Volly, Ponders, given your keeness on all things British, you'll be glad to know I was chatting with a couple of Bolivians on the building site today, and I made a point of directing them in the direction of working in London. Just doing my bit to keep the UK Cosmopolitan, and that the next time you get robbed, it's by someone called Garcia or Salvadore ,-)
Not sure what this has to do with football, Ken, but I shall address your interesting story - I am not keen on Britain. Britain is for people who lack an identity. I am keen on England, though. The state of Wessex should be reinstated for Anglo Saxons. I have absolutely no problem with hard-working foreigners. In fact, my local chippy is run by an extremely pleasant Venezuelan. I do have a problem with useless immigration: Kurdish thieves, Romanian Big Issue Sellers, Polish Poundland cashiers... If you ever meet me, you will know why I have never been mugged. Why on earth were you on a building site? I hope this post doesn't offend anyone and start a tit for tat sniping session. I have been well-behaved and utterly civil of late, so it would be shame to kick a hornets nest. Ta.
Okay, back to football we go. I don't want to see Charlton relegated again. We've had two in the last few years, and while relegation from the Prem seemed inevitable from the first few matches of Dowie, the second was silly. Powell's tactics sometimes baffle me, and sometimes they're just daft, but while in a choice between keeping Powell and survival, I would unswervingly choose survival, unless we get a couple of loan signings in sharpish, the choice of manager will be academic, and for the record, despite the incomings, I still don't think after the last transfer window that Powell is being given the players he wants or needs. And I was on a building site as that's where I work these days. As a pointless immigrant myself, and given the Spanish economy, beggars can't be choosers and it pays money (occasionally). I've considered sending a CV to Charlton to be manager, but I'd be frightened of Typical and Volly orchestrating a 'Shabby out' campaign.
I applied for the job of Charlton manager after Andy Nelson got sacked, but they didn't think I was suitable for the position.
@ Captain With regards to your comments about us having 24 points and that being par for the course, or "expected"....I don't concur. To use a horse racing analogy for a minute - I am a great afficianado of the turf - its a bit like the horse handicapping system. If you own a thoroughbred and run it alongside donkeys, and it keeps finishing upside those donkeys instead of pulling away from them, your thoroughbred is then rated as...guess what....a donkey. eew aww It is also a fact that the four teams with the lowest budgets in the Championship this season are Yeovil, Barnsley, Millwall and Bournemouth. Three of those four clubs are the donkeys upsides us in the table...and we have just sold our best player to the other one!
Fair enough, Ken. I was just being snooty. You see, one tends not to get one's hands dirty these days.
Where did you read this? I'd be surprised if Millwall or Bournemouth had smaller budgets than us considering both have made significant strides in the transfer market over the past 12 months.
yeah, i find it hard to believe millwall have a smaller budget than us - we both offered simeon jackson a deal till the end of the year and he chose them. the only thing that would have swayed him would have been cash, as geographically we're in the same place, we're in the same division and we're both struggling.
I saw a league table of Championship budgets on line a while back. We were mid table QPR and Forest at the top.
Perhaps he saw Millwall as a more stable club than ours. Our current plight must be pretty off-putting to prospective signings. Having said that, he was faced with Hobson's choice if he had to choose between the two of us.
Not to sound like I'm scoffing at that, Nick, but I think whatever you read would have been horribly wrong. You just have to look at the squads of the Championship teams on wikipedia to know we will definitely be bottom 5 and I'd hazard a guess the bottom 3. Especially after seeing the backs of Kermo, Stephens, Haynes, Fuller etc and replacing them with loans from RD's clubs and players like Gower. Bournemouth paid a 7 figure sum for a manager, and almost the same amount on Pittman whilst in League One, whilst paying handsome wages for players like Andrew Surman upon entering the Championship. Millwall then signed high profile free transfers like Bailey, Mcdonald, and Lee Martin. It doesn't add up.
It's Powell's fault because he is managing a team with 5 league wins all season. Be honest Captain, the prolonged departure of Slater and Jiminez saved him at the end of 2013. At any other club, he would have been gone months ago based on his results.
But we are not "any other club" we are better than that and we do not blame the manager/coach for things which are not within his control such as the pitch, the lack of money to invest in strengthening the squad under Slater and Jiminez, or the new owners strategy of strengthening from within his football empire. We have a history of standing by managers and not knee jerk reactions and panic. Yes, we do get shot of obviously poor managers such as Dowie and uncle les and occasionally have treated managers slightly unfairly - Phil Parkinson. If the new owners get rid of CP I think we and they will live to regret the decision. That is not your view nor, because the view comes from somebody else, does it make your view right. I do not drink Bovril nor do I have any of the other style characteristics you appear to deeply deplore in other Charlton supporters, that doesn't make me "right", nor does the assault on people's dress, hobbies or choice of beverage, make you or anyone else "right". I like some others on here have a view that we should support the manager since we do not believe there is a better or affordable alternative. We are entitled to have our view, but again that does not make us less intelligent or clever nor does it make us better people. We, like you portray yourself to be, are "Charlton supporters" ( the clue is in the second word) and that is what should make us all better than that.
Well said SVC. Vol, we're going round in circles. It's not Powell's fault that 2 of our best players have been sold, nor that we couldn't keep Fuller this season. It's not Powell's fault that we have had very little money to spend so can't buy better players. Finishing 9th last season was a damn fine achievement, and, given what's happened this season off the pitch, survival would be another decent achievement. I wish we were at the other end of the table, but realistically, given our situation, that was never going to happen. Given your stated desire for a return the good old days to English owners for English clubs - I sentiment I respect, as I'm not comfortable with the idea of football clubs being a foreign businessman's plaything - I would have thought you would take a dim view of the modern belief that a bad run is reason enough to sack a manager. I've mentioned this before, but did we sack Curbs, a manager who had taken us up a level (like Powell has) when we went down in 1999, a season which at one point included a run of 8 straight league defeats? No. And look what happened. Just because other clubs do it doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean it's wrong either, but the point is you can't use it as an argument that we should do the same as them. You may have a point about Powell being saved because of Slater and Jiminez's departure, but that doesn't mean it would have been right to sack him.
There seems to be a foolish notion that there is no other manager on earth who could get better results from our current squad than Chris Powell. I wouldn't mind Alex Ferguson or Curbs having a go at saving us from the drop, but this is never going to happen, so we must be pragmatic. I do believe that Chris Powell is the only man within the club who can lead us away from relegation, so any suggestions of Paul Hart, Alex Dyer, Keith Peacock, the jackpot ladies, and the office cleaner, Iris, should be quashed forthwith. A foreign manager with no experience of our league is too risky at this stage of the season. The same can be said for a lower league rookie such as Gary Rowett. In an ideal world, Chris Powell would be the man to lead us to the Promised Land. Personally, I don't think he is up to that level of achievement, but I do think he is able to save us this season. Beyond that, who knows... I just dread the day we end up with some non-entity from Flanders.
