Interim supremo to bring in new players

Now billed as Charlton's 'interim' supremo, Phil Parkinson intends to bring in up to four new players during the January transfer window, he has told the club's E mail bulletin.

He said: 'We've mapped out how we want the squad to look. Steve Waggott, Richard Murray and the board are all working together and we're talking to players. Ideally, if we are going to bring players in, then we want to bring them in straight away. We have a squad written down with new additions of how we'd like it to look in an ideal world, and we're speaking to players' agents and other managers all the time, although there is no guarantee that any of those players will come.

We need to bring some players in to give everyone a lift; the supporters and the current group of players. Nothing lifts a team more than one, two or even three or four new bodies walking into the building. It lifts the training ground and certainly lifts the dressing room.'

There are some supporters who might be given a lift by Parkinson's departure, but clearly they are not living in the same ideal world as he is. He certainly isn't talking like a dead man walking.