Mar 4
We are used to strange timing of announcements, and the litany over the years of odd communiques, but as the team prepare themselves for a game at promotion chasing Plymouth today the club have disclosed that assistant coach Scott Marshall has left the club.
Please click for moreThe pre-season friendlies continued last night at Colchester as the Addicks came from behind to win 2-1.
It was another good run out for players such as Forster-Caskey, Oshilaja, and Williams before a whole lot of changes were made at the half and on the hour. Brendan Wiredu came on in the final minutes and scored the winner, his 4th in 4 games. The midfielder seemingly being given more of a wide forward role by Bowyer in pre-season, and the 19-year old has done himself no harm and with numbers short, he can expect to be knocking on the first team squad door, just as Albie Morgan did at the start of last season.
When you think about it, it is astonishing that we are only one point from safety. We have won 2 games in 22 matches! That stretch of games over two different managers, Fraeye’s record worse than Luzon’s even though that is hard to believe because it had to be a better decision.
In all seriousness it is incredible that in 25 games we have seen us win just 4 times, yet we are still within a very good fighting chance of staying up, even though the bookies have given up on us. Corals have us at 1/5 to go down.
A long time ago, in fact probably on the eve of the opening weekend, I looked at the teams in The Championship and tried to find 3 other candidates for relegation. Who will be worse than us? And that scheme still very much applies.
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Second to your boss calling you into his office to give you an unexpected pay rise, listening to Charlton win away from home sat at your desk with ear phones discreetly tucked into one’s ears is a bloody nice way to spend an afternoon at work.
Apart from just a couple heart in mouth moments (mostly from corners and without the benefit of pictures) the commentary team on Player gave me an excellent description of an impressive and confident away victory this evening. This at a ground, well two grounds actually, where we had never previously won a league match, although I was at Layer Road many moons ago to see us very fortunately win in the cup. But why ruin a good stat?
I think a lot of us were thinking that tonight was a really difficult test. Colchester had scored 8 goals so far this season but that first half performance sounded, and has since been confirmed by onlookers, a devastating display of attacking football.
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Charlton Athletic 1 Colchester United 0
This afternoon I was tucked away in a big conference room underground searching for both daylight and a Blackberry signal. I was doing a half decent job (I think) of paying attention to what was going on in front of me on stage but surreptitiously I was refreshing my Twitter Blackberry feed furiously to see what was going on at The Valley.
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Off to Fort Lauderdale in Florida this morning for a work conference. I was there 3 years ago but didn’t get a lot of time to stray outside mostly though because the weather was a shocker. Looking at my itinerary I don’t reckon on much exploring time this week and if I’m honest any free-time I think will be used for sleeping because that has become a scarce commodity.
After Saturday’s Rochdale postponement Chris Powell’s second game as the gaffer will be back at The Valley tomorrow night with Colchester the visitors.
The away game on New Year’s Day in hindsight was probably a nail in Parky’s coffin but to the present and the U’s have top scorer David Mooney in their ranks still on loan from Reading.
The Irishman got the U’s winner on Friday night inflicting defeat on Peterborough to put them on level points with us. Mooney has 10 goals, 3 less than our top scorer Bradley Wright-Phillips!
Colchester United 3 Charlton Athletic 3
I didn’t manage to get over to Colchester on Saturday (about an hour from where we were staying with friends), but sat in front of the BBC’s Football League Show last night to watch some highlights of what must have easily been the best game in the division yesterday and they gave us a couple of flipping minutes. They didn’t even show Benno’s disallowed goal. What a joke programme that is.
Anyway onto the game…. once again we just don’t have enough about us to dominate games against 11 or 10 players, a problem that both Brighton and Southampton don’t seem to have. However to come from behind 3 times showed a lot of character and it has been rare this season that Addicks have had cause to complain about lack of fight within the side. Whether come May this alone will be enough only time will tell.
Chicago Addick 