I might be going mad and agree about not playing players out of position, but one that has always crossed my mind is whether Church could do a job out wide with Sordell up front with Yann. Church can run all day long, get forward, track back, has even had few decent assists this season. Would at least run at them a bit, somewhat like Wagstaff did. Clutching at straws maybe.
Home at 3am from Donny, family move today so won't be on here much until tomorrow but without reading ANYTHING , my brief thoughts on last night/the current worrying situation are here...
No Thuram in goal so the conspiracy theorists were wrong on that count. Not happy to see Ceddy & Lennon on the left and I'm afraid those fears were realised quite early on. Donny/Dickov wanted this game SO much more than us from the off .I can understand that they were more than miffed in the way their 2 appearances in SE7 turned out and revenge was their aim - they came out of their blocks a la Usain Bolt. Of course, we too should have been up for it - a 6 pointer indeed but as before this season, we were out muscled & out fought before we saw any chances of our lads getting going.
2 nil down at half time says it all & down to 10 men- a mountain to climb. I won't hazard a guess at our formation last night ( is there a "chaos formation" ? ) but it didn't work and seemed as though damage limitation was the best we could hope for. Can't comment on the red card as it was at the far end and players in the way of our view but there didn't seem to be too any protests . I'd say pretty much ALL our players looked out of sorts & as though they had other things on their minds which may be true in light of the uncertainty around the Club. I wasn't "gaffer watching" all the time but not once did I see him leave the side of the dugout - from a distance he looked totally dejected as were most of the trusty travellers in the away end.
A few Addicks slagging off the team pretty loudly but that's passion, anger at spending money & precious time in attending etc .On the whole, once the drum was silenced fairly early on, we followed its lead. There really was very little to shout about & my voice today is testament to that. Came away very despondent & worrying where we would be by Saturday...
Rumour heard that we are due to sign 2 -3 players for CASH before Friday- 2 pretty much done deals, the 3rd needing a bit more work. No names mentioned at all. Also, a rumour that SCP has been offered a contract in principle , probably to be signed on Thurs and that Yann too is in the same situation but murmurs about the terms being given. All or none of these could be true. I did however, by pure chance sit in front of a guy who introduced himself as Lawrie Wilson's uncle. Unfortunately, his nephew wasn't on the pitch for too long although Unc wasn't incensed by the decision to send him off - as he and I agreed, our view wasn't ideal. With little happening on the pitch ( apart from Donny players conning the lino & ref and halting play on many occasions) we had a chat about all things Charlton. Uncle is a Hammer but also watches Lawrie when possible. Said he was at Ipswich on NYD and thought we were unlucky to only come away with one point. Stated that L's best position is wide right & ideally in front of CS , of which we are only too aware. I asked if he's happy at our Club and was told yes but Brighton want him ...Nathan Jones obviously having a say in his Club's targets . Of course L has another year to run on his contract. Also said that the players were bored witless since Saturday night and they would rather have come home than stay up north. And Unc then went down to the concourse at half time and didn't reappear- sensible man !
So, it's all down to what happens in the next couple of days, I guess. maybe last night's performance & result is not the be all & end all ( it did feel like it at 10pm !)and that the team we see at Wigan will have been refreshed & rejuvenated with the inclusion of at least a couple of new faces (inc a striker PLEASE!!!) Anyone coming in at this stage needs to hit the ground running though and maybe the SL additions are not up to speed with the English game yet....but when will they get said opportunity ? Another decent reason why a Reserve team in a relevant league would be a huge plus. You know that I will support whoever puts on the red shirt and whoever is strong enough to get us out of the mess we currently find ourselves in. I sincerely hope that this is SCP & that he is given the opportunity to bring in a few of HIS players. Maybe then , and only then will the playing field be more level & that we can slowly but surely begin to haul ourselves away from the lower realms of the table. Next season seems a zillion miles away but as long as it's in the Championship, I'm not going to waste my time stressing about the way forward.
What I do know is that, as Gritty & Brownie stated last Thursday evening, the players & management team need us to get behind them from the first whistle to the last, every game. The mythical 12th man needs to morph into reality starting at Wigan. I honestly don't know whether we can turn our season around as February approaches but I DO know that all concerned will give it their best shot. The next few days will tell us whether RD is the man we hope he'll be.
I know we are in a relegation fight - but will someone tell the club not to play the Killers Human before games as they have done before in similar circumstances. "We are on our knees looking for an answer" may be true - we just don't want to hear it.
I might be going mad and agree about not playing players out of position, but one that has always crossed my mind is whether Church could do a job out wide with Sordell up front with Yann. Church can run all day long, get forward, track back, has even had few decent assists this season. Would at least run at them a bit, somewhat like Wagstaff did. Clutching at straws maybe.
My guess is that he cannot cross the ball - not that has been much of problem for many Charlton wingers in recent times.
I've only read a few other posts on this one and some vg points made by Fanny, Scoham, and Muttley among others.
Arriving home at 2.30am it was easy to conclude that trudging up there in foul weather wasn't one of the highlights of my Charlton life. After sleeping on it I've arrived at pretty much the same conclusion - without significant strengthening of the whole attack and the injection of belief that goes with it we are in very real danger of going down. All season I've felt we'd have just enough to scrape clear, with the organistaion of very limited resources and the togetherness and resolution of the players essential. After all, even in difficult circumstances, we rarely get thumped, which has at least helped ease the pain of our obvious lack of firepower.
Thankfully last night we didn't fold altogether after the (correct) sending off, but a relegation rival could very well have won by five. Apart from the apparent additional hunger, Donny completely outplayed us, even with eleven men. I can't quite go along with the "we couldn't be arsed" type comments - we were annoyingly poor but still battled - but the gulf in quality was there for all to see. All over the pitch Donny players won their duals, playing with verve and the swagger their last two games have given them. The most glaring contrast was in the way players whose own league position suggests aren't world-beaters EXPRESSED themselves, taking on their markers and shooting or making an incisive pass for someone else. In advanced positions we always chose to turn back and play safe, passing on the onus to someone in yet another harmless position. I a nutshell it was completely defendable, whereas Donny produced unexpected flicks, body swerves etc. that caused havoc for us, and could very easily have produced more goals.
I know how rudimentary that analysis sounds but the difference really was that stark - against bloody Doncaster! Clearly the two squads are not that wildly mismatched - we beat them convincingly a month ago, but all the current uncertainty and some muddled team selection made for an impotent team bereft of belief, playing damage limitation. Maybe the boss must take some criticism this time but how many people would be able to get blood out of a stone over a prolonged period in this situation, with their hands tied behind their back? We certainly should have attacked the game more last night, and given a lowly team cause for more concern themselves, but I can understand why there was a collective tendency to retreat into our shells, especially after our most industrious player was dismissed.
All that said, the whole experience was just depressing, and must be playing on even the brightest optimists' minds. After we lost 3-0 at Burnley I suggested we gave a reasonable if limited account of ourselves against a strong confident team, but still felt we could turn things around. Unless substantial changes are made urgently in attack at least, I really can't keep pretending.
not read all the views: 1) Powell's selection was again Tosh/rubbish/inexcusable/inexplicable .. 2 left backs, 2 men to do one job ? .. Lennon was OK, Evina, God knows for what role he was selected, was dire and once again he was pulled off at 1/2 time 2) Irrespective of the sending off, we would have lost .. we were lucky to get NIL and were just outclassed 3) Dickov has been allowed to bring in two class defenders (both were as quick as Church and as tough as Kermorgant) and a class striker. His midfield is so experienced that 2 of them played against us for Doncaster some 6 years ago 4) From boom to bust in three days, a great win at Hudd, close to humiliation at Donny 5) Donny looked more like promotion than relegation candidates. 6) We need experienced players NOW .. otherwise we are going down.
7) A word on the sending off. The last man 'commits a foul and is sent off' rule is wrong and ruins too many games. A booking and penalty should be enough. Go over the top and break a man's leg, bring a man down in the area with merely a mistimed tackle and concede a penalty, the same punishment for either 'crime' is just wrong. People paid a lot and travelled a long way to see a game that was ruined by the referee's decision .. wrong .. we would have lost the game anyway, but the spectacle would have been much more enjoyable
Any consolation? .. Donny beat Wigan, our next port of call, 3-0 in the home game before ours .. but Wiggy are at home against us.
Have to agree with a lot of what Lincs has posted above. When you set up with no natural wide players and three centre halves in your back four, which becomes four for the second half, your attacking options are extremely limited especially with no plan B. We were second best before the sending off but were well and truly shafted when the penalty was given and converted with Wilson gone. The decision to sub Evina with Wood was a strange one to go even more defensive with damage limitation clearly in mind and the hope that the four 6 foot plus defenders might nick you something at a set piece and 2-1 maybe we might salvage something. But with absolutely no threat going forward how could we possibly win a free kick or corner to score from. Hence the away natives became restless and quite rightly so.
Alnwick did ok and had no chance with any of the goals, the last one their MOM number 7 went past Wood with ease and buried his shot with venom. Morro did ok as a stand in right back but offers nothing going forward. Cousins was played out of position wide right, why, why oh why? 4 games in 11days for JJ was always going to end in tears, big heart but not the quickest at the best of times. Yann tried to get something going and showed his class early on and if he had any doubts about leaving last night we didn't help our cause to keep him.
Donny were a tidy side and up for it, we would have struggled with 11 to get something from the game with 10 we had no chance. I said Brum were dire and relegation fodder when we beat them away earlier in the season, our performance last night came close to that and the only saving grace is the excuse that we had a man light for an hour of the contest.
Saturday's performance at Wigan needs to be a massive improvement on what we had to endure last night :-(
Just one of the days or nights where nothing clicked for the boys where everything that went wrong did go wrong.
No you can't put that down to "just one of those nights". Lack of any creative threat at all - none - zip - is rather worse than one of those nights. And a new striker won't be much help if there aren't any scraps for him to feed off (there weren't).
Plenty wrong, but the one thing that will ensure we go down is playing 90 minutes and creating not a single chance worth the name. As Lincs adroitly observed, we were lucky to score nil.
sounded like they went there for one point, had a key player sent off, were probably still buzzing from Saturday, sh1t happened. Yes we need better players and yes the attitude may have been all wrong. Get over it and move on. Roll on Saturday and more importantly let everyone at Charlton roll their sleeves up and get stuck in and that includes the fans in upping the noise levels whenever we are at any of the games and yes big thanks for all those there.
At the match and left feeling dispirited. There number 7 Duffy mesmerised our defenders. A fellow struggler put us to the sword confirming our team/squad are several players short of the number required to survive in the Championship. Feel that we are now standing on the trap door. But we live in hope.
not read all the views: 1) Powell's selection was again Tosh/rubbish/inexcusable/inexplicable .. 2 left backs, 2 men to do one job ? .. Lennon was OK, Evina, God knows for what role he was selected, was dire and once again he was pulled off at 1/2 time 2) Irrespective of the sending off, we would have lost .. we were lucky to get NIL and were just outclassed 3) Dickov has been allowed to bring in two class defenders (both were as quick as Church and as tough as Kermorgant) and a class striker. His midfield is so experienced that 2 of them played against us for Doncaster some 6 years ago 4) From boom to bust in three days, a great win at Hudd, close to humiliation at Donny 5) Donny looked more like promotion than relegation candidates. 6) We need experienced players NOW .. otherwise we are going down.
7) A word on the sending off. The last man 'commits a foul and is sent off' rule is wrong and ruins too many games. A booking and penalty should be enough. Go over the top and break a man's leg, bring a man down in the area with merely a mistimed tackle and concede a penalty, the same punishment for either 'crime' is just wrong. People paid a lot and travelled a long way to see a game that was ruined by the referee's decision .. wrong .. we would have lost the game anyway, but the spectacle would have been much more enjoyable
Any consolation? .. Donny beat Wigan, our next port of call, 3-0 in the home game before ours .. but Wiggy are at home against us.
problem with this Lincs is there was only one Left Back who was playing out of position and a Centre Back also playing out of position, plus pushing Cousins out to Right wing further disrupted the set up
Comments
Arriving home at 2.30am it was easy to conclude that trudging up there in foul weather wasn't one of the highlights of my Charlton life. After sleeping on it I've arrived at pretty much the same conclusion - without significant strengthening of the whole attack and the injection of belief that goes with it we are in very real danger of going down. All season I've felt we'd have just enough to scrape clear, with the organistaion of very limited resources and the togetherness and resolution of the players essential. After all, even in difficult circumstances, we rarely get thumped, which has at least helped ease the pain of our obvious lack of firepower.
Thankfully last night we didn't fold altogether after the (correct) sending off, but a relegation rival could very well have won by five. Apart from the apparent additional hunger, Donny completely outplayed us, even with eleven men. I can't quite go along with the "we couldn't be arsed" type comments - we were annoyingly poor but still battled - but the gulf in quality was there for all to see. All over the pitch Donny players won their duals, playing with verve and the swagger their last two games have given them. The most glaring contrast was in the way players whose own league position suggests aren't world-beaters EXPRESSED themselves, taking on their markers and shooting or making an incisive pass for someone else. In advanced positions we always chose to turn back and play safe, passing on the onus to someone in yet another harmless position. I a nutshell it was completely defendable, whereas Donny produced unexpected flicks, body swerves etc. that caused havoc for us, and could very easily have produced more goals.
I know how rudimentary that analysis sounds but the difference really was that stark - against bloody Doncaster! Clearly the two squads are not that wildly mismatched - we beat them convincingly a month ago, but all the current uncertainty and some muddled team selection made for an impotent team bereft of belief, playing damage limitation. Maybe the boss must take some criticism this time but how many people would be able to get blood out of a stone over a prolonged period in this situation, with their hands tied behind their back? We certainly should have attacked the game more last night, and given a lowly team cause for more concern themselves, but I can understand why there was a collective tendency to retreat into our shells, especially after our most industrious player was dismissed.
All that said, the whole experience was just depressing, and must be playing on even the brightest optimists' minds. After we lost 3-0 at Burnley I suggested we gave a reasonable if limited account of ourselves against a strong confident team, but still felt we could turn things around. Unless substantial changes are made urgently in attack at least, I really can't keep pretending.
1) Powell's selection was again Tosh/rubbish/inexcusable/inexplicable .. 2 left backs, 2 men to do one job ? .. Lennon was OK, Evina, God knows for what role he was selected, was dire and once again he was pulled off at 1/2 time
2) Irrespective of the sending off, we would have lost .. we were lucky to get NIL and were just outclassed
3) Dickov has been allowed to bring in two class defenders (both were as quick as Church and as tough as Kermorgant) and a class striker. His midfield is so experienced that 2 of them played against us for Doncaster some 6 years ago
4) From boom to bust in three days, a great win at Hudd, close to humiliation at Donny
5) Donny looked more like promotion than relegation candidates.
6) We need experienced players NOW .. otherwise we are going down.
7) A word on the sending off. The last man 'commits a foul and is sent off' rule is wrong and ruins too many games. A booking and penalty should be enough. Go over the top and break a man's leg, bring a man down in the area with merely a mistimed tackle and concede a penalty, the same punishment for either 'crime' is just wrong.
People paid a lot and travelled a long way to see a game that was ruined by the referee's decision .. wrong .. we would have lost the game anyway, but the spectacle would have been much more enjoyable
Any consolation? .. Donny beat Wigan, our next port of call, 3-0 in the home game before ours .. but Wiggy are at home against us.
Alnwick did ok and had no chance with any of the goals, the last one their MOM number 7 went past Wood with ease and buried his shot with venom. Morro did ok as a stand in right back but offers nothing going forward. Cousins was played out of position wide right, why, why oh why? 4 games in 11days for JJ was always going to end in tears, big heart but not the quickest at the best of times. Yann tried to get something going and showed his class early on and if he had any doubts about leaving last night we didn't help our cause to keep him.
Donny were a tidy side and up for it, we would have struggled with 11 to get something from the game with 10 we had no chance. I said Brum were dire and relegation fodder when we beat them away earlier in the season, our performance last night came close to that and the only saving grace is the excuse that we had a man light for an hour of the contest.
Saturday's performance at Wigan needs to be a massive improvement on what we had to endure last night :-(
No you can't put that down to "just one of those nights". Lack of any creative threat at all - none - zip - is rather worse than one of those nights. And a new striker won't be much help if there aren't any scraps for him to feed off (there weren't).
Plenty wrong, but the one thing that will ensure we go down is playing 90 minutes and creating not a single chance worth the name. As Lincs adroitly observed, we were lucky to score nil.