My Valley Birthday

It was my birthday on Saturday and not only did my lovely, clever wife come with me to Charlton for one of her rare ( humour him) trips , but she also baked me a special cake in honour of my 55th birthday .

Unfortunately Steve Bruce seemed unaware of the event and conspired to produce a pretty turgid defensive display until the last 15 minutes when I thought he might mess up my whole day . Not sure I really understood why SCP didn’t use a sub or two . Some width , a la Green or Cook would have been useful . Anyway , its a good start , so no complaints from me . Nevertheless , I remain suspicious that Wilson was bought for a reason , so someone needs to hide the keys to Solly’s car until the end of the window.

As part of my huge array of birthday gifts , I got a few vintage programmes for my collection .

1964 Charlton Programme    Looking at this progranme , it did occur to me that it would be really good if some of the minor works in the ground like the gaping holes in the woodwork in the gents loos in the East Stand were fixed , maybe they should revisit the Charlton Development Fund .

Super Charlton

Phew , is every game going to be like that . If so I think I will have to raise my own levels of fitness this season if I’m going to make it through to the end . As I twitched and grunted my way through defending every ball and cross in the last twenty minutes , the bloke sitting in front of me actually got cramp in the 93rd minute. It was totally exhausting

What a fantastic game of football , I thought both sides were brilliant . If Leicester play like that every week , they will win the Division and get a few 5 or 6 nils along the way. Our team was brilliant 1 to 11 , 100% energy and commitment , great goals from BWP and Kermit . My only word of caution is for the Skipper . I know he got clattered early on , but he always looks a little injured /below par to me . I don’t think we will get more than 20-30 games a year from him.

I don’t remember this division being quite so competitive last time , but I guess its been 5 years since we were competing properly with its better teams.

Whether we will have enough strength in depth and financial firepower to last the course as a contender seems questionable , but we won’t be lacking for team spirit and managerial talent.

Last night , we certainly got our Charlton back , but if its like this every game , I’m back to the doctor for some beta blockers.

Impetus – have Charlton lost it ?

im·pe·tus
(mp-ts)

noun

1. An impelling force; an impulse.

2. The force or energy associated with a moving body.

3. a. Something that incites; a stimulus.     b. Increased activity in response to a stimulus:

It always seems to me that impetus is a huge thing in life /business/sport . Its the ‘when you are on a roll ‘ syndrome . When things are going badly ie relegation from Prem , mid table Championship , relegation to Div 1 , it becomes increasingly and disproportionately difficult to turn it around . The same is true in business and when things are going really well , its almost as difficult to stop the impetus and cock it up.

Under SCP , they did the hardest bit last year and turned the oil tanker round and throughout the year the pace of progress quickened .

To maintain the momentum, I really would have liked to have seen 3 or 4 good quality signings over the summer , particularly a regular goalscorer , another centre half and a ball winning midfielder . Obviously the window is not closed and we may yet see some progress on signings .

With a ‘modest’ level of investment ie c £3m , and given SCP’s ability to identify and motivate talent , I think we would have gone straight through to the Premiership .

I hope we haven’t missed that chance that the impetus gave us …. Anyway, onwards and upwards . I fancy us to win at Brum

Sport , Jim – but not as we know it ?

After attending a number of the Olympic events , I think I know which was my favourite . Look I know they made it up 10 minutes ago and yes I know the worst injury you can get is a hurty forearm, but lets face it dancing around with a beachball to disco music thats the sort of all inclusive sport we can all do .

On the Charlton front , I tend to side with the doom mongers . Frankly , any organisation that gets rid of Peter Varney and Steve Kavanagh and replaces them with some bloke who ( according to Linkedin) has only ever worked for Umbro and comes from Manchester ( like Mr Slater) and has no affinity with the club is not going in the right direction . Its a mistake !

I see from the twitter feeds that SCP was watching Watford last night . What price a return for Chris Iwelumo ??

Anyway, all will be clearer soon . In the meantime , I will be researching the stats on my new hero , zara dampney , the UK beach volleyball star . She can’t really be called dampney , can she ?