Charlton going nowhere – slowly

Another pretty awful performance and terrible result yesterday against a poor team in the THIRD division of English Football watched by an ever dwindling crowd of less than 10,000. I guess it’s admirable in a way that Karl is sticking to this brand of playing it out from the goalie and then 25 passes later we get to the half way line but I’ve got to be honest, I’m a football Luddite, I’d much rather get it forward quicker and have 2 blokes up front.

I don’t know what the statistics are for teams getting promoted out of the bottom divisions of the football pyramid by imitating Barcelona or Arsenal, but I can only remember Swansea, Swindon ( under Hoddle) and to be fair to Karl – MK Dons in the last 50 years – which implies that it’s a bloody difficult thing to do.

The problem is that we have been well and truly sussed, the opposition push 10 yards further forward knowing that tactically we are a one trick pony. Southend , Wigan and Bury have all done it to us recently and we have been unable to cope.

Obviously the problem is exaggerated by the fact that we only one have one capable striker and as Karl memorably said yesterday we can’t expect Joe Doodo to create chances on his own – I guess the question is as a ” striker” what can we expect Joe to do do then.

We are still in touch with the leading pack but with the thin squad we have it is difficult to see beyond another mid table finish in a divsion where many of the teams have crowds below 5,000 – the misery of being a Charlton fan seems endless.

 

One Striker only

Is it really possible to get promoted with just one striker ?  – personally I don’t think so. Josh Magennis is a good player, but like all strikers he will have his off days and in his case if you include his international commitments he is going to end up playing lots of games this season, which inevitably take their toll. Heaven knows what happens if he is out injured for a spell.

Sheffield United ( Clarke , Sharp etc) Bolton (Madine, Clough etc) , Millwall ( Morrison, Gregory , etc) got promoted last year and obviously in our promotion year we had Bradley Wright Phillips , Yann Kermogant, Paul Hayes, and even Leon Clarke to name but 4.

Karl has the team playing decent football with lots of wingers and inside forwards, but in the pure striking department we are totally devoid of options and it is already starting  to cost us – both the Plymouth and Gillingham games would have been won with better,alternative and off the bench striking options.

 

Steamrollered

There is a saying in horseracing that a good big one always beats a good small one. It felt rather like that on Tuesday night. Wigan looked like a very good side, both in terms of physicality and technique. In contrast to Saturday when Southend had a fair amount of the former , but luckily not much of the latter.

I’m not really sure why Karl felt the need to apologise to supporters unless he felt that the rain and the train service back to London Bridge were his fault. We got beaten by a better side and to be fair it could have been a bigger score. I guess the lack of a Plan B and the players to implement a Plan B is a concern.

It was obvious to all of us that skilful as they are , JFC, Fosu and Billy Clarke were getting outmuscled whilst Ricky Holmes was being assaulted and none of them were getting close enough to big Josh for him to retain meaningful possession. Personally, I would have brought Konza on earlier to compete with more size and aggression in the middle where we just looked lightweight. Joe Dodoo appears to have been to the Izale McLeod school of first touch and ball control , but we can only hope that he is just ring rusty.

Anyway, there will be better days and weaker teams and generally it has been a very good start. The overall play has been refreshing and good to watch and as a result the crowd has started to find its voice again.

Let us trust that Gillingham are no Wigan …………….

Dreadful Deadline Day

I think Karl Robinson is a good manager and I think that he knows how to get us promoted and he knows how to communicate effectively with the fans.

I think that our owner and his ventriloquist’s dummy CEO are not good managers, do not care if we get promoted or not and have absolutely no idea how to communicate with anyone.

Put simply, in the event that Josh Magennis gets injured, our only striker option will  be a loan signing who has scored 5 goals in the last 2 years in the Scottish Leagues. At the same time on deadline day, we have let the experienced League 1 goal scorer , Lee Novak go , the excellent and experienced central midfielder, Andrew Crofts go ,the very promising Regan Charles Cook go plus Brandon Hanlon

I guess the budget is running Charlton and the inability to shift Naby Saar has meant that there is no room for manoeuvre on Katrien’s spreadsheet ( that’s assuming she’s not holding it upside down )

We have made a promising start to the season and played some lovely stuff and it will be great if it continues. If we are incredibly lucky all our key players will stay fit but the squad is characteristically thin on numbers (as in all the Meire/ Duchatelet years ) and the owner and CEO just made Karl’s task a whole lot harder.