Chris Powell | Chicago Addick

Jan 4

Finally. Good riddance

Good riddance to old fruit loop rubbish. 6 years to the day that Roland Duchatelet added Charlton to his football club collection, we are rid of the old scroat after the EFL finally ratified East Street Investments purchase for a sum guessed to be in the £50m range.

After the narcissist ownership of Tony Jimenez and Michael Slater backed by the secretive and shall we say complicated assets of Kevin Cash, we were very glad then to see a new owner with fresh ideas take the club on in January 2014. Especially after Cash cut Jimenez’s credit card up and for the longest time the club survived on a shoestring.

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Dec 31

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Happy New Year

It’s hard to even fathom that 20 years ago today we were at work unsure as to whether the computers would even come back on after we came back from the new Millennia celebration. Millennials can look up that near calamity here.

2019 has flown by, work has been the busiest I have known it since I’ve been in Bermuda, the results have been bloody good though, but absolutely exhausting and it didn’t surprise me to just be told I have almost 4 weeks holiday left for the year.

My predilection for travelling has thus taken a backward seat this year, for which I’m very disappointed with myself. Good news though is that after years of attempting to renovate a house in Sarasota, Florida, which has veered from the tortuous to the exorbitant, it may finally become liveable so that is an exciting development and will be a home from home.

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Oct 22

Managerial Addicks

Phil Parkinson’s recent appointment at Sunderland and Gary Rowett’s move to our south-east London neighbours got me thinking of other Charlton connections currently in managerial positions around the leagues.

We all admire Parky, who quietly and almost successfully attempted to rebuild the damage caused by his old mate Alan Pardew with a millionth of the budget. But even the Roman’s would have had difficulty rebuilding the destruction Pardew left behind. The Spiv’s moved him on and replaced him with a certain Chris Powell, and the rest was history. Powell is now part of the England coaching set-up.

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Oct 5

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Fulham 2 Charlton Athletic 2

It’s great this division isn’t it? So proud of the boys today who fully deserved their point in front of the cameras in which Scott Minto, Lyle Taylor and Chris Powell also proudly watched on.

Fulham probably have the best roster of players in the league, and in a space of a week we have met three of the biggest promotion contenders, and we have ended it with our heads held high.

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Jul 27

He’s only 5ft 3

A big day for Chris Solly, one of our most popular players in what has been a topsy turvey last decade for the club. Solly’s debut was as a substitute in the last game of our wretched Championship relegation season in 2008/9.

That team and the one the next season never really gelled with me as we missed out in the play-offs under Phil Parkinson. Yet youngsters like Solly, Scott Wagstaff and Jonjo Shelvey were little specks of light in a dark tunnel that Chris Powell drove us out of at full speed.

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Mar 26

Sir Chris sacked

Southend United have sacked Chris Powell today with 7 league games left.

In a very short statement the club said: “The results over a number of weeks, 11 games without a win, has impacted all concerned and immediate changes needed to be made.”

The Shrimpers were buzzing around the play-off’s prior to Christmas, but have not won since the middle of January.

The debate about how good a manager Sir Chris is will go on. It is clear he is not a firefighter manager but a builder of teams. Trouble is very few clubs allow time or finances for that. Southend was a bit of a safe haven for Powell, but he hasn’t put his mark on it, and a top half finish would have given him another season at least.

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Feb 9

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Charlton Athletic 1 Southend United 1

Very disappointed with that. It’s still bugging me now. At least my hangover has gone. 70 minutes against 10-men, we’d waste time in the same situation, and we couldn’t find the second goal. Lots of huffing, puffing and effort but ultimately not good enough again. No pressure Lyle..

So that’s just 2 points from 9 and a different mood is enveloping us now to that of a few weeks ago as Luton look unstoppable and Barnsley are putting a very nice run together.

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Sep 1

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Southend United 1 Charlton Athletic 2

What happened? I listened to the 1st half and there wasn’t much to get excited about. At half time I had to go out for the remainder of the afternoon. Later I checked the final score and all hell had let loose.

Grant did well to win the ball out wide and feed Lyle Taylor who tapped home. But then Southend equalized within a couple of minutes. After that Grant had a goal scratched off for offside, but Tarique Fosu was on and was getting in some good positions. From a corner in the 87th minute, Josh Cullen put in an accurate ball and Krystian Bielik headed crisply home in front of 1,600 travelling Addicks.

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Jun 21

3 Comments

Sunderland away at lunchtime

Perfect. 600 mile round trip on opening day and because our new friends Sky fancy it, the game will kick off at 12.30pm. Nice for those of you that wanted to see the team in the flesh on opening day. Wait, we may even have ~~new owners sat in the stand~~ the old scrote in his laboratory watching on his Belgian telly..

This is followed by our new big rivals Shrewsbury Town at The Valley the week after, then the club’s first ever trip to Accrington Stanley and a game under the lights in SE7 home to Peterborough.

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Apr 18

Chris Powell & Prostate Cancer UK

Thank you to Shadow Play for flagging in my comments that Sir Chris Powell is running the London Marathon on Sunday for the charity Prostate Cancer UK. Chris has been a long time ambassador for the charity and it is rare that he is ever seen without the charities pin on his lapel.

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Apr 5

Bermuda wins first gold

I like the Commonwealth Games, it gives lesser nations and athletes a chance on a big stage. Bermuda has only ever won one medal at an Olympics, and five at a Commonwealth Games, the last being a bronze in ten-pin bowling in 1998. Luckily for the rest of the Commonwealth there isn’t a rum drinking contest, because they may have medalled in that as well.

Flora Duffy is the women’s world number one in triathlon, so it was no surprise that she won gold last night in the Gold Coast’s first medal final. She surprisingly missed out on a place at the last Olympics, but has emerged as the world’s best since winning the last two ITU world titles, and despite the weight of 63,000 Bermudians on her strong shoulders she romped home 43 seconds ahead of England’s Jessica Learmonth to claim gold.

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Jan 23

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Chris Powell back in the game

On the back of a Kent Live survey showing overwhelming support for Karl Robinson (I’m not sure what the sample was), the last man to have such support, Chris Powell, has been appointed the new manager of Southend United.

Powell played 290 times for the Shrimpers between 1990 and 1996 before moving to Derby County for £750,000.

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Jun 11

6 Comments

Odd

Would you hire a new employee without speaking to him?

“Charlton Athletic’s new striker Billy Clarke revealed he never met Karl Robinson prior to signing for the club – only having the briefest of chats (on the phone).” More

Just seems a little odd to me. No conversation on a vision, goals, objectives or what KR would demand of Clarke and the other way around.

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Dec 19

8 Comments

Duchatelet opens his gob again

Tom Rubashow must be rubbing his hands at getting his feet under the desk at Charlton. He is set to start work for the club on January 2nd. If I was him I wouldn’t bother.

The mad crackpot Roland Duchatelet has opened his mouth again:

“He (Chris Powell) is not a clever person and those who think the same are also not clever. In principle we were giving them the advice so they had responsibility and could take responsibility and that is how we work. I find it very stupid that a person who is getting help, an important person for the club, does not accept it. I also find that the activists, some activists at the club, who from their reactions think the coach was right, well they are just stupid people too.”

Dave has it all here.

The video interview is here starting at 1.08.30. Watch him squirm.
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Mar 11

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Funeral march

Fans from the Coalition Against Roland Duchatelet (CARD) will carry a coffin to The Valley 45 minutes before Sunday’s televised kick-off to symbolise what the club’s owner and chief executive Katrien Meire have done to the Addicks, and they are inviting supporters to line the route to pay their respects.

The mock funeral procession will kick off what CARD intends to be an afternoon of protest and unrest. Other protests are planned that will become apparent during the game, showing live to a national audience.

A CARD spokesman said: “This is not just about the team’s prospects, although they look very grim. It is a measure of the damage being done to Charlton by Duchatelet and Meire, which is unlikely to end with relegation. They are destroying decades of work to build up our club in the name of a soulless experiment conducted by remote control from Belgium. This is not the Charlton Athletic that has been a vital part of so many people’s lives for decades.
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