today, may take an unexpected turn, but although both Kaminski and Mannion are creditable, neither are going to help us get to the next level.
The change in formation could be season-defining. The singular biggest gripe among fans last season was the style of play, but we played to our strengths that were planted in the promotion season and achieved our goal.
4–2–3–1 is a progressive change and Jones has signed players to play this way. Interestingly within the existing squad, Rankin-Costello, TC, Apter and Knibbs should all be able to contribute more.
Jones still has the options to revert to a back five, and I would be shocked if he didn’t do this on the road. Not every game, but I do think we will see that.
Bell, Ramsey, perhaps even Lloyd Jones are better suited to a three, so it will be interesting (not sure if that is the right word) to how they evolve into a back four. And I’ll go back to the goalkeeper conundrum, in that they will probably be much busier than in a lot of games last season, and the command of their area and the communication will be essential.
Nathan Jones loves the ‘front foot’ saying, but that is what we really hope to see next season. In Grant, Alli, Apter and TC plus Chalobah and Ouma we have players that can move the ball up the field with pace and or precision. We were really poor at that last season.
As I said in the article picking a best new signing without seeing them in a red shirt is a game I don’t play. Koumetio and I would say Sichenje were signed with a view to playing four at the back and I am particularly looking forward to seeing Big Billy.
Goals need to be shared and our survival will hinge on three or four players scoring 6, 7, 8 goals. Matt Godden is 35 now, but is still the most instinctive striker in our squad. His fitness and how the team in this more attack minded formation, feed him will be huge. Let’s get that golf swing out on a regular basis.
Finally, I don’t make predictions but I reckon we will be in a mini league with Lincoln, Cardiff, Bolton, Preston, Blackburn and Portsmouth. Possibly you can add QPR, West Brom and Watford, and then there always seems to be a sudden surprise relegation contender.
The goal is simple – gain more points than three of them.
Good starts are important, it bloody was last season, but it ain’t imperative but breaking the season into small chunks and being consistent in adding points to the overall total would alleviate the end of last season’s heartburn.
It is a results business but I tend to look for patterns and put substance over form especially in the early season. Form is temporary, class is permanent and whilst I am still looking for us to scrap and throw ourselves head first into every shot, we have to be an attacking threat in games, particularly those games where points are a must.
Right, I am ready. Let’s get behind the boys again home and away. There is nothing better than us all being in this together.
We’re stronger than last season – at least on paper. Billy Koumetio replaces Macauley Gillesphey, we have in Ivan Mesik a dedicated left back in replacing a loanee. In midfield we’ve added strength in Nathaniel Chalobah and Timothy Ouma plus Karlan Grant and Milli Alli. All look better players than the ones they replaced. But we need to resolve the goalkeeper problem and need a bit more striking power.
The World Cup has been a distraction for Charlton but it’s the same for all other clubs and we also have to keep within the Squad Cost Rules system which is more restrictive than the old profit and sustainability system. It doesn’t do clubs with low turnovers any favours.
We need to move a few players on and that’s going to be tricky, some of those who we want to trade on will have to take a pay cut and why should they do that? So I expect a few more loans.
Off the park the senior management team have a done a good job in rebuilding the club’s finances – there’s more work to be done there, year on year things are going in the right direction and that gives us more room to play with over the next few years.
Derby in the first league game will be a real test. They very nearly got into the play offs last season and would have made it under the new system. It’s a long season but wouldn’t it be good all round for morale if we could somehow start off with a win?
We will know so much more about our new signings by 5.00 pm on Saturday. Personally, I think that this season will be a long and hard struggle but I also think that we will stay up and go on to become an established Championship team. It may take us a lot longer to get to the Premiership than it took us to get out of League Division 1, though. At the moment, promotion is a distant dream, but was it so bad in the late 50s and 60s when the then Division 2 became our home?