I'm not sure I can face it any more.
I just don't enjoy going to the games and haven't done for a few years now, yet i've continued to faithfully buy a season ticket. It wasn't the fact that it was 4-0 today either, it's just that my team has become so relentlessly lacking in any invention, skill, or even that consistently overrated characteristic, passion, that I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a game.
I've started to not care. I'm a bit cheesed off now, obviously, but not like I was when we lost 6-1 to Leeds or 4-1 to West Brom or 3-1 to Stockport or even when we drew 0-0 with Bury. Back then we would sometimes be entertained. We're now so bad at playing football, that I'm wondering, not how long it will take us to get back to the big time, but how long it will take us to stop the rot. How low can we go? Division 2? Conference? Oblivion? I've no idea, but I'm inclined to walk away now and start going to Welling matches instead.
Only trouble is, I bought a five year season ticket, so unless the club wants to do the decent thing and refund any disillusioned types who are now feeling that they've been conned, I'm condemned to either 4 and a half more years of this damned torture or I've got to write off more than a grand of my hard earned.
I don't know whether Parky is the problem, because this started long before he came to us. Maybe he's the problem NOW, but I don't know what the solution is.
Like I say, it's not knee jerk - I've felt increasingly like this after pretty much every game for a long time now. Now I think I've had enough.
Don't think I'll turn up for the next home game. I'm not even sure who it's against or when it is. Maybe I'll have a change of heart, who knows?
Anyway, that's how I feel.
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Even so, I regret having paid £22 today to watch an awful Charlton performance.
Poyet has done wonders with his squad.
I don't think I'll be back until common sense prevails and Parky is on gardening leave.
You're probably right. It usually doesn't.
Oh well, see you all at the game against, er, oh whatever. See you all at the next home game. (Can't be bothered to look it up.)
My mate lent me his season ticket to watch a football match, am sending him a solicitors letter referring to the trades description act
Not been having a good few days mate. I've mentioned why elsewhere. Just want some bloody good news for a change.
Have you evey thought of joining the Samaritans? ;o)
What? He buys a five year ticket to try and help out the club he supports and you dig him for it? Have a word with yourself.
I know many people who were long time hardcore supporters that have long given up...
I haven't bought into the "it's all down to the last five managers" either.
Personally I think football is simple... You get better players than the other team, you keep them, you build around them, and then what tends to happen is that, poor tactics, motivation, passion, substitutions, or whatever cliché criticism the manager gets is hardly ever mentioned, because most good footballers make these points redundant.
In the last six years we have been so far away from that proven formula it's scary, and in most cases it hasn't been the managers that have sold off our best assets..
I have no idea if Parky is a good manager or not... A steady decline in the last six years, and five managers later, I fear the problem goes deeper..
To be honest there is no limit how far we can go. Remember relegation from "The Championship"? I never thought that would happen but it did very, very easily. We can comfortably go down this year and next etc. Look at other clubs. Look how many conference sides used to be in the league.
If you think things don't look so bad tomorrow, put your perculator on and have a big sniff!
This club has been in decline since January 2004. Untl someone stops the slide I would not like to predict where we will end up.
Janurary 2004. Curbs leaves Scott Parker out of FA Cup 3rd Round game V Gillingham because his head is not right. Charlton lose and Parker goes to Chelsea.
JohnnyH2 - The words nail, hit and head spring to mind.
We have no money to go and buy better players so we have to rely on loans or freebies. Maybe Parky does need to go or maybe he doesn't. Today was a bad day but this was the first time we've been outplayed by a team for a long time (Millwall away) and even today we could've scored a couple in the 1st half with our chances.
If Parky goes Breacker, Kinsella and possibly others also must go. We have to get the right replacement. Fine if we do get a good replacementp. I'm not confident they'd get the decision right, is anyone?
It is just one game. We still made the play offs after that Millwall defeat when some said we wouldn't.
However it's starting to feel more like the end of Pardew's reign than a just few bad results. We have some very tough games coming up and just points off the bottom 4. Next few games and any decisions made could have a huge effect on the rest of the season.
I remember that day as if it were yesterday, as the news filtered around under that rickety stand at Priestfield. It was a prophetic moment, we were on the cusp of the real big time but the player who had done more than most to get us there obviously wanted out! That was the zenith, have we reached the nadir yet? Parky seems determined to take us there.
lol
yes, sir alan has said it himself a few times that the short sightedness of the board meant that he wouldn't extend his contract.
Of course I have read Curbs book. The point is we have been in decline since that point not whether Parker was right to leave.
As for the comment would I leave my current employer if someone else offered me £20K a week more of course I would. But since I’m not on £15K a week (as Parker was at the time) nor did I sign a new 5 year contract only six months previously , nor would I have refused to come into work and do my job if they would not let me leave, it is hardly the same scenario.
To me the fee was irrelevant. Our best team in over 40 years was losing its best player when it was in fourth and was nearer third than it was fifth. Opportunities like that are very rare for a club of our size and what really stank was the petulant attitude shown by Parker. At the time unless we had got Gerrard in as a replacement no amount of money was going to make up for the loss of the player.
I think another defining date was when Andy Reid was sold.Team was starting to get results especially Iwelumo was getting the right service.
I agree with everything you've said here. But its worth also remembering that it simply wouldnt have happened if Abramovic had not popped up with his dubiously obtained billions and decided it would be fun to own an English football team.
The guy ruined us and he ruined English football.
Morts.I don't know if this was tongue-in-cheek or not,but if not your a dreamer if you think this clown could ever get us promoted.
Could not agree more with these
I don't think so. A club whose future is that dependent on whether one player stays or goes is on shaky ground to start with. And we should've made more of the Smertin/Murphy midfield; we could and should have done a Fulham.
I completely agree with that, though. Especially with players like Benty (and Rommedahl - if he'd been used properly, i.e. like he was the start of that season) in that squad. But that was coincidentally when Curbs totally lost interest, and possibly his lack of man-management skills came to the fore. Murphy and Smertin both effed off and we were left with Matty bloody Holland. The dross at the end of that season was shocking - and sending Palace down (we were outplayed and deserved to lose) let him off the hook a bit, I think - as there were already a lot of angry fans around that time.
Does make me upsethinking about Fulham, and also even what Ian Holloway's doing, and thinking 'that should have been us'...
Anyway *sigh*...
Some of the other points about a downward slide being jan 2004 when we sold parker, it is true but I think the biggest mistake was not investing the whole £10 million and buying just one player of true quality and then building a side around them, that's the biggest crime. We wasted that money on four mediocre players.
It was more than one player going - it showed to the rest of the team (and us fans) the lack of ambition of the board. And, as has been said, rather than investing all or most of the fee on a quality replacement, the board/Curbs went for quantity and look where that got us!
So It wasn't a case of Curbs choosing to spend more on quantity then quality...