Feb 21
That was a terrific and hard-fought point today.
Tuesday was so disappointing, but the players showed real character today to bounce back and take a point from a very good Southampton side, who have individuals a cut above this level.
Please click for moreIt sounds as if James Bree will return to Southampton after the weekend as Saints manager Tonda Eckert wants to utilize him in his first team plans.
Nathan Jones said this week that conversations are ongoing, but Bree frozen out by Will Still, is under contract and if Southampton want him back then that is probably the end of that.
Please click for moreI haven’t watched a first half performance that horrible for a long time. It was startling how easy they dismantled our defence and rolled us around all over the shop in midfield.
It was only thanks to Kaminski and luck that it took them 14 minutes to score their first, and by the time they scored the 5th half an hour later, it had become like a very bad dream.
Please click for moreSouthampton’s James Bree has joined on loan until January.
The 27-year old Bree’s versatility will appeal to Nathan Jones. He will solve, temporarily at least, the need for more depth at right (wing) back, and can also play at centre-half.
Please click for moreHang on. The window has been wedged back open and in walked today Thierry Small.
Small, a free agent after mutually agreeing to leave Southampton yesterday, signs until the end of the season with a club option of an additional year. Clearly a trial run and a coincidence perhaps that both he and Kayne Ramsey were previously at Southampton.
Please click for moreJust over 10 years to be precise, when the then highly rated young coach left to join the burgeoning project at Brighton.
Now the Addicks board are in deep consideration of offering him the vacant position of head coach at The Valley.
Please click for moreI’m frankly having a job keeping up with what’s going on in SE7, but I’ll come to that later. I was however determined not to overlook last night’s superb victory by the U18 side away at Southampton in the 4th Round of the FA Youth Cup.
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Southampton 2 Charlton Athletic 0
Despite the lift we all got on Saturday, and also the wholly unexpected news today that 6,253 season tickets have been sold for next season, tonight’s result was no surprise to me. Saints wanted, needed these 3 points and following their sixth win in seven I expect them to join Brighton in filling the top two spots.
We disappointingly conceded early, did appear to get back into it after almost being over-run in the first half hour. Then we created a few chances in the 2nd but a second goal by Lee Barnard just before the hour ended the game as a contest.
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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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As Christmas has come and officially gone (although I’m still wishing people ‘Happy Christmas’ because I don’t go back to work until the 4th) I have got increasingly pisseed off that the Brighton game is tomorrow night when 95% of the countries football matches were today. Why are we playing tomorrow? It’s not on the box. There wasn’t some world championship long jump event at the Withdean today was there?
Three times in the last couple of days I have passed within 750 metres of the Withdean, but tomorrow night at kick off I will be tucking into a scrumptious indian take away at my brother’s in Shoreditch.
Yes I know, bad planning on my part and not for the first time this season either.
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I think I have mentioned this before but I have an old mate close to goings on at Southampton, close both financially and emotionally so after various snippets of information over the summer it was no surprise to me when I heard on the radio of Pardew’s sacking early this morning.
Everyone’s outright favourites, the Saints have had a sketchy, if hardly disastrous start to their Div 3 campaign but the timing of the dismissal of Pardew (his 3rd in 4 years) after their 4-0 stuffing of Bristol Rovers the weekend is odd to say the least.
There isn’t much doubt that Pards’ ego is as big as Hampshire but whilst his mind games and convincing turn of phrase got him his own way at The Valley Pardew came up against a fierce adversery in Saints’ CEO Nicola Cortese.
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Sarasota, Florida
