May the fourth ( official ) be with you.........

With a little adaption like putting Messrs Sheldrake and Kaye's faces on this picture and adding the word " official " could turn turn it into hot selling t-shirts............

We witnessed one of the more interesting decisons ( did I say one ? ) last night as I'm sure all present will agree, however, more later. I felt a whole lot better than I did over the weekend and was able to make the trip to the Valley. Nursing myself gently back to full fitness involved an all day breakfast ( with bubble.......not had that for years ! ) at the Valley Cafe.......very nice. Followed by a pre-match pint in Bartrams. All very pleasant.

I was pleasantly surprised to see our two new recruits come straight into the team even if Mr Ecclestone wasn't so enamoured of the decision. You've got them in so you might as well play them and let others know they've got a fight on their hands. Both acquitted themselves quite well with our new left back not performing as badly as we might have been led to believe.

How he might might play was the subject of some discussion on the journey down and we reflected on numerous players who've left Charlton and you'd have told a fan of their new club......." waste of space " " good luck with him " etc. only for them to go on and be world beaters ! Perhaps a change of manager / enviroment etc spurs a player on, who knows. Anyway our new man looked ok to me and seemed able to play with both feet even with a slight preference for his right I thought on occasions ?

I felt we showed more patience than under Parky with a greater desire to pass rather than hoof the ball upfield. This was aided by Elliot's willingness to feed the defenders ( thankfully not in a Razor Ruddock kind of way.........did you see the FA Cup draw !!! ).

Some in the crowd got impatient with this but mostly it bore fruit with a chance of some kind at the end. We do need better finishing and not just from the strikers. We spurned some golden opportunities. Sir Chris will no doubt be working on that. Just as he will with Master Ecclestone who was no doubt in the headmaster's study this morning.

Young Nathan needs to learn that twittering your spleen isn't the best idea. If you've got something to say go and knock on the gaffer's door and have a word in his shell-like. I have sympathy for him, Benson coming on ahead of anyone isn't good for self-belief but there are ways of doing these things.

Back in the day most of our players couldn't string 2 words together let alone write enough down to make a whole sentence but they could play football. Social network sites have a lot to answer for. I was equally unimpressed with McCormack's twittering on his trip the Oxo place the other day after a pi** poor game. I wasn't interested and that he was happliy tucking into a nice meal with equally nice wine in a place I can't afford to go and it didn't cheer me up and as a professional player he shouldn't have either.

Semedo was the stand out player for me last night. Wagstaff did nothing until supplying the cross for the goal and a lovely turn late on...........all well and good but not enough for me. Francis posed more attacking threat than he as he supplied several good crosses.

Sadly for our Simon it's not that simple ! He's playing as a defender but sadly that's seemingly the worst aspect of his game. He landed young Robbie in the brown stuff early on with a sloppy back pass....sadly things didn't get much better. His distribution was shocking. I read in one of the programmes recently that he was a bit of a rugby player and nearly ended up doing that. As revelations go this wasn't a shocker. It won't surprise me at all if one day he just picks the ball up and runs off with the fu**er !

I thought everyone else did okay and Dailly marshalled the defence with the usual aplomb. He'll have harder nights than having to deal with the ineffectual Mooney who played his customary 90 minutes. Memories of the duracell bunny.

I'm sure it was Napoleon who said something about lucky generals, we'll Sir Chris is looking like one of those eh ? He got a bit tetchy yesterday didn't he ! I was fearing his being banished to the stand only for Mr Sheldrake to consult the excellent Mr Kaye and make the right decision..........in the end !

Now as I saw and heard it...........the ref blew for offside before the ball hit the back of the net. I thought it was offside although not perfectly in line. The lino didn't give it of course but the ref had blown and I think a couple of our players had stopped as a result ( I don't include Francis in this as I think he was still reacting to something that happened in the first half  ! ).

Whether offside or not having blown he couldn't give the goal. It was both incredible and ultimately funny as the decision was reversed twice ! Anyway....hats off to Mr Kaye and Sir Chirs for getting mean !

A lovely finish by Bradley Wright, Wright, Wright ( how do we keep coming up with these songs eh ? ) saw us to victory despite the 7 minutes added on. As was observed elsewhere, good on Mr Sheldrake for resisting what didn't seem totally unreasonable penalty appeals when there must have been some temptation to give one.

We've looked more solid in defence in the last couple of games and are playing a more patient and in my view attractive style of footbal but we do need to take our chances. We can't rely on BWP to get all our goals so others will need to deliver. Ecclestone's turn may come, I hope it does whilst he keeps his tweets to himself !