Second in an occasional series of looking back to the "Were they really that good old days?"
Some of the comments this week - eg "this is the worst Charlton team I've seen in all my years supporting them" prompted me to look back to the last season we were in Division Three. Mike Bailey was our manager - he took over towards the end of the previous season, but couldn't stop the inevitable.
Some stats from it:
Up to and including 17 March 1981
21 wins; 7 draws; 8 defeats
This included defeat away at Millwall (0-2) and we'd just drawn 0-0 with them at The Valley. Colchester, who got relegated, did the double over us. It included defeat away to Oxford on Boxing Day when we were top of the league and they were bottom, and we lost 4-0 away at Chester.
In the next eight games our form was: DWWLLLLD.
Then we managed to win away at Carlisle in the penultimate game of the season, and clinch promotion IN THIRD PLACE (NB - no playoffs then).
I don't remember anyone describing it as the worst Charlton team they'd ever seen. I don't remember anyone calling for Bailey's head - not even when we lost to Millwall, not even when we lost 4-0 away at Chester, not even when our form slipped in the second half of the season, and most certainly not when we lost four in a row during the run-in. We were all in it together, and the enemy was not in our midst, it was any other team in the promotion race.
But times have changed.
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To my memory it was only Terry Naylor signed on a free from Spurs during the season and he did have exciting youngsters like Kevin Smith and Paul Walsh coming through .Derek Hales also had one of his best seasons . Remarkably the Les Berry / Peter Shaw defensive partnership found its level , looked sound and contributed to a club record of clean sheets.
As I have said elsewhere Parky can truly be judged this time next year and if we are still in L1 after next season then maybe consider a change
we hadn't been in the top flight for 20 odd years in 1980 and only a few years earlier had spent 3 seasons in the 3rd tier we also had gone down the previous year on naff all points(even worse than last years ) ... the club was in the doldrums with small home support and i'm pretty sure wouldn't have had one of the biggest budgets in the division as we have this season and have had in the previous couple of seasons since premiership relegation..... expectations were considerably lower in the old days as opposed to these days
Exactly my point, Oohaah - it's the expectation level and the shock of being back somewhere we now don't consider we belong that has led to so much over-reaction, acrimony and a nasty atmosphere at times in the stadium. The actual quality of the players, the football and the management now is much the same as it was in 80/81.
(And the main reason we have one of the biggest budgets in the division is because Pardew lumbered us with it.)
When we came down from the Prem we thought Ambrose, Holland, Thomas, Zheng etc would be among the best players in the Championship, yet Ambrose and Holland for example showed that they were nothing special in that league (talking about their all round game, not Ambrose's goalscoring). This season we perhaps thought/hoped our midfield would destroy this division, when in fact while they're talented, they're far from unstoppable.
Some fantastic (and dire) away days.
We won at Huddersfiled, lost at Exeter and drew at Oldham if that is an omen?