No Appointment At The Doctor's

The Good Doctor - an integral part of a trip to Everton

Had we won at Fulham we would have had a trip to Everton and for me that would involve a beer or two in Doctor Duncan's. Nevermind, I'll save that for another day.

It's been interesting and frustrating to read others accounts of Saturday - thanks for the reports and photos. As I say mixed emotions reading them but great to see that so many had a superb day. We weren't disgraced and we need to remember that we are a work in progress and should things go according to plan the next step for us is the Championship.

On Saturday I  went out for a romp in a local forest without my mobile ( doh ! ) so didn't have a scooby about the score ! I arrived home to see we were 3-0 down quickly followed by the news that it had just gone to 4.

I know I missed out on a really great day and am disappointed not to have been amongst the 7,000 Addicks. Well done to everyone who went for what was obviously support par exceleence and to the players who gave it a good go and didn't resort to the type of hoof ball that so typifies a number of League One clubs.

Oh well, we got the least we hoped for and we can now fully focus on the league.

Breaking news as I type that Cort has had his contract with Burnley terminated and that means he's no longer on loan with us. We can only hope that as he's now a free agent he'll sign up with us although I guess a lot will depend on how he feels about not being a regular starter.

His absence leaves us very short on cover at central defence although I can't beleive that if we haven't sorted something with Leon that we'll play out the rest of the season with Doherty on the bench ! I assume we'll seek to move in the loan market at the very least.

I'm pleased to see that three of our title / promotion challengers are still in the cup albeit maybe only a replay further for MK Dons. A shame that Warnock was sacked ( did I really write that ! ) as I feel QPR might well have gone out to their league one opponents even if they are playing at home. For what it's worth, Warnock has been treated disgracefully given what he achieved last season and with the R's spending power there's no reason to be believe he wouldn't have kept them up especially when one considers how Bolton, Blackburn, Wigan and Wolves are performing.

Anyway the Dons and the Sheffields live to fight another day and that means more games and good news for us I trust. Whether it's a good time to play Wednesday and United is a difficult one to call. Would we better playing them a week before the cup or now with their attention hopefully diverted ?

I hope that the plethora of scouts at Adams Park on Friday night were suitably impressed to report that their club must buy Jordan Rhodes no matter what the cost. However bad Wycombe may have been ( and they were awful ) he's a class act and will be difficult if not impossible to replace. Still whatever happens this season Huddersfield can be proud of their " unbeaten run "......promotion's just a sideshow eh ? 

The only serious challengers to automatic promotion, perhaps fairly obviously, come from Huddersfield, MK Dons, Sheff Weds and Sheff Utd. Out of those the Dons are top of the recent form table and one can but hope that they suffer a stumble. They do have some tough games coming up after which they have a fairly straightforward run to the end of the season. 

I'll not be too disappointed if we come out of the Sheffield games with 2 points. With the Sheffields and potentially the Dons not playing on Saturday 28th January added to our Tuesday 31st January game against Bury we have an opportunity to open up a bigger gap at the top. 8 points or better from the Sheffield games and the final two in January would put us in strong position ahead of February.

The rest of this month and the next two games in particular will be pivotal to our success this season and it will be interesting as pretty much all of it has been to date.