Striker Shortage

Charlton look woefully short in the striker department with the season opener only 5 days away now.

There are various conflicting noises emerging from the club about the need for another striker but you don’t need to be a Mastermind to conclude that we definitely do. One of the defining moments of last years poor season was the 4-0 home defeat by Oxford who could easily have scored seven. The biggest problem that day was not that we didn’t have the same number of players on the pitch as them but that all of Washington, Aneke and Stockley were out injured and we had to play Leko up front , who was quite frankly , pretty hopeless. The opposition become bolder and more confident when they know that you don’t carry any goalscoring threat. They take more chances and in the Oxford game it was thoroughly depressing.

Now it may be that our Ben Garner is a tactical genius on a scale seldom seem at The Valley before and his plan is to pack the team with 7 midfielders – but he probably isn’t, so please get at least one experienced and decent striker in soon to give us the best chance of being competitive this season

Bright future likely at Charlton

Nothing is certain in football and if we get a few key player injuries this season, it could be tough again. We need a bit of luck as well as good players. As useful as our promotion winning side under Chris Powell was, if we hadn’t signed Yann on a free transfer in September, we probably wouldn’t have been Champions and 9th the following year in the Championship.

HOWEVER !! – we really have some excellent young players coming through, the nucleus of whom have swept all before them in the U18 leagues, it is potentially a golden generation coming though at Charlton. Miles Leaburn is the probably the tip of the iceberg. He already looks very comfortable in mens football. At 18, he was arguably the best player on the pitch last night. Deji Elewere, Lucas Ness, Charles Clayden and Aaron Henry all played and looked pretty comfortable. That is 5 home grown players, or 6 if you include Albie Morgan. Below them, there is another whole level teeming with talent, Daniel Kanu, Jason Adigun, Seydil Toure, Euan Williams, Dylan Gavin, Tyreece Campbell. and there are lots more………………..the list is almost endless.

Maybe we will sell some of the potential stars at some point but the news that Miles has signed a 3 year deal is very welcome.

The doom and gloom from some on Twitter is boring. Yes of course we need some luck and its never going to be easy and we’d all rather be playing at a higher level but the fact is that we aren’t- but with the platform now being created, I think the next 10 years will be very progressive and successful.

Patience will definitely be needed this season because we are going to give away goals fannying around at the back but we are on a new journey and I think it will be fun and ultimately promotion winning – a couple of times !!!