Despite the welcome uptick in our results, it’s still a “no” from me. Two reasons - we are a couple of key injuries (Lloyd Jones & Miles Leaburn) away from another dip. We will need a lot of luck to keep our two best players & Ramsay fit for the next 20 games, and there’s currently no back up. Secondly - results have been better than performances. We didn’t actually play that well yesterday. There’s still plenty of grit in the oyster unfortunately. I think we will finish 8th without a couple of quality signings this week. Thoughts ?
If we find ourselves in a play-off spot it would mean we have continued with our run, and others have continued with a poor run. I'll stick with a failure.
If, and it’s a big if, we do get promoted, the US billionaires will need to take their spending to a whole new level in the Championship next season. Assuming they don’t flip the club pronto.
Nathan Jones explained again at the Q&A last week that he was opposed to loans (apart from A Campbell his Luton mate ) “developing other clubs players” was how he dismissed it. That suggests to me that any signings this week will be free agents.
And A Campbell is complete dross ! - apparently,from seriously, championship players would loathe to step down to league 1 ! Not sure where he thinks they should be loaned to ?
To answer the original question - it doesn't matter. I would give Charlton around a 6% or 7% chance of gaining promotion from where we are now. That's a 25% chance of making 6th or 5th place Multiplied by a 25% chance of winning the play-offs (and that's being very optimistic given the likely quality of the two play-off opponents we will have to defeat). With a much better manager and a much better squad CAFC won at Wembley in 2019. Then look what happened. If Charlton happen to be in the Championship for the 2025-26 season NJ will receive less backing than Lee Bowyer got. Which was a sum so small agents laughed at Bowyer over the phone when he told them his resources. We will be torn limb from limb 46 times. So what's the point? When Charlton dropped out of the top flight in 1957 they spent 39 years getting back. But only 4 of those seasons were spent in the 3rd Division. Second time down we took just 8 seasons to get back, even allowing for a resource-draining return to the Valley. And none of those seasons were spent in the 3rd Division. This time it will be an absolute minimum of 20 seasons, probably considerably longer, to return to the Premier League. And we have so far spent 11 of those seasons in the 3rd Division. And it may well be more. Charlton Athletic has never faced a decline as steep and damaging as the one it is suffering now. So promotion this season will never have meant less. Even if it happens it will be the least relevant 'success' in the Club's 120 year history. As in 2019, promotion will not solve Charlton's underlying problems. Any fan pinning hopes on a new owner coming to the rescue in the 2nd tier - look who we got last time we were up there. We won't attract anyone willing to pay the Landlord £50m+ to get the Valley back. And that, as they say, is all she wrote.
No - the squad is not good enough. We need that creative midfielder and an experienced Jorge Costa type defender to take us through the rest of the winter and the spiteful games and keep the heads up.
He (Hawtrey) is literally obsessed with “PL loans”. It’s one of his weird in jokes. Even though Nile John, Dylan Levitt, Matt Smith etc were all PL loans …that gets glossed over of course because nobody on ITTV is allowed to challenge “Charles”.
A definite “no”. Too many teams around us, all much of a muchness, but we will need a miracle to go 15 games without an injury to Lloyd Jones or one of our few essential players. It is a disgrace that we are supposedly embarking on a “promotion challenge” with the 2nd fewest number of outfield players in the league. I wouldn’t want to see this SMT or squad in the Championship anyway, it would be embarrassing. Can you imagine the budget Methven would give Nathan Jones if we were promoted this summer
Truth is yes we could Nick promotion but as you say we’re really not ready for it at the moment- but would it prompt the “owners “ into splashing some cash ?
It’s highly unlikely. Methven’s business model in the Championship would be identical. Can you imagine us running out at Wolves or Leicester City away in August with a front line of Ahadme & Tyreece Campbell …
