Charlton 3 Derby 2

After a thrilling night at the Valley, take a look at these stats (from the BBC, so I apologise for the obvious liberal, feminist bias oozing from them. I just hope it doesn't infect me with its blatant pc agenda.)

Sixty-three percent of possession controlled by the visitors should make any particularly clued-up person consider that poor Charlton were pummelled cruelly. And there were times when Derby looked perfectly capable of doing so. For long periods they were persistently camped just ahead of Charlton's defensive line, which came perilously close to positional collapse. Derby were perfectly competent, but Charlton - it turned out - with their patient cat-and-mouse strategy showed pure class. What a preposterous conclusion! So many pre-contest predictions confounded! What a feeling of pure contentment!

[piece concludes]

Charlton 2 Wigan 1

The first home game of the Championship campaign and, with all due respect to Colchester, the first chance to see what Charlton could do against one of the stronger teams they'll meet.

Wigan started brightly, and, in truth, Jordan Cousins' opening goal was against the run of play. After 8 minutes he found space on the left, Gudmundsson found him with a precsion pass and Cousins shifted the ball onto his right foot and shot into the top right corner to open the scoring.

It was a classy goal, almost equalled by Wigan's reply within 10 minutes. Mcmanaman timed his run to beat Wiggins and finished coolly. Wigan remained dominant for the rest of the half, with Charlton occasionally looking threatening, but neither side was really looking like scoring again.

In the second half the game got more ragged. Charlton perhaps had more fight about them, while Wigan looked more organised, more used to playing as a team, but bizarrely uninterested in scoring a goal. And as the end of the game drew nearer, it was Charlton's willpower that looked more likely to prevail. A succession of decent chances didn't quite fall right, but in about the third minute of added time Moussa's shot was wickedly deflected past a helpless Scott Carson. The remaining few minutes of extra time lasted about a year but with hindsight were comfortable.

So, what do we make of the new team? All but one of the new players had a good afternoon. In a won't-last spirit of positivity I won't name the one who didn't. And I won't be as harsh as someone on twitter who reckoned "he should have shot himself" on a few occasions. Come now, he maybe just needs time to settle. Tal Ben Haim was much better than I expected from pre-season reports, and while Stephen Henderson looks generally fine, I have to agree with comments I've read about his distribution. On the whole, though, it looks like the squad has actually been strengthened.

Biggest impression for me, though, was made by Bob Peeters. Uwe Rosler is one of the least likeable figures in football - if the standard unit of unpleasantness is a Dickov*, he weighs in at 920 millidickovs - so anyone who's prepared to take him on is OK with me.


*(I've checked, and it is.)

Under new management

Just up the road from me is a pub that has stood empty for about a year after the previous manager had a disastrous fallout with the pubco that owns it. This week, though, the pub is going to reopen after a huge amount of work. The owner claims to have spent £400,000 on the place, which is believable, given the look of the building. It looks terrific, and promises to be a great place to visit, selling good beer and offering decent meals. A whole new set of staff has been recruited and they've been getting training over the last few days. It should be a great pub, but until it opens - indeed, until it's been open for a while - no-one can be sure of that.

In other news, the football season starts today. Roland Duchatelet has had a very good summer. Far from being the asset-stripper some of us feared, he's put a lot of money into the club. There's a pitch to be proud of, some much-needed refurbishment of the stands and some interesting and - by Charlton's recent standards - expensive player recruitment. We haven't seen this level of investment in the squad since the Dowie/Pardew years. And look how that turned out ...

It might be fine. Charlton may now have a manager and a squad that can, at least, easily survive and maybe do better than that. But it's very uncertain. Few of the new players have any experience at this level; the manager, as manager, has none. And while I'm now happy about Duchatelet's good intentions, I can't help but look back at the player deals he made in January. They were, mostly, wildly misjudged and contributed to a wholly avoidable relegation scare. He and his advisers clearly didn't then have an adequate understanding of the Championship. Has their judgement improved since then?

We get the first hint of an answer this afternoon. I'd expect Brentford to be strong and supremely well-motivated, and if Charlton get a point, it will be a good result. Maybe we'll get a better idea from Tuesday's game: if Charlton get a win in the League Cup against lower-division opposition we'll know that things really have changed.

If not, you can find me in the pub.

... and Peeters doesn't

It's nearly a week now since Charlton announced that Bob Peeters is the new Head Coach. I'm trying to keep an open mind about the appointment. As others have pointed out, many of us, me included, got Jose Riga all wrong when he was appointed and he surprised us with his commitment, attitude and ability. Maybe Peeters will be good for the club. Let's hope so.

But what's odd is that there hasn't been a peep out of Peeters since then. Not even the obligatory few words, however insincere and platitudinous, about his excitement at the new challenges and opportunities facing him. Nothing about the kind of football he wants his team to play, or his ambition for what the club can achieve next season. Not even an automated phone call urging me to renew my season ticket.

A lot of people have legitimate doubts about this appointment: his record as a manager isn't brilliant (though you could have said that about the previous two postholders), and we know very little about him. The underlying fear is that he'll have more loyalty to the Duchatelet network than to Charlton. His silence isn't doing anything to assuage those doubts.

It's worrying that the owner of the club can't see this, or doesn't think it matters. As Matt Wright wrote in Voice of the Valley last week, Duchatelet had the easiest job in the world to win the Charlton fans' affection, simply by not being Slater-Jimenez. Investment in the pitch and training ground are obviously good things. Maybe we should accept that he has good intentions. But he's making it very difficult. Actions don't always speak louder than words.

Update 4 June
Within hours of my posting this, Charlton announced that an interview with Peeters would be posted on the official site at 8pm. I'm perfectly used to my views being proved wrong, but not usually as quickly as this. The interview is here, so make up your own mind.

Dyer speaks

The South London Press today has an interview with Alex Dyer. It's not online, and for copyright reasons I can't just scan it in, but here are some of the highlights, if that's what you want to call them. If you're in South London, buy the paper. It's only 50p.

First, Dyer confirms that CP had no control over the signings brought in, and seems to have argued specifically that there was no need for Loic Nego. Sometimes the signings were played, "because the owner wants to have a look at them" but "In the end Chris went 'I'm not playing them' ... the owner was always on him, sending him emails and phoning him up... Then it was 'you should be playing him'. We said no."

Dyer also says he believes Riga didn't get the long term job was because he also didn't play any of the imports other than Reza and Astrit.

He describes Duchatelet's methods of tracking players: "He has three or four scouts who just sit at computers and watch WyScout or tapes. One might go and watch players. They just do it in front of a screen and they look at stats. [This means] you can't see the true picture. You can't see how someone reacts in training of what they'd be like around the boys." Once some players find they're not playing "they kick up a fuss or they don't want to train. You wouldn't know half the things that have gone on with players who don't want to play because they are not in the squad or team and want to go home". I think we have a good idea who he's talking about there.

The general impression is that the club was a chaotic mess after Duchatelet took over. Clearly, Powell resisted a lot of pressure from the owner, and we have to assume that Riga did so too. Duchatelet's desire was for his loaned players to be playing, regardless of their suitability. This doesn't do anything to overcome my fear that his priority is not Charlton's success. And his methods are the opposite of Chris Powell's. Instead of selecting a squad that has guts and heart and can fit together, he will build assemble a random collection of players, and expect his coach to get them to work as a team, without any input into the selection.

There's also an interview with Ben Hamer. In it, he says that he tried to open negotiations over a new contract in December, but nothing happened until after the last game of the season. In the meantime, unsure of his future, he'd explored other options. Leicester offered him a four year contract, Charlton just two years. He doesn't say so, but we can assume Leicester offered more money, too. As he says, it was a no-brainer.

If his experience is typical, it's likely that most player contract talks didn't start until after the end of the season, and so there must be other players who've talked to other clubs in the meantime. It's not certain, of course, that Charlton and Hamer could have reached agreement in January, but it seems clear that the delay played a part in his decision to leave, and meant that he's gone as a free agent, for nothing. Let's just hope this doesn't happen with any others.

From my previous posts, you'll realise none of this really surprises me, but it's depressing to have all my worst fears confirmed.

Apocalypse tomorrow

What a confusing day it's been for us valleyologists. Today, we have mostly been relying on the Belgian press, who seem to have more interest in little old Charlton than the British press do. Personally I've been relying on the francophone Belgian press, my flemish being limited to beer label language.

They all seem pretty sure that Bob Peeters is set to be appointed Charlton's manager.

Here's what dh.be had to say:

José Riga, qui a réussi à maintenir Charlton, est pourtant remplacé du jour au lendemain par... Bob Peeters !
Mercredi soir, José Riga avait encore eu Roland Duchâtelet au bout du fil, ce dernier estimant vouloir s’accorder un petit temps de réflexion avant de prendre sa décision. C’est dire si celui qui a sorti Charlton du pétrin en le maintenant en Premiership à la satisfaction générale est tombé en bas de sa chaise ce jeudi matin en apprenant la nomination de Bob Peeters à la tête des « Addicks. »
« Quand bien même aucune clause de prolongation n’avait été prévue lors de la signature du contrat me liant au club londonien, ce que j’avais accepté bien volontiers, je n’imaginais pas un seul instant que cela s’arrête de cette manière, aussi brutalement. Sans forfanterie de ma part, supporters y compris, on avait été très satisfaits de la bonne tournure des événements et du travail que j’avais pu accomplir dans une compétition que j’ai eu beaucoup de plaisir à découvrir. Maintenant, à savoir pour quelle raison je n’ai plus voix au chapitre, cela reste un mystère total à mes yeux. »

Or, in English (I'm unsure about some idioms, but the gist is OK):

José Riga, who kept Charlton up, is however replaced overnight by ... Bob Peeters! On Wednesday [sic] evening, Riga had still had Roland Duchâtelet on the end of the wire, the latter reckoning to give himself some time for thought before making his decision. That is, whether the one who had got Charlton out of the mess and in the Premiership [sic] to general satisfaction has fallen out of his chair this Thursday [sic] morning when he learnt Bob Peeters has been named as the Addicks' boss.
"Although there was no extension clause when I first signed the contract - which I freely accepted - I never for a moment thought it would end this way, so brutally. Without boasting, I thought everyone, including fans, was very happy with the way things turned out in a competition that I had a lot of pleasure in discovering. Now, knowing that for some reason I no longer have a role to play is a total mystery to me."

Reader, do you spot the mistakes? It reads as if the story should appear tomorrow (Thursday). As if Riga has advance-released his response to a club statement that will only be made public tomorrow.

Well, we'll soon find out.

I suppose the central question is this: if Duchâtelet's aim in appointing Riga was to keep Charlton up, why let him go after he did just that? I can't find an answer that both makes sense and makes me happy.

Everyone assumed Riga had been appointed as Duchâtelet's yes-man. Maybe, but he doesn't seem to have acted like one. He ended up using the loan players even less than Chris Powell had. Pragmatically, Duchâtelet had no choice but to let him get on with it, even if he hated it.

My best guess is that Riga had, in old-fashioned and possibly offensive language, gone native. He fell under Charlton's spell, and committed everything to the team's survival, including, it now seems, his own job. We could sense this, watching the team. It's why the initial mistrust turned so quickly into real affection. He was no longer Duchâtelet's man. The only conclusion I can come to is that Duchâtelet won't tolerate this sort of divided loyalty.

Sooner or later, someone would have to come up the river and take out the renegade.This is the end, beautiful friend.

Charlton 3 Watford 1

Thank goodness that's over! The season, I mean. The game was terrific entertainment and for once I could have watched more. Watford were surprisingly competitive (by which I mean violent) given their league position, but Charlton finally put together a decent, full-length performance and thoroughly deserved the win.

It was especially good to see Callum Harriot get two goals. He's been so unfairly scapegoated this season by some individuals that you sometimes had to wonder if it would affect his confidence. But he doesn't seem to lack that commodity at all (by which I mean he's cocky) and he got a standing ovation when he was taken off with about five minutes to go - presumably the substitution was made precisely so that he got that ovation.

And once again Johnnie Jackson scored a vital goal at exactly the right time. Watford's equaliser - a rather lovely goal itself - might have a trigger for the kind of collapse we've often seen, but Jackson seemed to use sheer willpower to get the ball across the line.

After the game Jose Riga probably won over any doubters with a simple and moving speech, while Jackson embedded himself deeper into Charlton folklore with his few words. He specifically thanked the crowd for not getting on the team's back during bad performances. And it's true that the support has been exceptional even during the worst times. There has been a real connection between the fans and the team. Comparing this to the Pardew times, it's been clear this season that, to use a tarnished phrase, we're all in this together.

The past is awful, the future is doubtful, but last night was a time to live in the beautiful, glorious present.