A League 1 Side With League 1 Ideas

Here is what The Grauniad had to say about our performance on Saturday. Quite a lot of it hits home.

Low on confidence and playing a brand of get-rid-quickly football that was easy to forget, Chris Powell's side had two shots on target, the first of them after 71 minutes, and there was a modicum of dissatisfaction from the fans at the final whistle, some of it aimed at the manager, the last link with the Premier League days of what in many ways was seen as a model club.

The rot set in when Iain Dowie was hired to replace Alan Curbishley in May 2006 and proceeded to stock up on largely pointless, expensive players and then endured a calamitous six months which saw the club quickly shelve plans to develop the fourth side of their revamped ground as their league position slumped.

They promptly slipped through two divisions with a succession of managers but Powell has taken them to a promotion and survived a season in the Championship since, although they still look a League One side with League One ideas. Only two players arrived on frees in the summer and seven were released. Rumblings about a proposed move away from The Valley to a site on the Greenwich Peninsula add to the sense of unease.