An Important Win

Sheffield Wednesday 0-1 Charlton Athletic.

So we get the points in the first of two six-pointer games. Next week Wednesday's neighbours, Sheffield United, visit Charlton.

Of course they are not really six point games. A win still only gives you three points, but the advantage gained by beating teams also vying for promotion can seem like double the points are on offer. The visit to Sheffield Wednesday may well have been the more difficult of these two games as they were unbeaten at home this season until our visit. On the other hand United are the in-form team. If we do get the three points in that game, champions of the third division starts to look like ours to lose rather than for anyone else to win.

Year ends badly for Charlton

So the last game of the year ended up with 1-0 loss to the Orient. The Charlton keeper was sent off very early in the game so there's an excuse. The shame is both Sheffield teams got three points. A win at home to Brentford is very much needed tomorrow.

I have to add I have a soft spot for Orient. Many years ago I had an invite to their directors box for a pre-season friendly against I think Grimsby. It was during the very early eighties and at the time there were quite a few more mature players finishing their careers for the O's. The ones I can remember are Stan Bowles, who had sent an apprentice down the road to put a bet on, Ralph Coates and Mervyn Day. Also a young winger called John Chiedozie was playing who promised so much for the future.

What made my day was the minicab driver taking me over to the game. I would have been in my late twenties or early thirties. I dressed up for the occasion with a blue velvet jacket and a nice pair of strides. I looked the part, and even though I was smoking with the window open, the driver was convinced I was a player. This was helped by the fact that the entrance to the directors box was via the ground's players entrance. That was the one only time I ever been mistaken for an athlete unfortunately.

Still unbeaten but not top

It had to be. We didn't get the three points, just the one. Sort of knew that was coming. Charlton 1-1 Sheffield Wednesday.

Good point was that there was still a +14,000 crowd for a Monday night division 3 game.

A good start

I knew yesterday's game was going to be problem when earlier in the day my brother said that it was an almost guaranteed three points. I can't blame him saying that. Following a good home win against Bournemouth with two wins on the road, 2-1 over Notts County and 2-0 over Colchester, made a home game with lowly* Scunthorpe seem easy. It wasn't to be of course. A 2-2 draw still leaves Charlton tied on points at the top of the third division with the MK Dons (boo**) and Sheffield United so we mustn't complain, but it will be interesting to see how good this side that Chris Powell has put together is.

*lowly - not really fair as Scunthorpe has only just joined the third division after relegation last season.

**Anyone who is against the Americanization of British sport should boo here as MK Dons were the first English football club to be franchised and made to move towns. Something very un-British.

That's enough of the resting boys

Well Norwich managed an injury time equalizer to share the points with Charlton at Carrow Road. The 2-2 score line knocks us off the top of the third division table as Leeds well beat Gillingham. I managed to get the live coverage of the game on Radio London. I wonder if this was a jinx. Next week I won't listen, promise.

And on the seventh day they had a rest.

Well the run ended yesterday. It would have been the seventh win on the trot if they had managed to beat Southampton but instead it was a 1-1 draw. From the sounds of it Charlton didn't play well in the first half and went a goal down. In the second half they were unlucky not to win after equalizing. Oh well, it had to end sometime and we are still top of the third division.

Run continues!

Charlton's fantastic start to the season carried on when Brentford visited the Valley. 2-0 was the score. Next week we have Southampton at home which is very winnable. Leeds are also still on maximum points. Not going to say too much in case it puts a curse on.

As good as it gets?

Well I hope not. Maximum 15 points from 5 games with a 4-0 win at Tranmere, but with two home games coming up even more wins are a strong possibility.

The only downside is Leeds United are matching Charlton's pace. Now Leeds, with apologies to the good citizens of Leeds, are not Britain's best loved team. In fact they are way up there with ManU, Chelsea and Arsenal. This maybe truer for those of a certain age who remember the Don Revie years, which admittedly were a long time ago. So we need Leeds to drop points before we do if we want to keep this heady feeling at the top of the division.

4 games 12 points

The perfect start to the new football season. Charlton, not at their best, beat Walsall 2-0. They still managed most of the possession and were ahead in all the stats except for fouls which Walsall won by a long way. The only other team with a perfect record in Division Three is Leeds. As they say in boxing, one of them has to lose the O. Let's hope it's Leeds, who still in my mind carry all the darkness of the Revie years. OK, I watched "The Damned United" last week.

Three games - nine points

Last season was one to forget, ending in demotion to the old Division 3 for the first time since I was a boy, which was a long time ago. Well at least we get to play with neighbours Millwall again.

This season has started with a bang. Three wins with two of those on the road. There was our usual loss and early exit from the league cup, but it was a ManU style second team playing. The first game was a 3-2 win at home against Wycombe Wanderers with an encouraging sixteen and half thousand crowd. Next came a 2-0 win in Hartlepool and round off our first three wins (four if the last match of last season is included) three thousand supporters took the short trip over the river to see Charlton beat Leighton Orient 2-1.

Can this keep up. After the last few years it makes a pleasant change.

Back to football and walking

Over the last year I haven't posted either about my football team or walking along the Bangkok klongs. The football was because it was such a horrible season from the beginning and the walking because I did fewer and spent too much time on UK politics.

Well I have still kept up walking new klongs although far from regularly but the next post will cover the last two Sundays east of the new Bangkok airport. With football Charlton are having a great start to the season so I will start posting results again.

Charlton Athletic 0-2 Bristol City

A bad week for Charlton. Not only did the team roll over for Bristol City but yesterday came the news that Dubai wouldn't be buying the club. I suspect there are not many smiles on those associated with the club but someone who should be happy is Alan Pardew.

I suspect that, with the poor results from last season and so far this one, a new manager would have been the first signing of the new owners if the take-over had gone ahead. Maybe a few of the players will also feel a bit safer now.

As for the club's future, it doesn't seem very bright. The existing board is obviously trying to get out of the money hole that football clubs not in the Premier League now are. Can they find a buyer in the present economic climate? We have to hope so, but it is a shame that British football grew into the Limited or Public Company format it now is. I wish it had gone along the lines of non-profit social clubs like Australian Rules clubs or Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain.

Cardiff City 2-0 Charlton Athletic

The opposite score to last year and not a good time to not only lose but have two men sent off. If we were meant to be showing the Dubai Royal Family why they should buy Charlton instead of Everton/West Ham/Newcastle/Liverpool/Portsmouth, we didn't do a very good job.

Giving up on Frankie

Well my stubborn determination to link to Frankie Valley's old website in the hope he would finally go back to it has finally faded. The link is now to his newer Doctor Kish site. Can't blame him for wanting a life outside of blogging and he and the others who write on Doctor Kish still have the best Charlton site, but maybe one day he will back in all his glory with a daily post on FrankieValley.com.

Charlton Athletic 2-1 Ipswich Town

A win was most needed after a strange run of results. Since my last Charlton post we had lost a home and had an away win, an away draw and an away loss. I will list them below.

Doncaster Rovers 0-1 Charlton Athletic
Nottingham Forest 0-0 Charlton Athletic
Charlton Athletic 1-2 Sheffield Wednesday
Crystal Palace 1-0 Charlton Athletic

Of course, it's the last one of those that hurts as we lost to our local rivals for the first time in the best part of a dozen years. Rivalry like that between Charlton and Palace would be very hard for some of the media yuppies, or foreign owners, to understand. When a few seasons back the Charlton crowd cheered as they sent Palace down to the Championship some reporters couldn't understand it. It was because they failed to understand the basic tribal nature of our football in the UK.

Why are Palace so disliked by the likes of Charlton and Millwall? Many would point to the ground-sharing which Charlton did with Palace after they lost their own ground. I suspect it goes a bit deeper. Palace was always more middle class, more suburban, in fact more Croydon than it's more working class neighbours like Millwall in New Cross or the Charlton's Woolwich area.

Let's hope we are playing a bit better on the 27th. January when the reverse fixture takes place. I wonder why both these games are midweek evening games and not at least one over the Christmas and New Year period. I guess the Met need an easy life now.

Charlton Athletic 1-3 Wolverhampton Wanderers

So we lost the two games on the trot and the first loss at home. Now with the previously referred to mood swings I should be in a really pessimistic mood, but football fans have to learn to deal with this otherwise the suicide rate would ten times its present one.

How it's dealt with is by using the "Dunkirk spirit". No matter how bad it is today and how much worse it will look tomorrow we know we will win in the end. Just look at supporters of a team like Leeds. As they dropped through the divisions through no fault of their own, but by mismanagement, they still turned out to watch a game.

Have to admit I looked up on the Wolves website whether they were wandering or wondering. Neither are particularly good things to be doing and I'm happy with our teams athleticism.

Preston North End 2-1 Charlton Athletic

We won this fixture 2-0 last season, but from the few reports I have read today we didn't deserve any points from yesterday's game. Well at least I can expect all 3 points on the next game with the way our results have been so far this season; played 4, won 2, lost 2.

Charlton Athletic 4-2 Reading

Great result, I looked at the goals this morning (Monday) from a torrent download. Week to week mood swings could be here for the season or has Charlton discovered the midfield mix which will supply the strikers with plenty of chances consistently. Let's hope so. Still it must be boring supporting the Uniteds and Chelseas of the world.

Watford 1-0 Charlton Athletic

Well all the good feelings I had of the coming football season last Sunday took a bit of a beating over the intervening seven days. First on Tuesday was being knocked out of the Carling Cup by Yeovil and then yesterday losing at Watford.

I know from the blogs that Charlton fans say we didn't play that badly yesterday and that the officials were 'homers', but having listened to an old (1992) Danny Baker 606 radio program I downloaded last night and hearing a Norwich fan looking for the silver lining after losing 7-1, I'm a bit suspicious on these reports.

I miss not seeing the football more now, when we are in what was the old Division 2, than when we were in the Premier. This isn't only because there are no games on TV out here, it's also because the mood swings are so much better in the lower leagues for a team like ours. In the Premier it was just a struggle every week to keep our heads above water. Now we can go mentally from being championship material to relegation prospects in a week.

Charlton Athletic 2-0 Swansea City

Apologies to Swansea supporters as yesterday I tagged your team Swansea Town when of course you are city. I have nothing against Swansea, although many years ago I did use a cellar drinking club one afternoon where they had old bus seats perched on beer kegs to sit on and the beer was in plastic glasses long before the rest of Britain went that way. Still it's Swansea City and you were unlucky to play us at the beginning of the season. It's better to play Charlton at the end when we hardly win anything.

Reports suggest Charlton played well enough to deserve the 3 points but will have to get better rather quickly. Here's hoping for a good season. I have a feeling we will be challenging for automatic promotion this season which is a feeling I didn't have last.