…to another wet and dreary Bonfire Night weekend. November 6, 2004. Almost four years ago to the day, the assembled home fans at a London football stadium were as irate as the regulars down at The Valley on Saturday afternoon. After just 50 minutes of play, the ‘plucky’ red-shirted opposition from South East London were 3-0 up.
Fortunately enough for the home fans, the away team were reduced to ten men with more than 20 minutes left to play after their two goal striker from South Africa, the unheralded Shaun Bartlett, had been sent off for handling on his own goal-line – his last-ditch clearances being a main part of his whole-hearted, never-say-die approach.
Tottenham Hotspur despatched the resulting penalty and scored again ten minutes later when Jermain Defoe fired home. With both the momentum and the numerical advantage, Spurs sensed blood and thought Charlton Athletic were there for the taking.
But with the likes of Radostin Kishishev, Luke Young, Hermann Hreidarsson and Chris Perry refusing to let their heads drop, Charlton’s players delivered yet another major scalp for manager Alan Curbishley.
Mind you, even if the Spurs fans had their noses put out of joint by the audacity of their upstart London rivals to pull off such a dramatic victory, they were becoming increasingly accustomed to coming off second best to Charlton Athletic. They were to lose 2-0 at The Valley later the same season, as the Addicks pulled off the double, and they had endured another home defeat, this time 1-0, just the season before.
I would say that ‘those were the days eh?’ but of course I fully respect the fact that the Curbishley years, with their top ten or mid-table Premier League finishes, were becoming all too samey and the club, despite battling with its limited budget and the limited capacity at The Valley, always inexplicably failed to push on and become the country’s fifth great footballing force.
So, naturally, the blame for the failure to achieve a UEFA Cup or even a Champion’s League place was quite rightly placed at Curbs’ door rather than on the fact that Charlton was not being bank-rolled by a billionaire and nor was it one of England’s ‘pedigree’ clubs with a vast stadium filled with 40,000 fans every week.
No, Joe the Charlton Fan knew in his wisdom he had tired of those sensational headline grabbing wins at the likes of Highbury, Stamford Bridge and Anfield and felt that the man who had engineered seven straight seasons of top flight football, despite spending no more than 4.75M on any single player, needed to be replaced.
On May 19, 2001, Charlton’s fans, almost as one, had stood and applauded heartily as Curbs fought back his natural desire to take over at his boyhood club West Ham United to dedicate five more years to serving the Addicks. Indeed, he was, of course, set for a sixth year before the Chairman, Richard Murray, decided it was time for him to leave as he wouldn’t commit to signing a new contract a year before his present one expired.
But when Curbs bowed out at The Valley, after 15 long years of service, in May 2006, with the team he had taken from near the foot of the old First Division now anchored in the security of mid-table in the Premier League, Joe the Charlton Fan’s applause was this time somewhat muted as he genuinely knew that Curbs ‘had taken Charlton as far as he could’.
Even then, a concerned minority warned the likes of Joe the Charlton Fan that sometimes life was better with the devil you know and a new regime, after so many years of stability, could create problems for a club, despite Alan Curbishley’s many successes on the pitch, still languishing as one of the Premier League’s smallest and least affluent.
But Joe was heartened by the thought that if everything fell apart then life back in the Championship would be much more fun because you can only beat the likes of Everton and Middlesbrough so many times before, well, it just starts to drag.
No, a year or two in the lower division, whipping the Barnsleys of this world 4-0, would be fun and to hell with the club’s finances and blue-prints for the future. Supporting a football club is all about being entertained after all – nothing else. Getting value for money by stuffing Scunthorpe 3-2, not eking out a 1-0 home win over West Ham.
So Iain Dowie arrived and spent millions on players that Curbs, with his mid-table limitations, wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole. After they unsurprisingly stuttered and stumbled, Les Reed came and went in a nano-second and then in came Alan Pardew, a man blessed with a top four Champion’s League ego, and spent the remaining millions on players that made Dowie’s look well researched and properly scouted.
Inevitably, Charlton Athletic tumbled down the Premier League, slid into the Championship and now sit perilously close to the trap door above League One. As a consequence, Joe the Charlton Fan is now a confused and perturbed man.
As the team had teetered on the brink of relegation from the Premier League, he had felt sure somehow, somewhere, the team would grind out two or three results that would have got them out of jail and saved their skins – just like in the ‘old days’ of Curbs’ back-to-the-wall 1-0 wins. But they never came.
Then, as the team commenced its first season in the Championship as one of the bookies’ favourites for promotion, he waited and waited, and waited some more, for that run of ten or eleven wins that would catapult the Addicks into the promotion places – just like in the ‘old days’ under Curbs. But they never came.
So now Joe the Charlton Fan must face the grim reality of his team’s sorry demise. Well-paid players have had to be moved on as the club still lacks financial muscle and the gravy train that was the Premier League seems a million miles away.
Joe has always grasped at straws and now he needs to find some more to cling to. Perhaps the squad is just under-performing? Yes, that’s it! Pardew, despite his truly woeful record over the past 22 months and the fact that almost every single one of his transfers has been either a disappointment or a disaster, must have quietly assembled a squad capable of challenging for the play-offs? Or, at least mid-table? Or at least good enough to beat the drop?
So, in a short space of time, things have come completely full circle and now scraping a gutsy, no-frills 1-0 win at Plymouth Argyle on November 8 seems a challenge not far removed from that 20 minutes of sweat and guts facing the ten men at White Hart Lane four years before.
Joe the Charlton Fan has always possessed the rare talent of not being able to see the wood for the trees. Perhaps it’s just as well. Otherwise he might castigate himself at the thought that recently the riches of Arabia were, tantalisingly, offered as an unlikely salvation to his struggling Addicks. But as the team nose-dived as fast down the Championship table as the shares on the world’s stock markets, the Crown Prince of Dubai lost his appetite for the deal and, perhaps, spied tastier morsels elsewhere.
Thankfully, Joe will never wonder what the future might have held if the billionaires had come calling while simple, unassuming Curbs was weaving his magic in the boring old Premier League.
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Comments
The departures within weeks of Kiely, Murphy & Smertin around Jan/Feb 2006 were key to our decline. We were a top 10 Prem team before the end of the 05-06 transfer window on Jan 31st, our form after that would have relegated us.
I also still contend that Dowie was sacked too quickly, our results in the opening part of 06/07 up until his sacking, were not great but look at who he faced & look at the time given to him compared to Pardew. In hindsight Dowie achieved better results in his 12 games then Pards has ever done for us........
English Premier West Ham 3-1 Charlton 19-08-2006
English Premier Charlton 0-3 Man Utd 23-08-2006
English Premier Charlton 2-0 Bolton 26-08-2006
English Premier Chelsea 2-1 Charlton 09-09-2006
English Premier Charlton 0-1 Portsmouth 16-09-2006
English League Cup Charlton 1-0 Carlisle 19-09-2006
English Premier Aston Villa 2-0 Charlton 23-09-2006
English Premier Charlton 1-2 Arsenal 30-09-2006
English Premier Fulham 2-1 Charlton 16-10-2006
English Premier Charlton 0-0 Watford 21-10-2006
English League Cup Charlton 1-0 Bolton 25-10-2006
English Premier Newcastle 0-0 Charlton 28-10-2006
English Premier Charlton 1-0 Man City 04-11-2006
English League Cup Chesterfield 3-3 Charlton 07-11-2006
English Premier Wigan 3-2 Charlton 11-11-2006
The point is a simple one. Be careful what you wish for. The achievement of "plucky little Charlton" beating established Premiership sides was not enough for a vociferous minority of fans who called for the head of Curbs.
Now we have seen the all too awful consequences.
It is not a matter of wisdom with hindsight, I and others said as much at the time.
Are you suggesting that it is reasonable to think that Curb's would be in charge forever?
And, you can't lay the blame for the Jabeel fallout on Pardew and the team neither. I personally think that the reasons for their change of heart lay closer to home, in Dubai.
We were playing a team built around Danny Murphy, expoliting the pace and finishing of Darren Bent and we were playing some bloody good football into the bargain.
Fast forward to about 4.50pm that same afternoon. This time the likes of Young, Perry and El Karkouri were not able to fend off the Spurs comeback and Spurs took all three points with them back to White Hart Lane. What followed in the coming games was a complete change of tack from Curbishley, it was as though he had an epiphany that afternoon and realised that he just couldn't move Charlton up to that next level, to me it seemed that he felt he had bigger ideas than this club was able to fulfill, and who knows, he was quite possibly right.
We reverted to an ultra defensive set up and having taken 15 points in our first six games by the time the back end of the season came around we were truly in relegation form, taking just 3 points from our last 6, the stats for the 20 or so games prior to that weren't too pretty either.
I don't blame Curbs for any of this, what he achieved at this club was truly incredible, even in his last season when things weren't going so well he displayed the nouse to keep us in the division and leave his legacy in tact . But remember that when Curbs left he wasn't shoved out, he refused to sign a new contract, for a man that had displayed the kind of loyalty that he'd already shown, who could begrudge him wanting to make the move to the next level? A move that realistically Charlton probably couldn't provide him with the infrastructure to achieve.
Either way, Joe the Charlton fan, whilst probably being guilty of not truly appreciating what he had at the time did not spell the end of Curbs at Charlton, Curbs' own ambition did. It's not a healthy situation to stay somewhere that you don't want to be, we've heard from players inside the club at that time and even hints from Curbs himself that he felt it was about the right time for the love affair to end and just like a relationship, if both parties hearts aren't it then it's just not going to work.
I don't think you'll find a Joe anywhere that didn't appreciate what Curbs had achieved or respect the man for the loyalty and the years he had given us, there were very very few Joe's who actively sought Curbs extraction from his well worn but oh so glorious managerial seat but there were some who were able to look objectively at his departure and realise that maybe the time was right for him and the club to part ways, in the interests of both parties. Joe knew that the club faced a Rocky Road with an unqualified driver over the years to come but Curbs couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't stay forever.
So, given that Joe the Charlton fan is probably feeling a little depressed right now, how about we give him a break and not drag up a past over which he had little or no influence in order to taunt him about how things were and how they might have been?
Personally, PITL, I think you've nailed it.
There were increasing calls for him to move on but also a number of outside influences, mainly the England job. If he had any such aspirations and indications were he did, he was regularly reminded by the media though he had done well he a) only managed Charlton b) had never handled any stars c) had no European experience.
For AC unless Richard Murray changed the business model Charlton no longer matched Alan’s ambitions. I am not sure even if Mr. Murray had offered him the funds he made available to Dowie, AC felt he could earn the respect he apparently needed with the media and the FA.
On such a basis AC was not really in a position to make a further long term commitment to the club. In view of his subsequent experiences AC may similarly reflect upon his regrettable departure from the Valley.
Grapevine 49
Of course it is impossible to say where we'd be now if that course of action had been followed, but I'm certain we wouldn't be in this pickle.
Incidentally, I'd point to Parker's departure as the moment when Curbs would have realised that CAFC could go no higher.
I'm really not sure where you get this from Len? I don't remember any after game protests, banners, "Curbs Out" chants, etc. I hardly think a few people expressing a view on an internet chatroom or one or two callers to 606 that maybe Curbs had gone a bit "stale" constitutes a "vociferous minority". Curbs was not forced out of our club by anyone's standards and went of his own free will and with the sound of applause ringing in his ears.
Still if it makes you feel better blaming the supporters rather than Pardew or his underperforming team then fair enough...but it doesn't me.
I feel though that PITL and Looky neglect the fact that, ultimately, Curbs didn’t jump, he was pushed.
I understand Richard Murray felt he was acting in the club’s best interests to nip Curbs’ seemingly dwindling enthusiasm in the bud by bringing his reign to a close, but Curbs was being pressured into signing a new contract right there and then and he didn’t want to. He thought that the final year of his contract ‘might’ well have been his last.
Curbs is not a saint, he is a football manager, and if he had been in place come the following summer and he had been offered the 12M or so Dowie was given to spend, and we will never know this, his ‘appetite’ might have been rekindled.
I am sure the fact he had had to cut his cloth year after year was a major factor in wearing him down. Ironically, once he left, the Board suddenly stumped up as much money as they have ever done. That frustrated me then and now.
I will freely admit that all this is mere hypothesis but, to be fair, so is your argument.
Charlton had always been perceived as a ‘plucky little club’ but Curbishley had, simply through his raw ability, taken CAFC to the brink of the next level in the Premier League.
It is a shame the development of the ground, quite understandably, couldn’t have kept pace with the lightning quick advances on the pitch. If it had done, and he had then finally been able to spend a genuine war-chest, the perceptions in the media of little old Charlton, which in truth Curbs himself did little to quell, might have finally begun to dry up. But, yes, it wouldn’t have happened overnight.
I am utterly convinced if Curbs had spent the 2006 money, and not Dowie, we’d still be in the Premier League, whether with or without him, right now, due to the quality of player he would have secured two years ago.
I do think it is very unfair to point to his last season as an indicator of his waning interest in the club. Through no fault of his own, at all, he lost his two key central midfield performers in Murphy, disgracefully on January 31, and Smertin later in the New Year as he wished to end his loan spell and return to Russia.
You have to remember that we were still unable to match our Premier league rivals in terms of the depth of our squad yet without Murphy, our main playmaker, Curbs took four points off of Liverpool in early 2006 and we beat Newcastle 3-1 in late March, with a midfield containing Kishishev, Holland and Hughes, only five weeks before Curbs’ departure was announced.
Curbs was set for what might have been his final season and it was denied him, not maliciously, but his plans were abruptly altered all the same when Richard Murray took his pro-active step. This meant there was no chance for a gradual and well thought out consideration for the way forward.
I must also say that PITL claims there ‘were very very few Joe's who actively sought Curbs extraction from his well worn but oh so glorious managerial seat’. I strongly disagree with this.
I remember NetAddicks was awash with fans saying he had taken Charlton as far as he could, that he lacked ambition, he possessed repetitive and negative tactics and also had an atrocious record in the transfer market, often buying dreary, humdrum players. Poor old Robbie Mustoe has paid a heavy price!
Let’s remember that Curbs, unlike Dowie or Pardew, actually gave a thought to CAFC’s yearly accounts and tried to balance the books.
Yes, he spent 2M on Marcus Bent but he also persuaded Danny Murphy to choose us over Spurs, at least gave Dennis Rommedahl a try, gambled with the now legendary veteran Jorge Costa, signed Jerome Thomas for 100K (and under Curbs he was touted as a future England player), also nabbed the vastly experienced Chris Perry for 100K and brought in an international kaleidoscope of players all the way from Bulgaria to South Africa.
Unambitious? This is the man who ‘almost’ signed the unknown teenager Matthieu Flamini and Europe’s Golden Boot Mateja Kezman, only to be gazumped by Arsenal and Chelsea, and even made an inquiry so we are told about two 17 year olds called Cristiano Ronaldo and Ricardo Quaresma.
Our 4-5-1 formation that season was, on a number of occasions, both dynamic and thrilling. PITL, yes we lost that Spurs game, but, we missed several gilt-edged chances that day (I recall it only too well!) to go 3-0 up ourselves.
But here you are saying a home defeat to one of England’s biggest and richest clubs exemplifies the start of the malaise. Conversely, I’d argue that shows how high your expectations had grown.
But on one thing, we can agree. This is all now ancient history and, yes, Curbs would have left eventually and most probably by now too.
However, when we started slipping and sliding, many voices on here and elsewhere said this wasn’t due to Dowie’s incompetence or Pardew’s arrogant bull but because Curbs had left us in such an appalling state. That is totally inaccurate and makes a mockery of the man’s legacy.
Many were unquestionably glad to see the back of him and I, for what it is worth, dreaded that eventuality because, in my darkest nightmares, I pictured relegation and financial meltdown.
But where to go from here. That is a question we will all ask ourselves. But I picture a future without Alan Pardew. I know that much.
PITL, I completely agree with your thoughts on the Spurs game. I remember watching it in bed on TV in Phuket (was it a midweek game?) and Charlton didn't deserve to lose that game; the first Spurs goal was a complete fluke and that spurred them on to victory (please excuse the unintended pun). I have never understood why this solitary defeat after some excellent performances changed Curbs' approach for the remainder of that season. Up to then we had possibly played the best attacking football, home and away, that I could remember during our time in the top flight; and that was without Parker.
Why did that one game shape the remainder of the season, and effectively the rest of Curbs' time at Charlton?
I lost count of the number of times Curbs used the term 'back to basics' after a run of poor results. But this was different. What had the team done so badly to bring about the ultra-negative tactics were utilised thereafter?
If I had to choose one game that determined our destiny, leaving us in our current predicament, that game would be my choice.
Curbs must have been frustrated that whenever he developed or bought good players, they would want to leave if successful. He couldn't keep a good team together for long. If we were became dull and functional in Curbs' last year, it was partly down to setbacks in the transfer market. He had his own reasons for moving on.
Losing him without a plan was stupid in the extreme however. They had 15 years to think about it.
Great posts Sailor and PitL.
I cannot disagree with a single word PITL and Grapevine have said though. I agree with much of Sailor's points, but in my opinion he is wrong on two points.
1. There was never a vociferous majority as Len put it wanting Curbs out. A vociferous majority is what was in the Valley yesterday, and there was never once that at a Curbishley game in that period.
2. He was not pushed, it was as much the most mutual agreement you will ever find. Curbs had got to the stage in his career that he needed to be managing at the top-end of the Premiership. The replay up at Boro was the game that effectively in his mind brought to the end his desire to be here. He knew he needed his CV to now say that he could do it at a club bigger than Charlton. And i did and still do agree with him.
This is all in the past though, and unless people can think of specifics we can learn from , we all really need to be concentrating on our present and future.
I'm leaning with PITL but feel that Curbs was burnt out with us and it was just time for him to go. He wasn't going to sign a new contract and while one more year would have been better than Dowie (as would have anyone) letting him stay on would have meant a lame duck manager.
I said vociferous MINORITY not MAJORITY.
The archives of 606 and Talksport will confirm the point. Not to mention netaddicks.
For the record I would describe yesterday as a vociferous minority too. It was by no means the whole Covered End.
well put sailor....
maybe our grandchildren will learn to appreciate the 'good times' if we ever return to them more than their forefathers did... my grandchildren wont have to , they'll be bored rigid about how good we used to be.....
i haven't seen anything since the day dowie left that makes me believe him going and the eventual taking over by pardew has improved us as a football team......
Oohaahmortimer, I have observed with interest, every now and again, over the past two years how the process of Curbs’ departure and our subsequent decline has been processed within the minds of many of our fans.
If it makes you feel any better, and I hope it does, you can definitely tell your grandchildren you were not on the ‘Curbs has had his Time’ bandwagon and foresaw what, sadly, not too many others feared was around the corner.
But, one good thing I am observing now is that a number of Charlton fans are big enough (and it certainly isn’t easy to admit things like this) to state they now realise how much we were directly affected by the departure of the best manager we have had in the modern era and, perhaps, regret his passing.
That is only a crumb of comfort for where we find ourselves now but, in my opinion at least, if the Charlton Board could reach into their pockets one last time, hopefully prior to another significant takeover bid, and bring Curbs back I believe it would be worth the financial outlay and the gamble.
However, I feel our squad of players is an utter mess and the bottom six is probably where we should be. We embarked on this season with only two full-time centre backs and gained a third on loan who is 35 years old and coming back from a career threatening ligament injury. I could go on.
If Curbs was offered the chance to take over he would see that survival was the initial target because this squad will struggle to make inroads in the top half of the table. But, and again it is my opinion, the man achieved great things in SE7 and he has the automatic right to be given the time and the emotional backing, by us, to see IF he can move us forwards again.
But the world of football finance has moved on since his departure and only the combination of fresh investment, alongside his meticulous style of old, will offer the possibility of the good times once more.