Jan 4
Andy Scott will tell you that he is blameless in the current mess the club finds itself in. He is all about long term strategy and can’t be held accountable for the gutless squad that was put together before he appeared on the payroll.
And you know what? I am going to humour him and play along with it, so come on Andy the floor is now yours.
Please click for moreLots more chatter around the January transfer window yesterday from Andy Scott. I do agree with him that January is a very tough window to trade in, but it will be interesting to see who the club can entice and how much real financial support they get from the new owners.
January will be a tell-tale month in many ways.
Please click for more“Charlton can confirm that Charlie Kirk has left the club by mutual consent.” (more)
This means that Kirk can get himself onto the free agent market and it gives Andy Scott more money to play with in January.
Please click for moreAlthough it wasn’t surprising to see us lose last night and exit the final cup competition of our season, it was a surprise that Michael Appleton refused to include Chem Campbell and James Abankwah in the matchday squad. There was also no place for Charlie Kirk, who clearly has played his last game in a Charlton shirt.
Please click for moreWell, or at best he’ll be back for the play-off’s. Okay, I’ll put the wine 🍷 down.
The news that the club cancelled Daniel Kanu’s loan at Southend this morning was only the prelude to the news that Miles Leaburn had surgery on his hamstring this morning and will be out for five months.
Please click for moreWe often see talk of pathways to first team football, which is a lot more of a windier path for goalkeepers.
Sam Walker is a great example of a player spotted at a young age, taken under the wing of a good academy system and then picked off by one of the big boys only then to see his career become one of a journeyman.
Please click for moreThe 23-year old Man City striker has signed on a season-long loan. He did get his L1 legs at Barnsley last season but mostly from the bench. He scored 4 goals.
Prior to that he scored 2 in 21 starts plus copious sub appearances for PEC Zwolle in the Eredivisie. That is not a particularly stunning goal record. He has never played for Man City, although their scouts saw something in the Serbian to give him a four-year contract
Please click for moreAs suggested earlier, the Irish born James Abankwah has signed on a season loan from Italian Serie A side Udinese.
The Italian side bought him for what was thought to have been a large transfer fee from League of Ireland team St. Patrick’s Athletic in January 2022. He has played twice for Udinese.
Please click for moreLuton Town’s Louie Watson has joined on loan .
Watson is another untried youngster joining a squad already brimming with untried youngsters.
Watson sounds as if he is more than deep lying playmaker, but he has had very little game time in recent seasons.
Please click for moreI am surprised by that, although it will be good for the young central defender’s development. I assume the loan has a call back for January.
Colchester are managed by Ben Garner of course, and should get plenty of game time.
Please click for moreUtility full back and free agent Tennai Watson has signed a permanent 2-year deal,
After Fankaty Dabo failed to pass another medical the Addicks turned their attention to Watson who left MK Dons in the summer.
Please click for moreSo, what did we find out yesterday.
Andy Scott will be the key decision maker in choosing a new manager, as well as bringing in and selling players this week. Andy is a busy man. Charlie Methven is keeping his counsel and the merry band of other investors and board members are silent.
Please click for moreGood luck to Jack, who never shirked a tackle or stopped running but from I saw was never good enough for L1, and MK Dons looks a good move for him.
Payne, 28, will spend the 2023/24 season at Stadium MK, where they have started really well under Graham Alexander.
Please click for moreNo, I’ve not heard of him either but let’s be frank he has to be better than Kirk and DJ.
I have seen more movement and heart in a statue than DJ when he can as sub on Saturday.
Please click for moreFankaty Dabo was due to sign on the same day as Alfie May in the first week of July, but failed his medical. In recent weeks Dean Holden has had the free agent training with the club and it appears the right-wing-back will accept a differently structured deal to sign this week.
By all accounts Dabo carries a long term injury that has been managed pretty successfully during his career. The Addicks’ medical picked it up, but he is fit, although probably not match fit, and has had part of a pre-season.
Please click for moreI quite liked what I saw and heard of Manny Egbo but he has been moved on by Dean Holden and will join his old mentor Ben Garner at Colchester.
I assume Egbo wasn’t happy playing second fiddle and Holden thinks Nathan Asiimwe is the new Trent Alexander Arnold after a couple of hours of men’s football.
Please clck for moreLeft wing back, centre-half, creative midfielder, winger, striker, striker.
Oh, sorry, I was dreaming of one of those cheesy memes announcing a new signing on the Charlton social media outlets. Then I woke up.
Instead on Charlton’s X page today they had Alan Curbishley rallying fans to attend The Valley on Tuesday. On CATV on Saturday afternoon Curbs was sending out a rallying cry for a strike partner for Alfie May.
Please click for more19-year old Aaron Henry has signed on a season’s loan to Crawley Town in L2. There is a break clause in January if we want to recall him.
Please click for moreMy optimism-ometer is a little bit more perkier this August than it has been in recent season eves.
Absolutely a lot more work needs to be done in the transfer market and we are missing players in key positions, but there is a month to go, and most clubs, not all, but most have been quite suppressed in the market so far.
Please click for moreI have never put much stock on results during pre-season, and it has never as far as I can remember been a harbinger for a good or poor season, yet today’s first half mauling by Aberdeen shows how much work there is left to do in the transfer window.
Holden looks glued to a 3-5-2 but he does not have the squad to play it, at least as of today, but he is the latest in what is getting to be a long line of Charlton manager’s that had a vision for a style of play but then never had to players to deliver it.
Please click for moreNow, that is a proper footballers name. I did read it as Terry Naylor first of all mind (one for the oldies that)
Terry Taylor, a young highly rated central midfielder with plenty of games under his belt and talked about positively in many circles.
Please click for moreThe arrival of a left footed left wing back in the hours before the Millwall friendly yesterday.
25-year old Tayo Edun signed from Blackburn for a small fee on a two-year contract, with the option of a third year. The fee is understood to be very much tied to sell-on clauses and performance-based add-ons, such as Charlton winning promotion.
Please click for moreAs the takeover edges to completion with Rich Cawley saying the EFL approval has been given, the club have announced the signing of midfielder Panutche Camará on a season-long loan from Ipswich Town.
Please click for moreAnd there he is. The ‘will he won’t he’ saga of Alfie May has concluded, and he will and has.
The 30-year old has signed a two-year deal with the option of a third year and will wear the no. 9 shirt.
Please click for moreL1 newcomers Carlisle Untied are set to sign Lancastrian born Sam Lavelle on a permanent deal. Lavelle made 41 appearances for the Addicks in two seasons.
Lavelle was signed on transfer deadline night in August 2021. I was never certain he was first or even a second choice buy that deadline day, and he had a mixed time at The Valley, often looking a little bit rabbit in the headlines, but also having some commanding games, especially in a back three.
Please click for moreIt looks as if all is not lost in the chase for Alfie May. Ever reliable Rich Cawley wrote today that the Addicks are moving closer to a deal for the Cheltenham man.
A fee in the range of £250-300,000 has been agreed but it sounds as if the structure of how that will be paid is still to be ironed out. That presumably due to the takeover.
Please click for moreIpswich’s Tunisian international looks to be high up on Dean Holden’s loan list. Whilst loan players normally come late in a transfer window it sounds as if Charlton have already lodged a season-long offer but are up against competition from Derby and Wycombe.
Plese click for moreAnother signing in the door tonight. 27 year old 6ft 3 central defender Lloyd Jones has signed a 2-year deal after his current contract with Cambridge United expired today.
That really should be it from a central defence point of view with Hector, Ness, Thomas, Jones, Mitchell and Elerewe all competing for a first team place. It is expected that Sam Lavelle will move on.
please click for moreI look forward to the drama that will surround a signing that we might actually part cash for. Social Media came alive this evening as the club announced the 12-month contract for Michael Hector.
The 30-year old Londoner has resigned for a year after making 17 appearances last season when he was a free agent.
Please click for moreThe summer ‘are we aren’t we saga’ of Alfie May looks like coming to a conclusion with the Cheltenham striker choosing Gillingham.
The Gills, under new ownership, are throwing money around and have already made three signings including Jonny Williams.
Please click for moreThe 26-year-old goalkeeper has signed with the Addicks on a two-year deal, with the option of a third year, from Luton Town after the expiration of his contract.
Isted had been at Luton since 2017 but only played 3 games. He has spent a lot of his career being on loan in non-league but was given a chance at Barnsley on loan for the second-half of last season and played 22 times including in the play-off final where he was excellent.
Please click for moreJoe Wollacott has signed on a permanent deal with Scottish Premier League’s Hibernian. The fee is undisclosed.
Once Dean Holden made it clear that Ashley Maynard-Brewer was his no. 1 choice, Joe’s future was always going to be away from The Valley, and at Hibs, who will also taste European football next year, he get’s an opportunity to play games and make a stake for a Ghana place.
Please click for moreAnother update about having no update today by current CEO Peter Storrie.
It does sound like this takeover is a long way from being finalized, and who’s hand is at the wheel and in who’s pocket it is in when it comes to transfer activity is very mystifying.
Please click for moreThat must be the first time I have ever heard a manager say they actually want a smaller squad.
“….In my opinion, a squad that was too big. We were leaving five or six players, sometimes more, at home during away games. At times we were looking to do an 11-v-11 in training – say on a Tuesday with a Saturday game on the horizon – and we were having to tell three or four players that they wouldn’t be involved in that and that they would be training with the U21s.” – Dean Holden
Please click for moreI was considering what my final thoughts were on the January transfer window following on from the speedy but worthy comments from Albury and Drinking.
It is noticeable that every player we released went to clubs below us, O’Connell to Wrexham being the oddity. They were replaced by players that have played at a higher level, ignoring whether they are anywhere near fit to play.
Please click for moreThe first signing of transfer deadline day, was the loan signing of Irish midfielder Gavin Kilkenny from Bournemouth.
The 22-year old was on loan at Stoke City the first part of this season, and is where Dean Holden knows him. Kilkenny only played in three games and the last time was in August.
Please click for moreThomas Sandgaard completed his cost cutting on the chime of 11pm tonight as both Diallang Jaiyesimi and Sam Lavelle were sent on loan to AFC Wimbledon and Burton respectively.
Incredibly DJ was still allowed to move out even though Wigan winger Gwion Edwards’ move to SE7 collapsed, supposedly due to a medical issue.
Please click for moreWhat is that about. Signed in the summer on a long term contract that was championed as laying down a mark for the future, 22 apperances later we flog him to Wrexham because they wave a wad of money in our faces
O’Connell was decent enough for this level, we were relying on him prior to his injury, and now he is gone.
Please click for moreI write this before going to bed in Colorado, and 7 hours behind the UK. Transfer windows, particularly January ones have not been kind to us, and I still have nightmares about ‘super duper’ phones and fake wealthy sheiks bearing big budgets.
At the beginning of this transfer window we were given a whole new management team promising a busy window and one that will have us much stronger by the end of it, possibly enabling us to make a run for the play-off’s.
Please click for moreAnother out today as Jayden Stockley moves to Fleetwood Town in a permanent fee for an undisclosed fee. A quick tap at the calculator tells me that the club are currently sitting comfortably in the black thus far this transfer window.
Whilst that is clear, where that money is going is not.
Please read for moreMidfielder Conor McGrandles has joined Cambridge United on loan until the end of the season.
The 27-year old moved to The Valley in the summer and has started just 2 league games due to a couple of freakish injuries and then when he has had the opportunity, he hasn’t in all honesty impressed.
Please click for moreMatt Penney, a left-footed left back, has signed on loan from Ipswich Town until the end of the season.
Stories were emanating that a new signing was due to be involved at Peterborough this afternoon, and the club later announced that 24-year old Penney had dropped.…
Please click for moreThe injury curse of new signings strikes again.
Todd Kane, who showed promise in the first half on Saturday even though he was switched to left back just before kick off is now sidelined for a ‘number of weeks’ with a hamstring injury.
Please click for moreIt became two in and two out yesterday with Craig MacGillivray leaving the club on a permanent transfer to Burton Albion.
MacGillivray was Portsmouth POTY the season before he moved to us, but he never convinced and used to make me very nervous when the ball was at his feet. He wasn’t particularly dominant at set-pieces, but I am sure somewhere online you can find a compilation of great saves.
Please click for moreFollowing hot on the heels of the signing of Macauley Bonne, Coventry’s Todd Kane has signed on loan until the end of the season.
Kane and Dean Holden give their thoughts here, but also there is a bloke called Thomas Sandgaard, who appears from the abyss, and shares his broad footballing knowledge with us fans. How we have missed his opinion..
Please click for moreI do think it’s funny. We have the Sandgaard black box and we brought in ace-wheeler-dealer Andy Scott, and who do we sign? An ex-player, who we tried to sign in August and a player we have at least been in for twice previously.
Please click for moreThe first piece of January transfer business sees an exit for Jake Forster-Caskey on a permanent deal to Stevenage.
After this season mostly being an outcast, the 28-year leaves the club having played 128 games for the Addicks, scoring 13 goals.
Please click for moreAnd just when you thought that was our lot. Thomas splashes the cash signs an ex-academy player who is a free agent.
Probably very unfair on the 26-year old centre-half, who spent 8-years with our academy but never played a first team game, mostly I suspect due to the revolving door of foreign imports at that time…. I’ll give you Marco Motta.
Please click for moreOver promise and under deliver.
Whatever your feelings on signing Macauley Bonne, the cold facts are the club have waited 3 months after they let Conor Washington go, and 6 weeks since they sold Josh Davison to AFC Wimbledon and waited until the very last seconds of deadline day to try to sign a striker who used to play for us. Martin Sandgaard’s data analytics must be top notch.
Please click for moreMidfielder Alex Gilbey has moved to League 2 side Stevenage managed by the inimitable Steve Evans on a season-long loan. There is a call back option in January.
Please click for more“Yeah, of course. We’re looking to see if we can stretch the other defence a little more – someone able to run in behind and create that confusion. We’ve seen that already, that it has been a little too easy for opposing defences to cut us off.”
Please click for moreWe have had some very depressing transfer deadlines with players sold from under our noses. The noises coming from within the club have been pretty honest in that it’s very apparent that we have to sell before we buy, and many players look to be on the block this week.
Charlie Kirk, Jake Forster-Caskey, Alex Gilbey, Craig MacGillivray, Jayden Stockley, Albie Morgan and Sean Clare could all be subject to bids this week. The squad is already paper-thin so making sure we have replacements is the most basic principle.
Please click for moreAre we really going to try to offload DJ, Alex Gilbey, JFC and Craig MacGillivray before the window closes? How light do we need this wage bill to be? And how many do we have to sell to add?
The bench is already packed full of youngsters, and players like Aaron Henry need a loan deal to stop their progress being blunted like Albie Morgan’s was.
Please click for moreAlex Gilbey has a few suitors as he decides, or more likely Ben Garner decides if the midfielder’s future is away from The Valley.
I suspect it will be demand of the owner that Garner moves one on from his first team squad to make room for a replacement, likely to be a left-sided centre-half I’m led to believe.
Please click for moreThe name of yesterday’s 7th summer signing had been on Addicks’ lips for a while, despite the tongue twister.
19-year old Jesurun Rak-Sakyi has joined from Crystal Palace for a season long loan. The assumption for the delay was that Rak-Sakyi was negotiating a new 5-year contract with our rivals plus the emergence of plenty of competition for the winger’s signature including Cardiff and Birmingham offering Championship football.
Please click for moreWouldn’t we just love to have that echoing around The Valley. We’d all like nothing more than seeing Miles Leaburn make it big (no pun intended), but although physically he is strong, there have been too many examples over the years of young players being thrown in too early, despite what both Thomas Sandgaard and Ben Garner says.
Ben Garner will know what is needed and has inherited a physical aerial striker in Jayden Stockley, who does not suit Garner’s system, and in Garner’s words “a deconditioned” striker in Chuks Aneke, who already has injury concerns a week before the real business starts.
Please click for moreJosh Davison has joined Johnnie Jackson’s AFC Wimbledon on a 3-year deal for an undisclosed fee.
22-year old Davison joined in October 2019 and played 35 times, scoring 6 goals.
Please click for moreLooks as if Jack Payne will be the next Ben Garner acquisition as the new Addicks’ boss raids his old club once more.
27-year old Payne can play as an 8 or a 10, and turned down a very good offer to apparently take lower wages at Charlton. Payne will have a medical today before being announced tomorrow.
Please click for moreHot on the news of the club open to selling Jake Forster Caskey, it is also appears that Josh Davison could also be gone by the time the transfer window is closed.
JFC was only offered a new contract a few months back after fighting back from another long-term injury. None of us really know if the 2020/21 POTY can rediscover that form, but central midfield is an area where the squad is more than adequate and it looks as if Ben Garner would rather move JFC on over Albie Morgan and Alex Gilbey.
Please click for moreIt sounds as if the first loan slot will be taken by Fulham’s versatile 22-year old Steven Sessegnon. His twin brother is at Tottenham.
Steven is comfortably two-footed and can play either at left or right back, and I presume with the squad number limit an issue, his adaptability will be important.
Please click for moreA surprise late signing tonight when not long after the club unveiled it’s new website, the first news article which looked like a test page, announced a new signing.
That is 26-year old midfield playmaker Conor McGrandles. Falkirk born McGrandles turned down a new contract with Lincoln City and in a ‘Dale Stephens move’ signed a three-year contract with Charlton after declaring he was homesick.
Please click for moreThat might explain why Ashley Maynard-Brewer wasn’t in Spain, although I think he was spotted in Australia, The Highlands and Tesco in Dartford.
Another transfer move that swung under the radar today with AMB moving to Gillingham for the season, although the Addicks do have a recall option.
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Happy Halloween
Sarasota, Florida
