Norwich up and Derby just sacked McClaren. Reckon there's more to the Newcastle story with McClaren. They went from being the second best team to one of the worst, all whilst investing heavily. Wasn't just Martin being injured.
On top of that West Ham have parted company with Sam Allardyce, after they achieved European football next season. I hear that they're approaching Klopp again after Rafa Benitez accepted the Real job.
It seems with BetVictor Charlton are the highest odds of Championship teams (7/1) to finish in the top 6 and with SkyBet Charton (after Rotherham) are second fav for relegation at 5/2 The Witch must be saying to Guy that the minimum expected of him next season is a top 6 place surely?
That might be the expectation but pretty sure that, that is what at least 10 other teams are gunning for. You'd have: Hull, Burnley, QPR all expecting to be promoted or playoffs minimum Ipswich, Middlesbrough both expecting top six Forrest, Derby, Blackburn, Fulham whom should be looking to top six Bolton, Birmingham will be up there at end of season I predict too that they'll have a lot more money to spend, and recruit better quality players than us. I think that Guy Luzon is going to need better players than Belgians and Standard Liège rejects and cast offs, if we have a realistic chance of finishing high.
Yes, we need to improve five positions and decent back-up for two more, assuming we lose Buyens and Bulot and no-one else significant. The back-up we might add cheap or from the network, but the rest would cost a minimum 5 million pounds nett outlay plus their wages. I don't think RD is up for that, and it seems the bookies agree.
I was just Wikipediaing Neil McDonald and then Jose Riga (his win rate at Liege hasn't been updated since Feb...) and then went to compare Riga's win percentage with us (43%!) to all other CAFC managers but unfortunately no one has yet added this to our Wikipedia Anyway it says in 2011 we won the People's Cup, which when you click on it is the Israeli verse of the FA Cup. Am I missing something? The People's Cup is even listed under Chris Powell's successes! Is this just a pro Sir Chrissy fan doing a Grant Shapps?
To mount any sort of credible promotion challenge, we need 12 players. 6/7 oven ready first teamers to strengthen what we already have, augmented by a decent crop of squad players. Take an example - full back. Wiggins is one bad tackle away from packing up, his replacement is Fox who reminds me of the Tin Man playing in a pair of diving boots. You could reasonably argue that we need two new players in this position alone. It isn't going to happen. As soon as we hit a slump in form - probably around September - Luzon will be bolted and Pinnochio Meire will be interviewing 20 candidates again.
The worst kept secret in football is out - home friendlies against West Ham and Chievo announced. The return of poyet.
There's an article in Private Eye about the OLympic Stadium. CAST even gets a mention: "Charlton Athletic Supporters Trust says the extremely cheap tickets West Ham plan to offer, thanks to picking up a bargain stadium, will threaten Charlton". The deal has been referred to the European Commission over the use of taxpayers money to subsidise a private club. Boris Johnson retorted "They can bog off. It's totally ridiculous".
Of course he's going to say that. The government don't want an expensive waste of money on their hands, they always needed someone to occupy it post the Olympics for it to be profitable. Look at the Brazilian World Cup. The stadium which hosted the final, only saw 3 games played there, and is now just a car park for buses. It's not been used since, and cannot find anyone to use it either. If West Ham do not move into it, it'll get get dilapidated and never used.
Least said about Ireland-England the better, but I cannot resist a dig at the ever-declining standard of sports reporting in this country. From the BBC website: "However, this lacklustre display did little to reflect the improvements they have made in recent months and Hodgson must hope it is not repeated when they play Lithuania [sic] next weekend".
BBC 5Live are repeating their Voices of Summer programme this evening about all the great cricket commentators. It'll be available as a podcast as well.
http://www.cafc.co.uk/news/article/charlton-upbeats-national-downs-syndrome-champions-2495321.aspx Things like this remind me why I support Charlton. 5 minutes of joy in a ****ty week for CAFC fans.
