Have not logged on here for a fair bit because I was letting myself get dragged into too many non-footballing debates with people who I was never going to agree with and nor they with me ,so I took a break for a while and will now only talk Charlton on CL and leave the other stuff well alone.
Anyway, with today's momentous, if unsurprising news, where else are you supposed to go to get your feelings off your chest but Charlton Life?
In short, I think AFKA's piece today summed up the Alan Pardew era more or less perfectly but from my own perspective I would like to add the following.
I absolutely hate the fact that we are going on to our fourth manager in the less than two and a half seasons since Curbishley left but I do accept that in this case there was simply no alternative but to sack Pardew given the serious decline that has taken place over the last 12 months.
However, I can't bring myself to hate Pardew despite the poor results. He seemed like a decent man doing his very best to produce the goods but just not being able to get the results because, as AFKA says, he was trying to create a Premiership style side in a Championship setting, as crazy as that sounds given our current position.
The whole thing is just very, very sad as far as I am concerned, for him, for the club and for us too and I really hope he does not come out and slag the club off in the press - he had more than a fair shot at the job and was given a lot of money to spend in the Championship and, let's be honest, wasted nearly all of it.
Hard to say for sure but I think this could be the end of his career, he has had two failures in a row now, with West Ham in 2006/2007 and now with us, he won't get a Premiership job and will be lucky to get a middling Championship club.
I was always very much in favour of backing Pardew and railed against those calling for his head last season but, if I am being totally honest, my own initial misgivings about him came when were still in the Premiership and failing to beat Sheffield United and Reading at home and, worse still, looking a complete bloody shambles at times both defensively and in attack.
I put those doubts aside at the time and argued that you could not expect great stuff in a relegation scrap but looking back the disorganised, disjointed effort in the 1-1 draw with The Blades, where our only serious effort on goal was that speculator from the Elk, really was the canary in the mineshaft when you think about it.
The early Championship days looked promising but those strange home losses to Plymouth and, again, to Sheffield United just had a really damaging feel to them, as if our early success was very fragile and could easily be masking serious flaws.....
Knowing what we know now, I really must apologize to a couple of faces on here (can't remember names, sorry) when defending Pards 2007 summer signings (Varney, Iwelumo, McLeod, McCarthy and Mouataokil in particular). I thought he was on the right track but the sad fact is that NONE of Pardew's signings can be called a real success, especially Varney who is no better than Garry Nelson really in terms of actual goals or performance.
Pardew has signed over 50 odd players and the best have probably been Hudson and Bailey this year - and we are third from bottom so even they can't have been that great. Even Weaver has fallen apart now after looking good last year.
Releasing Lisbie on a free and bringing in Varney for 2 million quid (a move I supported at the time) now looks plain crazy and is the sort of judgement that a manager lives or dies by and Pards got that one badly wrong. Lisbie scored 17 last year for Colchester and is already doing a good job at Ipswich, certainly better than Varney or McLeod and 2 million quid cheaper.
The Chris Iwelumo situation is even more bizarre, every time you see Iwelumo he's banging them in for Wolves yet for us he looked very, very ordinary, not even as good as Carlo at times, so what does that say about the players around him and the bloke pulling the strings.
I remember being appalled when we interviewed Mick McCarthy to replace Curbs (he had just been sacked by Sunderland) - I'd take him now like a bloody shot, not that he'd come to us anyway.
In terms of the "feel" of Pardew's side, under Curbs we may not have been that exciting but you knew we could keep it tight and at least get bodies behind the ball and pick up points when we had to, under Pards the defence has been abject, not just because of the personnel in the back four, but because we have seemingly lacked the right defensive attitude right through the team.
I think there must be a real back-to-basics approach instilled in the team now from both a tactical and philosophical point of view if we want to get out of the mire.
We need to play 4-4-2 home and away and just focus on being well organised, hard to break down and determined and then pick up what we can at the other end of the pitch even if its just off set plays rather than dazzling length of the field goals.
The same needs to happen off the field as well, those who have not yet done so need to get used to the fact that the glory days are over, for how long nobody knows, and that we have no inalienable right to success against anybody in this division.
The only way we are going to get back to the top of the mountain is the same way we climbed it in the first place, hard work, persistence and a determination to never give up or give in and getting back to being able to punch well above our weight.
Those are the qualities that fuelled the rise to the Premiership years and are the exact same qualities that have been missing all too often since the latter days of Alan Curbishley, never mind the various debacles under Iain Dowie (and doesn't that seem a long time ago now?, Les Reed and Mr. Pardew.
For mine, I have grave doubts about giving the job to Parkinson, he is Pardew's man and I can't see what he will do as manager to change things that he wasn't doing, or should have been doing, as coach.
Given the financial constraints involved I think we should go for a Kinsella/Powell/Brown type of set-up, probably with Kinsella in charge.
Yes, I know Kinsella's reserves are bottom of the league, but that's no fair yardstick given the resources he's had to deploy at times (Powell, Harte), he had a great career as a player and if he can instill 1/3 of the determination and fight that he had as a player into the team then we will be heading in the right direction again.
0
Comments
I have defended Pardew in recent weeks and had hopes after the performances at Plymouth and B'ham that corners had been turned, but by half time yesterday that had all changed. The man should have got in his car then and got away. His quick hand clap to the Covered End as he went down the tunnel at the end was a sad reflection of the man. He has in recent weeks had a dig at the fans, key players, lack of money everything bar himself, very sad.
What we have lacked and I have stated this many times is leadership, on the touch line and on the pitch. The players may have been working their socks off, the management too in their opinion but if that is all in the wrong direction then it is is in vain.
My friend and I said yesterday what would we give for a Steve Brown/ Kinsella / Robbo character today, players who can galvanise a side.
So going forward we must make some quick wins
1) Defend from the front, attack from the back, get ourselves organised
2) get a leader on the pitch, respected and vocal
3) as fans realign our expectations we are not going to get promoted bar a miracle this season and possibly next. Let's get that out the way and start playing toward an initial realistic goal, stability
4) Temp or permanent, the board to appoint a manager with gravitas in the dressing room to provide touchline leadership.
Easy to write difficult to achieve, afterall we all thought we had that when Pardew arrived. Who would I go for well we have a cracking manager at Kettering Mark Cooper if you want an up and coming, Neil Adkins at Scunthorpe if we want someone with real experience at this level.
This is very worrying given that Holland and Hudson should be playing this role but obviously are not, possibly because Pardew's instructions were just not clear enough or the personnel around them are not good enough to carry it out.
I think your third point, regarding stability, is a very important one for everyone to remember above all else.
As for your point about Pardew sarcastically applauding the fans, well, the fans gave him a lot longer than most would have done.
I think most people would have settled for top 10 this season given the losses in playing staff but bottom three and losing at home to Barnsley 3-1 and Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 is just not on and being 5-1 down at home to anyone bar Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool is just not acceptable.