Jul 1
Chris Solly is returning to the Addicks as an academy coach working with Jason Pearce.
Up until recently Solly was at Ebbsfleet but retired at the end of April. He was coaching there and doing his badges. Solly played 313 games for Charlton.
Please click for 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 moreWhereas Lyle Taylor is never slow in publicly making his feelings clear, sensibly or non-sensical, Chris Solly throughout his career has always kept one’s counsel.
Lost in the hand wringing and abomination of Taylor’s decision not to play for us again, Solly slunk away to a quiet corner after making his even more improbable choice.
Lyle Taylor has told Lee Bowyer that he won’t play for Charlton again when play resumes. His contract expires on June 30th, and does not want to risk injury and banish any lucrative summer move.
It’s hard to blame Taylor, or any player that doesn’t want to take the risk, but anyone that has seen Lyle’s recent interviews will have seen him disillusioned and infuriated about how the club’ owners have treated him.
Lee Bowyer cheery, positive and brutally honest in today’s pre-weekend press conference.
Cheery that he has an almost full squad to pick from, positive after last week’s crucial win and a high energy week of training, but brutally honest about some of his players.
There’s been many games this season where Bowyer could not name a full bench, but with Cullen, Taylor, Williams, Hemed, Oztumer, Forster-Caskey and Amos all fit enough for action and with Aneke and Lapslie to next two to come back, and then add in the three transfer deadline additions, Bow has for the first time in months choices.
Pah to the transfer window. Lee and Steve go on. Today 27-year old Welsh right back Adam Matthews signed a one-year deal after a successful trial.
Matthews played 28 games for Sunderland last season, even appearing in their final league game. He left in the summer due to his high wages, one of many still at the Stadium of Light signed in Premier League days. Sam Allardyce signed the then 23-year from Celtic for £2m in 2015, but within weeks Allardyce had gone and David Moyes was chosen. Relegation came next and four further managers, and a another relegation for Matthews to work under.
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.
I was disappointed that Aston Villa got promoted. Not because I don’t like them, because I do. I’ve had soft spot for them ever since that European Cup winning team. Who can forget Bremner, Withe, Shaw, Morley. Nigel Spink off to bench to play in goal.
Villa Park is a cathedral of a stadium. That day in the Premier League. May 1999. Robinson, Mendonca, Mills. Steve Brown in goal. What a day.
Not been very festive these Christmas games have they. We are well and truly stuck on the naughty list.
You can’t give a team of Barnsley’s quality, especially with their home records, a 2-0 head start. Apparently well taken goals, but we sounded all over the place and we allowed them to stretch us, and push us back towards our own goal. It was a very sluggish start and the game was all but over after a quarter of an hour.
That must have been an enjoyable walk through the allotments on the way out!? Absolutely fantastic to see us come back like that in injury time. In a crazy four minutes we hit the bar twice, had one of the line, and could have won a penalty. All before Chris Solly crashed a volley low into the net through a crowd of players.
It must have been brilliant to have been in that away end as the players celebrated wildly next to them, in front of the Luton fans (photo), giving it large after they failed to give us the ball back for the preceeding corner. Ah, football eh?
Jason Pearce will wear the captain’s armband next season but Chris Solly will takeover Jacko’s role as club captain. Seems like a nice resolution for both men, Pearce a visible leader and Solly, who this season celebrates 10 years, Charlton through and through.
I didn’t really want to give this more oxygen, but the club have made it newsworthy.
Charlton have made a statement following the video The Sun released yesterday showing current and former Charlton players in various state of drunkenness and abusing Northern Irish team mates Mikhail Kennedy and Josh Magennis. If you want to, you can see the video here but be aware the language is shocking and Mother’s favourite Chris Solly you will never look at again in the same way.
Sending a message..
That was a very good result in South Yorkshire today. There is the small matter of 42 games left, but these are the results it takes to win promotion. We were dogged, resilient, and carried a killer instinct. Solly by all accounts was tremendous as was Amos, Bauer and Kashi but plaudits all around the pitch and to the travelling Addicks.
We need a Chris Solly at the moment. But today Rich Cawley broke the news that Solly will be out for a “number of months” with another knee injury. No more details than that but I have been surprised how much he has played this season when last year he was regularly rested, especially with Kevin Foley a ready made replacement.
At Swindon Solly did not look himself and was sluggish, which now explains his own performance, from a man that never shirks any challenge and has played at a consistently high standard since he broke into the first team in 2009.
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News breaking this morning by someone close to the situation that yesterday before kick off Chris Solly was dropped from the squad and Johnnie Jackson from the starting XI. This at the insistence of Ms Meire. The reason? Both Solly and Jacko were a little bit too honest at Thursday night’s sponsors’ dinner.
A lot of stuff came out of that evening with almost every player that was willing to talk about off the field activities damning in their comments of the leadership and direction of the club. Almost to a man they agreed that this is the most unnecessary of relegations.
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Not good enough according to that expert on picking a player, Roland Duchatelet, but he has always been good enough for me and every other Charlton fan.
Chris Solly played his 200th game for Charlton yesterday. He said this on Twitter last night: “Certainly not the performance or result we need in our position right now, but a real honour today for me personally reaching 200 games for the club, been an extremely difficult season but I love playing for this club and will continue to give 100%!”
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I have no idea if Guy Luzon is a good coach/manager or not, and I have already made my mind up that I don’t want to find out. Harsh on the Israeli I know, but when one gives up professional pride and nails their colours to a mast of a man, so clearly bonkers, then what are you to expect.
Equally there is no evidence in the month since he was been appointed that he has any man-management skills, an ounce of tactical invention or an actual game plan. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on his ludicrous rabbit in the headlights press conferences because he is not speaking in his first language.
Unfortunately in the dressing room only Tal Ben Haim speaks in the same tongue and the centre back hates him.
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News today that the skipper will be out until the New Year with a calf injury sustained at Forest on Saturday. There are, in my mind, some prejudiced views that Jackson is past his best, but I would argue he has again been one of our most influential performers in midfield this season, and he will be missed.
Nonetheless his absence will coincide with the continued loan spell of Francis Coquelin and Yoni Buyens’ return, although like others I thought it notable that Peeters put Buyens on the bench and then replaced Jackson with Lawrie Wilson early in the game on Saturday.
Peeters has options anyway, and judging by the last two games when Chris Solly has taken the captain’s armband, I would expect him to lead the team out at The Valley on Saturday.
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I quite liked what Bob Peeters had to say today. Sat in between his boss and Richard Murray, Peeters came across as eager, methodical, personable, witty and up for it.
Duchâtelet looked disinterested and was happy for Peeters to answer all the questions, except for the one about the difference between a head coach and a manager, which startled Roland into action. Meanwhile Murray happily jumped in to explain the benefit of one-year contract agreements, still aggrieved obviously, like we all are, at the £1m the club paid to say goodbye to Alan Pardew.
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Tuesday night, and another Addicks game under the lights.
There are big games, there are massive games and there are huge games. All of those boxes are ticked tomorrow as we look to put a glimmer of light between us and the noise below us.
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“Apologies to everyone for my performance today. Not good enough.”
That was Diego Poyet on Twitter post match and by the sounds of it he wasn’t alone. We were again given a shooing by one of the better teams in the division, slipping to another 3-0 defeat, disappointing in front of a almost 2,000 Addicks, although hardly unexpected. As Riga pretty much said after, there are many teams on a different level to us in this division.
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Great news to wake up to this morning with Chris Solly signing a new 4-year contract. Stories around SE7 on Saturday afternoon suggesting that his absence from the side was a sure-fire signal that he was off was counterbalanced by another rumour that he had agreed to sign a contract extension.
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The pre-season rolls on and it’s Nick Pope’s Bury Town tonight. Ian Cartwright’s guide is as good as always, and the line-up is expected to be mostly developmental players but should include Danny Hollands as he catches up on his pre-season. Sadly Nick Pope misses the game in the pretty cathedral town of Bury St Edmonds due to injury.
A development side captained by Danny Hollands beat Bromley Town 2-0 on Saturday, with Ruben Bover’s stunning free-kick the highlight. On Thursday last week a 1st XI comfortably beat Barnet at Underhill 4-1. Kermorgant (both free-kicks), BWP and Jackson got the goals and Jon Fortune captained the Bees.
The first team go to Crawley Town tomorrow night and this is followed by Gillingham, whose hard-to-love chairman has vowed to clear his club’s name of racial discrimination. Pre-season is completed with a game at Tonbridge Angels and finally behind closed doors the Saturday before the new season, Fulham.
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That’s why we’re Champions! I thought to myself as I followed the fortunes of the League One Play-Off’s this weekend. I had a strong feeling for both Stevenage and MK Dons but at the halfway stage the stronger sides, on paper at least, hold the aces.
Even though I feel only enmity to MK, I would prefer a lesser team to join us and Wednesday in the next level up. The quicker we get to 50 points etc…. Joking, jo-king!
In fact I don’t know about you but I am still wallowing in last Saturday’s events. Indeed about this time last week we were all still raising glasses. It was quite a season wasn’t it?
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Charlton Athletic 1 Southampton 1
I’m a bit late with this as this week has been ridiculous at work but from what I have read it sounded a vast improvement and coupled with Michael Slater’s comments the same day I sense a bit more forbearance and less angst amongst Addicks. Am I right?
Whether Southampton came to win the game and therefore allowed us to play helped or the fact that probably everyone bar the most pessimistic Saints fan in the ground expected a complete thrashing distilled the general feeling of oncoming doom, I don’t know.
Maybe it was an excellent few days on the training field. Maybe it was an impassioned pre-match team talk. Maybe it was a more better balanced team line up with timely substitutions. Maybe we had reached the bottom. Or maybe Tuesday was all a blip.
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Leyton Orient 1 Charlton Athletic 3
A Charlton performance to warm your heart tonight in East London. After a decent first half with the ball being played along the floor more than is normally expected in Div 3, we held a 1-0 lead but after the break the O’s cranked up the pressure and ex-Addick Scott McGleish scored against us again and then within minutes for the second league game in a row we were reduced to 10 men.
Dailly’s second yellow was clumsy and with 30 minutes left I was sat at my desk thinking a point would be a good result. However Doherty and particularly Llera showed great resolve heading and kicking every cross away whilst in front of them Racon and McCormack formed a human shield.
Abbott ran his socks off and Martin was a clever outlet but it was Scott Wagstaff, disappointing in the two games so far who caused the damage with a finish that Super Clive would have been proud off to put us surprisingly back in front. Then a fantastic burst of pace down the right by Waggy deep into injury time ended with an inviting cross to be met by a jubilant Chris Solly to end proceedings.
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Charlton Athletic 1 AFC Bournemouth 0
One tries to temper the hope the first Saturday of the season brings. Last season Norwich and Swindon were great examples of how much the first game means in the whole context of the season but nonetheless getting that first win on the board is always important and that is exactly what we did this afternoon.
From the commentary The Valley faithful sounded right behind the new-look team and Akpo got the goal that our early pressure deserved. Kyel Reid tormented Bournemouth first half before understandably running out of steam in the second. Sodje himself impressed, and came in for some good praise on the radio.
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Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
