Against All Odds !

A game against the team 2^nd in the table, haven’t won at home for months, the strongest, most disruptive protests yet and live on Sky….Charlton can’t win that one can they ? 

Well you’d have thought not but win they most certainly did and with a clean sheet to boot.  

The Sky coverage certainly helped up the ante and all in all the various protests seem to have hit home and further highlighted our plight. The beach balls on the pitch did their stuff at the beginning and allowed some community signing of anti-Roly songs whilst they were gathered in . 

I’m not so sure about the whistles and pitch invasion such as it was. They were rather counter-productive in my view. The point was and continued to made very effectively in other ways. 

The club statement that followed the game was a piece of nonsense. It would have been better to say nothing if that was the best they could do. A better response would to have issued something in a day or two having agreed to sit down with Trust representatives. That would need to be followed up with a meeting with supporters listened to and action taken. 

That would never happen though because “ the owner does it his way “. In any case Item No. 1 on the agenda would the removal of Katrien and that ain’t going to happen is it ?  

She looked like a rabbit in the headlights yesterday when caught on camera and gave a nervous looking grin that rather more resembled a grimace. After all that has happened in the last few weeks and still nothing from her.  

Katrien has been lauded by Roly but seems incapable of providing leadership or direction of any kind. As others have observed she is simply out of her depth. Bizarrely the appointment of a competent CEO is now becoming more important than the recruitment of a decent manager. 

Miss Meire will now probably put her feet up until late March just ahead of the next home game on 2^nd April when she will concern herself with how to deal with the next round of protests. 

On the pitch matters were vastly improved. A bit of fight at last and in the face of what was going on all around. It rather put the lie to the notion that the players are affected by it.  

Henderson’s mysterious finger injury kept him out again ! In addition. Big Mak had “ an illness “…hmmm ! At last Lookman started and we were witness to the shortest front pairing I can recall. It worked yesterday in the end but isn’t something you’d want every week but then our alternatives are in short supply. 

News of our other injured folk is in short supply. No one seems to know when Bauer or Vetokele will return if at all. As I’ve remarked before we appear to have a complete mess of dealing with injuries in recent seasons. 

Harriott and Cousins were immense yesterday and deserve all the praise heaped upon them. Add to that a fairly assured display from Pope. I bet Riga and the lads wished they’d done thing differently on Tuesday night as they could have given themselves a real lifeline.  

As it is there is still too much to do and it’s hard to see them getting out of it. They have to keep trying of course but in reality it ain’t gonna happen. 

I still find it hard to believe that there’s no Champ football over Easter a time when more people are off work. Who agreed to that ? Mr Magoo I guess ! 

Should the lads get anything at all form next Saturday’s game against Wednesday then the break will have come at totally the wrong time as some momentum would have built up.