Tuesday 3 March 2009

Charlton till I die

A chorus of this chant floated across the world to Brisbane as Charlton went 1-2 down to Doncaster at The Valley tonight. This was a must win match and League 1 football next season now looks unavoidable.

Doncaster took the lead on 50 minutes, but Nicky Bailey equalised with a great strike. Unfotunately, he conceded a penalty minutes later.

The news that Darren Ambrose was coming on said it all and he managed to miss a sitter in the dying moments of the game. Dickson being offside and wide also emphasised the lack of a credible strike force. But Shelvey impressed with his skill and effort.

Leamington won 3-0 at Dunstable Town.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately we are bottom because we have the worst team . I think we have been unlucky with injuries ( ZZ) , but we have too many problems to blame it all on that . They should have played 442 last night with Burton instead of Kandol . I think losing Kandol for 2 games has been very unlucky. The big worry for me now is the lack of a decent goalscorer to get us back up . Leicester had Howard & Fryatt . We haven't got anyone and unless we uncover one quickly I fear a slip through the next division too ( sorry !)

Anonymous said...

When was the last time one of our socalled strikers scored from open play?Until they solve that problem we will continue to struggle,even one division lower

Anonymous said...

Yep, we're down and got shown up by a good Doncaster side. Dickson was getting some stick from those around me but I think this was undeserved as a small pacey striker like that should be playing off another not alone up front. Burton did well when he game on at holding up the ball. Shelvey is not quite ready yet and it is a shame that we have now resorted to relying on him rather than slowly introducing him into games like with Parker. In a must win game I was disappointed with Parkinsons choice of 4-4-1-1.

Anonymous said...

Dickson cannot help it but he was a disgrace last night.Lets not have any more talk about him being our savior.He is what he is ,I.E.a semi pro footballer who got lucky with a contract from a manager who is a poor judge of a footballer

Anonymous said...

So the general concensus is that were down now. I think a combination of us not being very good, having SO MANY loanee's (I know this is something covered over and over again, but we are now in a position where by if we give debuts to just 6 more players we would have fielded enough players to allow for a first, second, third and fourth team.)

I don't know about anyone else but now we really should cancel the loans of any players we are not definatley going to sign at the end of their term and have a look at what is left for the third division next year.

I think all of the optimists out there (and believe me when I say I am born of that nature) need to realise that there is no realistic way out of the bottom three now. In fact looking at the results the other sides around us have been getting, I'm a firm believer that whoever goes down third from bottom will do so with about 50 points on the board.

On the plus side, Jono has signed a contract, I think he will stay and he will take division three by storm (the perfect learning ground for a player of his age). Also Crystal Palace are now closer in points to third bottom than we are.

Anonymous said...

We are clearly going down after last night's effort. To be fair, Doncaster played some superb football given the conditions. I was a little frustrated that we were playing 4-4-1-1. I'm quite impressed by Parkinson, and I realise I may be in the minority saying that but I think he is the right man for the club. Last night he got it wrong though. Their defence had too much time on th ball and had numbers at the back to deal with Dickson on his own. Their midfield and strikers were fluidly moving into the gaps between our banks of four midfielders and defence and the onus was on us to put more pressure on their defence so that their midfield wasn't free to move around at will.

To this end a second striker should have been deployed earlier. Dickson came in for uncalled for criticism. He didn't have a great game obviously but he was left stranded and though his shooting was woeful he did make things happen for himslef which is something no other striker at the club has the ability to do. He is our best striker and in better conditions he may have conected cleaner with his chances and possibly scored. Next year I believe he will be crucial to us and think he will score a fair few.

I think its inevitable that some of our players will move on and I'm not overly optimistic about the state of the squad. Next year could well be a struggle as well. I think its worth pointing out how well Ward has played since he came into the team and I disagree that loanees have been the cause of our demise. That is down to poor management. There are some very decent players in our team. This season we've only lost two games by 3 goals and none by more than that. We haven't been totally outclassed, just not quite good enough.

As for Shelvey, he clearly has talent but needs time to mature as a player. Staying at CAFC would do him well. He's got time on his side and there's no doubt that one day he'll be a very good prem player but he's better off learning the game at a club he's comfortable at than joining a prem team now when he has so much to learn.