Feb 18
I couldn’t watch yesterday’s game as we were on our way to watch Andrea Bocelli in Tampa. Me and the operatic-other half drew straws to see if we listened to the game in the car or Bocelli’s greatest hits.
Fortunately she won.
Please click for moreThat is a dagger through the heart. 9 seconds after Pompey restarted the game they got their second goal. That is absolutely criminal from Charlton.
Probably like me and most of us I suspect the players expected the referee to blow his whistle as they kicked off, but that defending is inexcusable.
Please click for moreThis was a big game, with a big build up to a date so important to Addicks’ fans. It ended in tragic circumstances and our number is sadly one less today.
The outpouring of love and affection by those that knew Norman Barker or simply knew of him has been both heartwarming and sad. Yet we should all take solace, and I’m sure his family do, in that when your time is up, what better place to be than in a noisy Covered End surrounded by thousands of your best friends. Many of whom rushed to preserve Norm’s life of course.
Please click for moreWhat absolutely devastating news. 💔
On a day which should have been about celebration and memories, we lost one of our own in such tragic circumstances.
Please click for moreI had been trying to keep an eye on the Addicks last day of the transfer window whilst at a work symposium where back to back meetings only allow breaks for more coffee and a pee.
After a month of inaction it all happened today as the club signed on loan Alex Gilbert and Tom McIntyre, moved out Zach Mitchell on loan and sold REG permanently to Leyton Orient.
Please click for moreNot a rumour, not even a whisper, but just a little 2 + 2 cogitation.
Owen Moxon has won promotion in each of the past two seasons, but has struggled to hold down a first team berth in The Championship this season with Portsmouth.
Please click for moreIt’s a shame that Portsmouth got promoted, we are going to miss those six points this season.
It sounded like a far more promising exhibition today at The Valley, leaving Addicks in a far happier state of mind. Friendlies can bring a lot of misleading expectations, good and bad, but the final one has a lot more forward-looking importance attached to it.
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 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 moreWhat a great game that was. End to end with both teams wanting to win.
The Addicks showed great strength of character to twice come from behind and grab a deserved draw, and could even have won it at the death. How the away end celebrated not for the first time at Fratton Park.
Please click for moreFeb 15
That wily old fox Thomas Sandgaard has been saying for years how he has NO need to appoint someone to provide senior leadership at The Valley, and manage the day to day running of the business. You know it’s not important to have someone experienced and knowledgeable to fill this role.
Hang on everyone. Thomas’ lips moved.
Please click for moreI watched, as I often do, the opposing manager’s post match interview yesterday and Danny Cowley was clearly very emotional after their defeat to us.
Steve Brown on CATV suggested that Cowley would be gone soon enough and that time was tonight.
Please click for moreWe do like a day out in Pompey don’t we..
Well, well. Happy New Year. What a pleasant surprise, and it will give us all a lift, but we have to now use this as a platform to move forward in what is a very important month.
Please click for moreHappy 30th anniversary Back to The Valley Day.
We’ll ignore how the team did their very best to bury any memories of a wonderful time in our history on Saturday. A penny for the thoughts of those real Charlton legends including the peerless Roger and Heather Alwen who had to sit through that tosh.
Please click for moreA lot of good things to enjoy tonight. No less than watching the game with a few fellow Addicks in the pub in Bermuda.
As a comprehensive a win as you could get. Some great individual performances, but pleasingly a team effort to really buy into.
Please click for moreThe transfer day weather was sunny periods with later dark clouds but as those lifted we had a football match and bloody good it was too.
Fratton Park has been a happy hunting ground and 1,230 Addicks were making all the noise again tonight in front of the Sky cameras.
Please click for moreNot really sure how to react to that. The game showed us good, mediocre and bad. There was good character to come back twice from behind, but the 1st half was very poor and Pompey should have been home and hosed by the time we even got going. Yet, even then we had more chances than we’ve had in any home match this season.
Please click for moreThe first part of my League One rate the competition review guide….guide is a massive overstatement by the way, but hopefully you will stick with it.
League One is wide open this coming season, possibly only a handful of teams will have their ambitions fixed solely on survival, everyone else will either have a longing for a play-off place, expect a concerted challenge towards it or will have a vision of top two.
Please click for moreWe were well beaten tonight by a team that look well equipped for a strong promotion challenge, which I am slowly coming round to the realization that we are not.
Our performance was once again punctuated by shambolic defending, no obvious game plan, half-time substitutes, piss-poor passing and no cutting edge.
It’s poured all week in London town, and about an hour before kick off the officials called our game against Portsmouth off, the first game called off for weather since Roland Duchatelet refused to repair the pitch drainage.
A statement sending victory that one.
The tactics, game plan and the game management spot on. A magnificent defensive display again even with a makeshift back four, which became even more makeshift when Akin Famewo left the field with quarter of an hour left.
Portsmouth on the back of a very good run themselves presented our biggest challenge to date, and although we started slow, we grew into the game with the midfield four of Pratley, Shinnie, Forster-Caskey and Williams peerless, individually and as a collective.
Part III and my final look at our fellow League One teams teams this season. I started in the north in Part I and moved towards the middle of the country in Part II and lastly we have the southern teams for this conclusion.
Karl Robinson had a sticky start to LAC (life after Charlton) but this is his third full season at Oxford United and a sense of optimism fills the town. Robinson’s side fell at the final hurdle a couple of months back but have kept the majority of that squad together.
Nerves rattled both Portsmouth and Sunderland last night when with an eye on second place both came unstuck meaning that without kicking a ball both Luton and Barnsley were promoted.
Peterborough were two-up at Fratton Park, but then we’re hauled level. However with their own promotion push on a knife edge Posh went back in front and are now a point behind Doncaster. On Sunday Peterborough are at home to Burton and Doncaster home to Coventry.
Who one of those plays in the play-offs is all up for grabs. Even the Addicks can snatch 3rd on Sunday but Portsmouth are in pole position facing Accrington at home, although Stanley did score five last week. Sunderland have a tricky one away at Southend, who need to win.
A fantastic performance from the Addicks today, and on the TV as well. After taking five minutes to settle we dominated the vast majority of the game playing some wonderful stuff, chasing every lose ball, and never shirking a challenge.
Of course it wouldn’t be Charlton if we didn’t have to hang on a bit at the finish, and after last week I was shuffling uncomfortably on the couch at the end.
Bow put on a brave face when talking about our promotion rivals spending in the January transfer window, but if it didn’t only highlight the budgetary disparities between us and them, it also shone a massive spotlight on differing board ambitions.
None of the clubs at the top with us are loaded with money, yet Bow’s fellow managers and Steve Gallen equivalents were all allowed to haggle and barter in the window for the betterment of their squads and Sunderland, Portsmouth, Luton and Peterborough have all come out the other end with a deeper and, on paper at least, a stronger collection of players.
Doncaster, who have one of the lowest budgets in the league, were pretty inactive in January but importantly kept John Marquis despite interest from Sunderland, and a late bid from Swansea. In demand Alfie May also signed a contract extension.
What a performance. A game of two halves from the Addicks. The first of quick movement, passing and attacking threat, the 2nd knee deep in the trenches repelling wave after wave of attack.
Last season’s victory at Fratton Park was one of the season’s best memories, and once again in front of a noisy Addicks’ support we beat the league leaders, handing them only their second deafeat of the season, following an immense display in equal measures of ability and backbone.
The second part of my look at our League One rivals as we enter our third consecutive season under our current genius owner. I am sure he is reading this as he renews his subscription for Valley Pass.
Here was Part One of my 2018/19 League One preview, which went Accrington Stanley to Coventry City.
What a difference a week makes..
How an earth is that the same team that we saw last Saturday? Bowyer may well have learnt more from two defeats than three consecutive wins, and he deserves massive credit for turning it around.
That was an outstanding result today by a team that carried out his instructions exactly. I watched the 2nd half on iFollow and there wasn’t one moment when a Pompey player wasn’t surrounded by one or two Charlton ones. They chased and harried every single ball, and when in possession we were clever and precise with it.
Typical..
I somehow wonder how we ever won at Wembley and that game 25 years ago you know. You can always rely on them to let you down.
Nonetheless Killer, Super Clive, Jimmy Melrose, Bobby Bolder, Paddy Powell, Colin Walsh etc etc is what 25 years ago is about to us fans. I don’t suspect the average 20-something modern day footballer worries about Valley Party’s and bonfires on the centre circle, but what they should be worried about is today’s league table and how it looks next May. That’s how they will be judged, but by all accounts the class of 2017 never turned up!
25 years ago. Doesn’t seem possible but the Addicks welcome Portsmouth, befittingly the team we have played the most in our history, back to The Valley tomorrow afternoon in a wild quirk of fate. Thanks EFL for actually doing something right.
That Saturday 25 years ago is ingrained in my memory. My brother and I and a couple of mates were at Barnsley the week before and that was a carnival atmosphere on their away open terrace.
However getting tickets for the 8,337 sell out wasn’t easy. My Mum, brother and I were season ticket holders at Upton Park, but my Dad, who was getting a little disillusioned with it, wasn’t so sadly he missed out on the game, but the rest of us went with my mates.
CARD plan to honour Addicks’ fans at the 25th Back to The Valley anniversary game by distributing thousands of red-and-white rosettes to fans outside the stadium. The rosettes are to celebrate the part played by fans in the re-opening of the The Valley in 1992, and particularly the role of the Valley Party, whose 60 candidates amassed almost 15,000 votes in the 1990 local elections, changing Greenwich Council policy in the process.
With the risk of the true meaning of the game being lost by the club, I am happy to see the return of CARD for the first time this season. Katrien Meire is on record as not caring about the club’s history and has regularly failed to mention the massive role that fans had in bringing the club back to it’s spiritual home.
Part I, Lancastrians and Yorkshire types here, Part II for Greater Mancunians here, and Part III for Middle Englanders here.
Right then, my final part and the good old South of England. I’ll start my way from the eastern most club to the one furthest west.
One of a few seaside clubs in the division, Southend United chased a play-off berth all the way to the final game of last season, a nod to what a bit of experience and stability in these trigger happy days of football management can do. Only Keith Hill pips Phil Brown in the League One longevity stakes.
Huge heartfelt congratulations to Brighton and my mates who have followed them through their peaks and many, many troughs. 20 years ago Brighton were homeless thanks to the ineptitude and irresponsibility of a club chairman who shamelessly sold their historic Goldstone Ground from under them. They subsequently played 70 miles away at Gillingham’s ground for two years before spending 12 seasons at the Withdean athletics stadium, with portable cabins for changing rooms.
But today at their wonderful Falmer stadium, a legacy to the generous and patient Tony Bloom, the Seagulls returned to the countries top division 34 years after they were last there, and in that time only Steve Gritt and a last-day draw at Hereford stopped them from sinking into the non league, and potentially the abyss.
Brighton have long been ready for the Premier League and they are a proper club, with proper fans and the long friendship with Charlton supporters runs very deep.
A warm Addicks’ welcome to Richard Wood, signed yesterday on a one-year deal.
I have seen some question the validity of Wood’s signing over Matt Taylor, who CP released. I liked Taylor, but Woods is three years younger and has played the bulk of his football at Championship level, well over 200 games compared to just 12 that Taylor played in the 2nd tier.
Taylor was a good club man, and a leader but Wood has also been club captain at both Sheffield Wednesday and Coventry. I’m happy to have him as part of the squad.
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Sarasota, Florida
