Jun 14
The first of the unwantables has left the club. Signed two years ago, we never saw anything like the best of the deep-lying midfielder who had played over 200 games before he joined us.
McGrandles leaves us after playing just 19 times in two seasons.
Please click for more20 years ago today I was sat in my apartment in Chicago with dial up internet, and using some early Blog templates I penned my first Blog post.
I hadn’t long been back from the pub after watching England concede two injury time Zinedine Zidane goals in the first group game of Euro 2004. You can never accuse this Blog of dripping in football success!
Please click for moreThe Addicks announced their first summer signing today. No surprises in that it was goalkeeper Will Mannion, who will join once his Cambridge United contract expires at the end of this month.
Mannion finished the season as Cambridge’s number one, but his career, which matches many goalies, has been stop, start.
Please click for moreThe continuation of 20 Places and 20 Players to put a stamp on my 20 years of Blogging.
Back to the Places then, and one that will always bring back great memories…. Magaluf in Mallorca.
Please cick for moreBoth Ashley Maynard Brewer and Harry Isted are under contact, AMB until 2026 and Isted until 2025 yet it seems that Nathan Jones does not have them in his go forward plans.
Jones looks to be actively seeking goalkeepers in the market, and not just one but two.
Please click for moreTo commemorate 20 years of the existence of this Blog I’m selecting 20 Players and 20 Places that mean the most to me. No order or ranking.
My next in line for my 20 Players is Mark Kinsella.
Please click for moreThe club has given supporters an update on what to expect from CATV next season. This follows the news of the new Sky Sports EFL deal.
As expected we won’t have the weekly pre and post match show, but there will be a monthly show with Minto, Curbs & Brownie.
Please click for moreThe continuation of my 20 Players to salute my 20 Years of Blogging.
No ranking, no preference, just 20 Charlton Players that have left an indelible mark on me. No. 3 Alan Simonsen.
Please click for moreSounding as if there is some early transfer activity planned by the Addicks when the window opens on June 14th. This is exactly what Nathan Jones has hoped for.
Three players have been linked in the last day or two. Luke Berry, goalkeeper Will Mannion and Josh Edwards.
Please click for moreThis Blog began life as a diary of my formative months living in Chicago on my own. 20 years later a lot of things have changed but this journal predominantly still chronicles my support of Charlton Athletic and my travels.
To commemorate 20 years in no particular order I will choose 20 Players and 20 Places that have left a mark on me. Next one of the Places is Los Cabos in Mexico.
Please click for more20 Players and 20 Places to celebrate my 20 years of writing this Blog. No order, no ranking, just those that were meaningful in my life.
This is the first Place of 20 that has stuck with me, the volcanic playground of the Caribbean island of St. Barts, or Saint Barthélemy in the French West Indies.
Please click for moreI had been keeping an eye on when Luton Town‘s issue their released list, and it came out today.
It made sense in the law of putting two and two together to see if it threw up any obvious Nathan Jones’ previous connections.
Please click for moreGood news to see that The Valley shop has come back under club control.
It’s the little things isn’t it, and for me the demise of the club shop under third rate, third party control mirrored the whole leadership of the club under third rate, third party control.
Please click for moreNo order to these, not even alphabetical but the next one of 20 players picked to commemorate my 20 years of Blogging is Chris Powell.
Loved by Southend fans, lauded by Derby County fans, he was signed by Curbs in the summer of 1998 after we won the play-off final for £850,000 and Powell was instrumental in helping us get back to the Premier League.
Please click for moreA bit of a turn up that. Bolton just didn’t show up and Oxford were worthy winners.
That means that we keep both Peterborough and Bolton as well Barnsley and welcome Birmingham City, Huddersfield Town, Rotherham, Stockport, Wrexham and Mansfield. Crawley and Crewe meet at Wembley tomorrow to decide our last remaining opponent for next season.
Please click for moreRemember these will be in no particular order, but for my first player pick to commemorate 20 years of Blogging, I had to begin with Colin Powell.
Colin ‘Paddy’ Powell was my first favourite player after I starting going to The Valley at the beginning of the 1975/76 season, a year after Powell, Hales and Horsfield had fired Andy Nelson’s attack-at-all-costs Charlton to promotion.
Please click for moreA little bit of pre-transfer window season angst amongst some Addicks surrounding Thierry Small.
Nathan Jones was 100% behind Small having his contract mutually cancelled by Southampton and being offered a short term deal at The Valley just as he was signing his own deal with the club.
Please click for moreWe have been told the length of Tyreece Campbell’s new contract.
“The 20-year-old winger, who joined the Addicks at U9 level, has signed a two-year deal, with a club option of an additional year.” (more)
Please click for moreWe are all creatures of habit, but about the only good thing about being stranded in the lower reaches of the league pyramid is that Charlton fans have mostly been able to hang onto the traditional Saturday at 3pm kick off.
3pm on Saturday is in every football fan’s DNA, especially if you are attending the game itself, but even if you aren’t.
Please click for moreA month from today this Blog celebrates its 20th birthday, for which I have a binary sense of immense pride as well as complete amazement.
I was 30 something when I started penning these pages in June 2004, living on my own in an apartment in Chicago, and England were about to have another ignominious exit from a major championship on penalties.
Please click for moreMay 8
I’m not normally one to dwell on season’s past, especially crap ones, but I had ten minutes and was toying with some thoughts around if there was actually anything positive to say at all about the last nine months.
We began the season being fed the tag line of ‘new team, new era’ which coupled with Andy Scott pushing the mantra of ‘action not words’ told us in hindsight all we needed to know of what a cycle of incompetence we were to expect.
Please click for moreThe Glades would’ve been quiet today.
Congratulations to Bromley on their promotion to join the 92 football league clubs this afternoon after beating Solihull Moors on penalties.
Please click for moreI had no doubt that Birmingham would win today. I was at St. Andrew’s for the last game of the 1992/93 season when the Blues had to beat Charlton to stay up.
Saying the atmosphere was hostile does not do it justice and if Peter Garland’s shot had gone in instead of hitting the post I feared we would not got out alive.
Please click for moreCharlton have issued the names of players that will leave and stay for next season.
The only player offered a new deal was Tyreece Campbell, who has signed a new unknown length contract.
Please click for moreOn June 13th, 2024 this Blog celebrates its 20th birthday, for which I have a binary sense of immense pride as well as complete amazement.
I was 30 something when I started penning these pages in June 2004, living on my own in an apartment in Chicago, and England were about to have another ignominious exit from a major championship on penalties.
Read moreOnly Chris himself and Lee Bowyer will know what happened during a conversation at the end of the COVID delayed 2019/20 season.
Lyle Taylor has since gone on to be loathed by Addicks for declaring that he would not play, instead waiting to run his contract down before he got his big money move to Nottingham Forest.
Please click for moreFor the second year in a row SE7’s Charlton Athletic was engraved on the London Senior Cup after beating Hendon 2-1 tonight at Champion Hill, home to Dulwich Hamlet.
Young hot prospect Patrick Casey scored both goals in the first half, his 37th and 38th goals of the season.
Please click for moreWith a record breaking 82% of the vote 27-goal Alfie May won Sunday’s POTY award voted for by supporter’s.
In 2nd place was George Dobson and 3rd was Terell Thomas, somewhat surprisingly but I bet that the top two made up about 98% of the vote and the rest was shared amongst a number of players.
Please click for moreCongratulations to Alfie May on his League One Golden Boot win. He truly is a very nice bloke. Lovely interview with him here.
May’s 23 goals are the most by an Addick in a league season since Andy Hunt who scored one more 24 season’s ago.
Only Bradley Wright-Phillips and Lyle Taylor have scored 20 or more goals for us in those intervening years.
Please click for moreAnd the season finally slams shut, and locked and thrown in the river tied to a concrete slab!
More defensive clumsiness followed by a gift of what was the decisive penalty was an apt way to finish the season ending a 14-game unbeaten run.
Please click for moreMore evidence of investment by the club’s owners in that today they have announced the installation of a new Valley pitch this summer.
“Work begins on the pitch in May to ensure everything is in place for the men’s first-team’s final pre-season friendly on Saturday, August 3rd.” (more)
Please click for moreWycombe has all but sold out for Saturday’s early kick off – remember it’s a 12.30 start (7.30am here in Florida).
It’s another fantastic effort by Addicks for a dead rubber that closes down a season which will end with our worst league placing since 1926.
Please click for moreThe Addicks U21 side are through to the London Senior Cup final for the second consecutive season after beating the Met Police tonight 2-1.
Haringey Borough were beaten last year and this year the opponents will be Hendon, who play in the Southern League Premier South.
Please click for moreThe conversation on whether George Dobson will stay or leave in the summer has got louder and louder these past few weeks. There are over 3,300 comments on the Charlton Life Forum, and Nathan Jones spent the bulk of his post game chat throwing the club’s decision makers under the bus whilst singing George’s praises.
The people that matter – those that were witness to the deal in the first place including Fehérvár, George’s agent, Andy Scott and George himself have been pretty silent on the matter.
Please click for moreDraw no. 20. Very disappointing to finish off without a win, but at least The Valley had George Dobson to serenade on his final Valley appearance.
Please click for moreA interesting decision to trigger Lucas Ness’ contract for a final year. The 22-year old has had exactly 33 minutes of football under Nathan Jones and has appeared way down the pecking order behind Gillesphey, Hector, Thomas and Edmonds-Green.
I am always happy to see our academy players given an extra chance to prove themselves, and this is certainly that.
Please click for moreAfter 12 years languishing outside of The Championship, 7 in League One, Portsmouth finally found the secret sauce to get themselves back in there after coming from behind to beat Barnsley tonight and are crowned L1 champions.
We’ll miss those points we usually take off our long time peers, but Pompey are a proper club, so congratulations to them and their supporters.
Please click for moreAnother draw and more defensive ineptitudes in a game that summed up our season.
We should have scored more and despite a lot of balls into our box Isted was properly called into action once and failed to deal with a simple shot.
Please click for moreAs expected Sky TV and the EFL have shaken hands on a record domestic rights deal to show over 1,000 live games per season, thus closing down Sky Sports’ EFL red button coverage and the EFL’s domestic streaming option whether that was via iFollow or like in Charlton’s case their own streaming service.
Please click for moreA polar opposite game from Saturday as two mid table slides slogged it out in a quieter atmosphere.
The Addicks had enough chances to win the game but had to settle for their 18th draw of the season, the most in all of the EFL.
Please click for moreBarnsley have been good since they came down and they play very expansive, which allowed us to really exploit spaces on the pitch.
It was a very entertaining game and a really good Addicks’ performance which gave us the 3 points in front of a pumped up Valley.
Please click for moreThe conspiracy theorists, and I live in America and have got to meet a fair few, would say that Lloyd Jones’ apparent kidnapping after having an injection almost a month ago might be more to do with his new boss finding out about this.
Please click for moreAnother game of scarce quality, and this against a team attempting to get promoted.
A clean sheet has a been a forgotten prize, and I’ll take it, but the football on show, the passing, the basics was awful.
Please click for moreThat was poor at best and rubbish at worst.
Our passing was especially bad, with long balls continually over hit and short passes often loose, yet we came away with a point and should have won it deep in injury time.
Please click for moreA sign that the season is coming to a close with the voting starting for the Addicks 2023/24 POTY award.
Last season the winner was loanee Jesurun Rak-Sakyi, but I don’t see any loan player, and we’ve had eight, getting even a single vote.
Please click for moreA few weeks back I’d have been happy to have a free Saturday away from the despair of football, but fast forward a few weeks and I found myself a little bit forlorn, especially as I was home alone with the dog as the girls were across the state at a swim meet.
Please click for moreIt was a free week at The Valley but the club put out a statement from the ownership and also issued the pricing for next season’s season tickets.
Along with that there was also the surprise intention to make a thousand places safe standing at the back of the Covered End.
Please click for moreThe game stank, and although for the hundredth time we contrived to gift another a goal, neither team deserved to win the game which had zero quality.
The pitch was atrocious but throughout I felt all we needed to do was get the ball down and put three quick passes together and we would create openings and win the game, but that was beyond us.
Please click for moreNathan Joines confirmed yesterday that once Kazenga LuaLua resolves his contract issues with Greek club Levadiakos then he will sign with the Addicks until the end of the season.
Fitness doesn’t sound a problem: “He’s one of those physical phenomenons that you could chuck him on the moon for a year and he’d come back and be able to be potent for a certain amount of minutes,” Jones said yesterday.
Please click for moreI have to tell you it is still making me smile. Watching Nathan Jones clap along to his own song bellowed out from the Covered End after the game on Saturday. He did the same at Cheltenham in the week.
Bearing in mind what we have been used to, Jones’ interviews and antics are a joy to watch.
Please click for moreI didn’t get to watch the game and instead followed on a dodgy signal from a vast swimming arena in the middle of Florida, an area that boasts being America’s equestrian capital, but is clearly lacking in cell towers!
It did not sound either pretty or straightforward, but it was a precious home win, the first for over three months.
Please click for moreMy first thoughts are that is probably Chuks done for the season or at least a big chunk of what is left.
I can’t see what other reason we’d sign Connor Wickham although he apparently has been training with the club for the past two weeks.
Please click for more“We will get better” says Nathan Jones and I think we can see the groundwork of a team that will, but at the moment displays such as the one at Cheltenham are what we are going to be fed.
Games like Tuesday are a blunt reminder of what level we are at, but also, starkly, at what parameters of fitness and battling instinct we need to consistently be at to get success in this league.
Please click for moreJob done tonight in Gloucestershire, but it was not easy on the eye.
Contrasting halves neither pretty, but we finished strong and we now sit in the rarefied air of 14th, and although teams below us have games in hand they all play each other.
Please click for moreThe only way we were going to concede today was by a mistake and it just shows that they are still lurking within us.
A dreadful error from Harry Isted gifted Northampton a point with their only chance of the game 10 minutes before the end. When will these goalkeepers realise they are not Ederson.
Please click for moreHow good did that feel?
When Karoy Anderson’s arrow of a shot hit the roof of the net plum, that indescribable feeling of euphoria was back, right there, inside, beating.
Please click for moreIt has been interesting to see the team’s that Nathan Jones has picked so far.
Derby tomorrow will be his fifth game since taking over as manager and only four players have started every game. They are Harry Isted, Lloyd Jones, Terell Thomas and Tennai Watson.
Please click for moreIt’s took 22 games but finally a clean sheet against the league leaders today and another visible step in the right direction.
It wasn’t a classic but we matched Pompey tackle for tackle, header for header and tactic for tactic.
Please click for moreWell it hasn’t been ours in a footballing sense for about a decade.
In that long and painful period we’ve seen our two biggest rivals flourish, that was until this season and as the final lap of this season looms, both Crystal Palace and Millwall have hit the big red panic button. A fear and anxiety that we had pretty much copyrighted.
Please click for moreI wanted to promote a quiz night being held in memory of blogger Dave Thomson.
Dave lost his fight against cancer in November and fellow Addick Paul Breen has put together what looks like a great night.
Please click for moreThat’s more like it.
Something to get behind today winning an unlikely point against a very good side with the best home record in the league. Jones’ team pressed, chased and played with a fight and togetherness not seen in a Charlton team for what seems forever.
Please click for moreClinging onto branches of good things at the moment.
How up for it was Chuks Aneke when he came on last night? This photo taken by Paul Edwards was just a few seconds after he entered the pitch. Straight up to Lincoln’s two centre-halves banging into one and then giving them both some verbal.
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City of London
