We are slowly inching our way into a relegation scrap. Fulham will easily pull clear and Brighton's win shows that they are capable of winning enough games to pull clear. For my money Blackpool are the only certs to go down, all the other clubs will be up for the scrap. Will we? Watch this space, but I doubt whether Roland will call Riga a second time.
Yep - the notion we will spend if we're pushing for the play offs now has to be replaced with, we HAVE to spend to stave off relegation.
It looks like two from four for relegation to me: Blackpool are finished already on 17 points. Then any 2/4: Charlton, Rotherham, Millwall & Wigan. Dave Whelan has said that Wigan are going to have a go in the transfer market now to get out of it, us and other two look to be potless.
Dificult to believe we can have a millionaire owner and be potless. Bloody tightwad, you'd think a business man would now better than to let his assets disintegrate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Duchâtelet Roland Duchâtelet (French: [dyʃɑtlɛ]; born 14 November 1946) is a Belgian billionaire businessman
You are safe. Wigan will pull away, we will scrape our way up. But blackpools re doomed, Millwall and rotherham are in free fall and won't get to 40 points. Don't start panicking it all gets tense but you will have more than enough to stay up.
Chippy- you don't realise how badly our club is run at the moment, and unless Luzon confounds us all by being an Israeli Brian Clough the football will get worse. The decision to offload Morrison to Brum and give Onyewu a contact for the whole season is the sort of ludicrous decision which makes me so pessimistic.
Willy- I have heard that RD is one of the richest men in Belgium, with a personal fortune of 360m euros. £14m for CAFC was chicken feed to him. I find his "strategy" for Charlton, assuming that there is one, inexplicable. I thought that idea was to fatten the calf, take it to the Premier League market, and then sell it at a huge profit? Instead he has put the already emaciated calf on a crash diet, and is leading it by the nose to the slaughterhouse of League One. Does RD seriously think that 34 year old Wigan freebie Marc Antoine Fortune can help get us another 20 points to stay up?
Here are my predictions from Aug 5th (at a time when many here were predicting a promotion push): Relegated: Blackpool, Millwall, Rotherham (but maybe Charlton unless RD signs two good strikers) Charlton's Final Position: 21st as of now (but 16th if we sign a couple of good strikers) Nearly six months later and all I would change is that, having signed Watt, we need a LM as priority before one of those strikers. My prophetic powers were not infallible. I had Wigan down to be promoted via the play-offs.
Wikipedi calls him a billionare but SudInfo. http://www.sudinfo.be/1057847/artic...dans-le-cercle-ferme-des-milliardaires-belges calls him a surprise entry into the Belgium rich list at €700 million (twice your understanding). In 2011 this article http://www.rtbf.be/sport/football/detail_qui-est-roland-duchatelet?id=6344623 puts him at over €500million so I reckon billionaire is about right. Either way, he's got it and he's holding on to it, no crumbs for us.
Roland Duchâtelet could well be a billionaire. You know what these politicians (former and current) are like. They're mostly into tax dodging, lying and god knows what else.
The situation is truly parlous at this time and relegation is a very real possibility. I'm not panicking right now as I can think of any number of occasions in the past where we have been in this position and somehow "found a way". I believe the players have the ability to pull us to a safe position, the question is, is their confidence shot to such a level that they are unable to give of their best and win enough matches..? Our biggest obstacle to recovery at this time is not necessarily new players to bolster the squad (although some quality would be welcome), but the complete and utter collapse of Esprit du Corps amongst the players we already have. Morale is at rock bottom and when that happens players are beaten before they even take to the field. You can see the confidence and belief drain out of them at the first setback and when that happens in a game, there is no way back. But morale is a funny thing. It can be lifted suddenly, sometimes by the oddest occurrences. A lucky break that goes your way here, or a freak result there. It could be that somebody in the dressing room gets angry enough to roll his sleeves up, find an 'Agincourt speech' from somewhere and gets the team pumped up somehow..... perhaps determined to win games, not for Duchatelet, but to spite him. I've seen sudden surges of defiance in Charlton teams in the past, sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances, and would not write these players off yet. But if it doesn't come, then things could be very bleak indeed, come May.
Holloway is not going to get the Wallies another 17 points. Fatty Evans has lost the dressing room at rotherham. Your club is better run than ours, birmingham could get docked 15 points yet! You will be fine. Far worse than you in this league.
We have an eight point cushion. That should be enough, as Rotherham , Millwall, and Blackpool are not showing much signs of a revival either. Nor are Wigan, though I do believe they have enough talent to put some wins together. Maybe that is just my trying to justify my having tipped them for promotion through the play-offs. It would take mismanagement on an epic scale to send us down from our present position. Any of Powell, Riga or Peeters, whatever you think of each of them, could surely scrape enough points to keep us up. If Luzon takes us down from our present position he will become a Charlton legend like Pardew and Dowie. Apart from the four teams mentioned I foresee all others below us overtaking us before the end of the season. What a contrast from two seasons ago when Powell took us to within three points of the play-offs on a similar budget. Plus at that time our u21s romped their league as u19s and we thought that we had a few surefire future first-teamers. The future looked bright. But only Cousins has really come through to be worth a place in the squad. Pope, Osborne, Ajayi, Lennon, Fox, Poyet, Harriott, Sho-Silva, Azeez, Michael Smith and Pigott have all either left, got badly injured, or failed to impress consistently. What happened to Nathan Jones' "Golden Generation"? We still have a few good young 'uns coming through, but now the talk is not of what a great young side of homemades we will have two seasons ahead, but of whether they will decline to re-sign or whether RD will sell them for peanuts.
I have missed that. What is that about? As I posted above, I do not think we will get relegated this year, but "fine" and "far worse" are stretching it a bit. And what have we got to look forward to next season and thereafter? Is RD going to buy six or seven good players to replace the weak links, the loanees, and the veterans, when a couple of good players added to Peeters' team in the autumn might well have seen us into the play-offs? Seems unlikely. If RD had any plans to invest in this club, I think they were blown out of the water when the League voted to raise the Fair Play ceiling by so much. As a stingy and crafty businessman, he probably couldn't imagine that they would be so stupid, and I do have some sympathy with him there. No point in him throwing good money after bad when his peers are hell-bent on committing suicide.
Rumours are The financial results Brum submitted may have a £2.5 mill blackhole in them. If that is accurate they fail ffp and will subject to penalty of upto 15 points. Obviously if they go into admin the it's the standard deduction in ant case. It's only Twitter talk yet but it seems there is some smoke.....
Terrific win for Rotherham last night, and if they beat us they go above us, so I expect we are in for a battle Saturday. Question is: what players are up for it? I'm not assuming that Wigan and Millwall will keep losing, so this is a 6-pointer in my book.
It is not just being up for a battle. We need to win this game, where are the goals coming from? We have not scored in the last four Championship games. Rotherham scored four last night. This game is going to be tough and without some attacking additions we will struggle. We are desperate for a big Centre Forward, but there is none on the horizon. Also news from the Chairman of Steau Bucharest States that they have pulled out of the Tucudean deal. They offered 800000 Euros, but we were trying to push them to 1M euros. If true this is a massive OG.
Yes, stupid is the word I'd use. Who'd have thought Igor's goals would have dried up completely? WE had a decent away performance on Saturday, let's see if Luzon can improve on Bob's tame home performances. Surely Watt will start alongside Igor?
He has got to start. I will be at the U18 game on Saturday, but will not be going to the Rotherham game.
