Match Day Thread Road to Wembley was a cul de sac - Donny

Ajose was a disgrace. He spent the whole 90 minutes hiding. Missed a simple header from a good cross. Marshall was the only player that stood out for us. I don't know why we are offering a new contract to Hackett- Fairchild he is crap. I have to agree with Royston, the U23 well has run dry.

 

Ajose is a No Mark.

 

I asked Avory at last year's CASTRust AGM if we had just had a golden era of youngsters, with Lookman, Gomez, Pope, Holmes-Dennis Konsa (any more?), and although he didn't like to commit himself he did say there were always going to be ups and downs. We've got KAG., Dijksteel, Aribo and Solly in the first team atm, with only Aribo looking like potential Premier League quality, and we all know he'll go in January. The tragedy is that when we had the best ones they were sold off cheap. We were never going to keep producing players like Gomez, although I guess Roland's delusion was that we would.

 

Our only saleable playing assets now are Aribo & Taylor we were just saying in the cafe how unfit Billy Clarke looks.

 

I guess Elf didn't contribute much to a discussion about football?

 

He contributed his usual amount - nothing

 

Grant is also saleable.

 

I made the wrong decision yesterday. Welling won 3-1 and are now top of the table.

 

I started to talk about yesterday's cracker at Dorking but I was told to shut up.

 

Well that was infuriating, but if it did anything, saturday gave a loud ovation to Lardiman, who was getting pelters for saying it was getting hard to support a club as badly mismanaged as Charlton.

Firstly, the Doncaster manager said he wanted to win saturday as a plum third round tie would give him funds to boost the squad in january. It was pointed out on all Charlton fórums that the same does not apply to us as no extra money would be available to Bowyer to strengthen the squad for a promotion push - the owner will pocket any surplus.

Secondly, there has been a lot of debate about whether it's worth worrying about a cup we cannot win, as it would be a worry to pick up more injuries to our paper thin squad. Paper thin squad is hardly a description that ties up with a phrase like 'promotion challenge'. If the squad is so thin, and our players so weary at the start of december that they cannot raise themselves to play a cup match and then rest seven days before the next match, promotion would seem to be a home to the dementedly over optimistic. We have the same sort of squad RD has given us ever year - there are some good players, some trash and some workhorses, and the usual over reliance on the youth set up. And that is hardly a winning formula. We may yet sneak into the play offs in may - getting well beaten on saturday while putting out a joke sqaud will not be looked back on as having helped.

The fact is, we cannot win this competition, but getting promoted is also a long shot. But not taking anything seriously (of four competitions we entered this season, we surrendered in three) simply paints the picture of the club that Lardi got shot down for- mismanaged, underfunded and without any real ambition. the attendances are being shredded. Less tan three thousand Charlton fans went to saturdays fiasco, and I'd bet given how Bowyer treated them I imagine a few will think twice next time out. RD is poison, and the idea that meantime we can enjoy the football and the atmousphere is a bit of a thin way of papering the cracks.

Bowyer still has my support. He chose to accept the job, and clearly has one priority. On his head be it if at the end we abdicate in three competitions and grind to a halt in the one he has chosen to win. But saturday went way beyond resting players. That was a snub to the fans. He'd better have a good plan to win promotion, as for me his credit ran out with the subs he chose to put on his half empty bench.

 

RD has obviously told the manager that it will be far easier to sell a Championship Club rather than a L1 Club so to concentrate all his efforts on getting promotion …. Lee Bowyer has rather taken this request to heart and took absolutely no risks with his Cup squads … LB has burnt some bridges with a number of fans …. it is sh1t of bust for Bowyer now, he either gets promotion or we are looking for a new manager in the summer.

 

Bowyer's arrogant comments after the game warrant an apology.

"We were not going to win it, were we?"

 

Shockin, juss shockin.

 

The wider point is that Bowyer is "resting" players who haven't played many games this season, and could do with getting a few under their belt. Reeves & Clarke both played, and were both poor. Fosu and Bauer could easily have played on Saturday, or at least appeared on the substitutes bench which Bowyer disgracefully failed to fill. People defending Bowyer in the main are the ones who didn't fork out top dollar to watch a Reserve -U19 jolly. It speaks volumes for the inane lack of ambition in some that "Charlton never have a Cup run". Bowyer needs to learn a sharp lesson here - be clearer next time you play a reserve game under the auspices of a first team game, else risk losing the respect of our supporters for good.

 

The bench was a real shocker for me. Give the reserves a chance is all very well, but keep the big guns ready for the time when the reserves fail to make their case. It's fine to appreciate the job Bowyer has done so far but be dismayed by his performance on Saturday.

 

Bowyer started great (as often happens with the exception of Fraeye) and took Robinson's misfiring squad into the play offs. He was rightly aclaimed for transforming a go-nowhere team into promotion contenders.
This season, he has put together some very good deals working with the few peanuts RD let's him spend. It is always going to be tough gaining promotion with the sort of financial constraints at the Valley. But at the same time he has done some fairly dumb things. Satrting with failing to fill the bench at sunderland, or make changes as we were being pushed back. Saturday was another one - the bench was just foolish. January is coming and it'll be tough to imagine we come out of january stronger than we go into it. The statement to the press that the FA Cup was unimportant as we aren't going to win it is one he may live to regret - it smacks of the sort of tripe Katrien used to offer the fans. Not his finest hour at all.

 

Maidstone vs Oldham had a better attendance than we did on Saturday.

 

Cracking post Ken (and not just because I got a couple of mentions)

 

Fans saying that if we win the next two games this result will be forgotten; true, but this puts extra pressure on the team, who will be well aware of fans' anger. This performance makes me less confident that we can win these difficult games. Hopefully Bowyer will prove me totally wrong.

 

So far this season Charlton have (by and large) done pretty well in the League.
However I think the honeymoon is now over.

Yes, Bowyer is a rookie manager who is only learning the ropes. Yes, his past history with Charlton helps the fans to identify with him. But he has settled for the meagre, inadequate resources that Duchatelet has allowed him. He has consistently peddled the line that this squad is good enough to win promotion.

Blaming injuries is a cop-out.
A manager should build a squad with enough depth to cope with injuries. Everybody knows that our squad has almost no depth in several positions.
Even Karl Robinson had the occasional cheeky side-swipe at Duchatelet, which revealed that Gobbo was not really happy with matters and was well aware of whose fault that was.

Despite all of his good managerial qualities, Lee Bowyer strikes me as even more 'Duchatelet's man' than Robinson was.