No transfers

Charlton plc chairman Richard Murray said: "Over the past few weeks and months, we have made every effort to sign a number of players we felt would improve the first-team squad, but they are either unavailable or are overpriced.

"So, we will review matters again in January when the transfer window re-opens." (more)

Oh, bugger.

Pass this around

The Guardian on Man City

Excellent bit of analysis from The Guardian's Rob Smyth on our walloping at Manchester City.

Charlton have opened their doors this summer to a number of high-profile signings, a policy that is anathema to that on which their recent success has been built. The golden goose is not dead yet, but they did look horribly disjointed. They need to get nasty.

Dennis Rommedahl may gobble up the ground like Pacman, but at the moment the pace of the Premiership is swallowing him up. Francis Jeffers was isolated and, though Danny Murphy probed intelligently, he was guilty of missing an absolute sitter, wafting lazily over the bar from six yards at 1-0.

By the end, Charlton were putting up as much resistance as a drunk fresher. (more)

Robson out

Newcastle have sacked Sir Bobby Robson - maybe sleazy old Freddy Shepherd might just be honest and run the team himself now. If they don't plump for Alan Shearer straight away, expect another week of irritating speculation about Curbs...

(Unless, of course, you want to see him go...)

Sky Sports News is talking about a Gerard Houllier-Alan Shearer partnership. How to make a self-made crisis worse... That's two managers out after two weeks. What a high calibre of chairmen we have running Premiership clubs.

Still, that'll also mean no manager is going to want to be advertising Barclays Bank next season.

In other news, Robert Earnshaw has signed for West Brom.

Missing out on Earnshaw?

So, get ready to cross off another of those long-rumoured transfer targets as Robert Earnshaw looks set to be going to West Brom. Or was it Everton?

Not that one of the worst football websites in existence, Tribal Football - created for people who scream "it must be true, it's on the internet!" - seems to have a clue.



Mind you, there are still a couple more days to go until the transfer window closes, so who knows what might happen? The trouble is, after yesterday's performance, we still seem weak in all departments - I've been spending the past few weeks banging on about how we need a striker, but yesterday our defence and midfield was too poor to get a ball up to the ones we had. Although we do have more options in these areas - for example, why has Chris Perry not had a start yet? After a week which has seen us linked with Andy Reid, Joey Barton (who played out of his skin and was cheered to the rafters at Eastlands) Javier Saviola and Darren Bent, to greater or lesser degrees, I'd be interested to hear who you think we should be after.

One thing which may happen if our results don't improve is more scrutiny of our performances - now we're not considered automatic relegation fodder, journalists may actually start to question what Curbishley is doing, something he's not used to.

Incidentally, if I hear another idiot call for the return of Scott Parker, I'm going to go absolutely postal - why anybody thinks we should reward his greed in demanding to leave our club with a return on loan from Roman's money boys is beyond me. A cut-price buy-back, maybe, but I can't see that happening, can you? We may miss his presence in midfield, but that was yesterday. And, of course, if we had someone like Barton in midfield, you'd forget Parker had ever existed.

We have to move on, and forget the money-grabbing little bastard that's rotting at Chelsea. He made his own bed, he's got to lie in it. In Bobby Davro's house, of course.

The same is happening at Everton, of course, where shag-a-granny addict Wayne Rooney slaps in a transfer request just a few days before the window closes. Did anyone suggest the words "tapped", "up", "Manchester" and "United"? Oh, of course not, this is the clean and honest world of football. And then Rooney goes and slags Everton off. Sound familiar? Crazy, and sad to see a proud side like Everton bullied by a thick teenager, a greedy agent and the ruthless "big clubs". Just the shining qualities embodied in the all-new, fair play anthem Premiership.

Manchester City 4-0 Charlton

Proper reports: cafc.co.uk, BBC Sport, Sky Sports, Sporting Life, The Observer, Sunday Telegraph, Independent on Sunday, Sunday People, Sunday Times, Wyn Grant, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Sun, Daily Mirror.

An absolute shambles of a game. Utter crap. The best thing about it I can report is that I managed to get home in three hours and twenty minutes.

Which was worse, this or Bolton? This was - because I think Bolton were a better team than City, who didn't look all that impressive, save for the efforts of Nicolas Anelka and Shaun Wright-Phillips. We, however, stank the stunning City of Manchester stadium out, giving the hosts probably their best win there since they moved in.

Who was to blame? A woeful defence, especially Fortune and Fish, needs taking out and sorting out. Fish was about as agile on the pitch as an oil tanker - and helpless as Anelka fired home City's first. Our midfield was all over the place. Kishishev - who showed so much improvement against Villa - was wretched. Our strikers - Lisbie and Jeffers - hardly had a sniff of the ball. And this was the same team as Wednesday night, too.

It's time to suggest the unspeakable. Have a long, hard think about dropping Dean Kiely for the next game, Curbs. He was useless today, and not much better at Bolton either. The woeful second goal, where his clearance cannoned in off the back of Trevor Sinclair's calf, just about summed his performance up. The results of those wayward free kicks are starting to mount up - and we have a brilliant young understudy in Stephan Andersen. It's time to seriously think about whether Deano is past his peak.

But generally, we're still too lightweight. And it showed today. We got away with it against Portsmouth through luck. We got away with it against Villa because the Brummie side were useless. Those neat little Euell tackles didn't work today. We show nice bits of skill, but get blown off the pitch at the slightest provocation. Keegan's side spotted that, and blew us apart. Others may not - it could be a very volatile season. Unfortunately, this defeat is going to hang over us for ages - there's 16 days until the Southampton game. I hope the crowd's jeers ring in the ears of everyone involved in this debacle every day until then.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm retiring to the pub to forget this ever happened, and to buy the gentleman who got me back to London so swiftly a drink.

And another one...

Another day, another new Charlton blog. Enter Addick Life, a kind of colour supplement to the indispensable Forever Charlton. Excellent stuff.

Ipswich don't want our Bent coppers

Sorry, couldn't resist the pun. Charlton have confirmed a £3m bid for Darren Bent - but Ipswich told us to stick it, in the nicest possible manner. You can't blame Ipswich, for whom Premiership football is becoming a distant memory, for wanting to hang on to one of their best players, although it'll be interesting to see if this prompts a "oh... another half a million?" or something like that. Mind you, since we got Holland and Herman on the cheap from them, they'll be unlikely to want us to get away with it again.

Which of course, is why Kevin Lisbie is hoping praying Franny Jeffers' excellent debut rubs off on him.

"I'm scoring goals in training and it's not a problem but I've got to do it in games. I've been out for eight months and am just getting the hang of things again. I need the ball to go off my knee or my shin, and then I'll be up and running again." (more)

After the 10-hour round trip by train to Bolton, I've sponged a lift for our trip to Manchester City - I can only hope my travelling companions don't blow the M6 Toll money on the "jazz mags" they keep going on about. I've always quite liked to read about Miles Davis and Chet Baker on a long car ride, myself.

A Reet good idea

Still catching up with things after being away - and blushing slightly at Forever Charlton's comments that the "humour and insight of the fanzine days is re-emerging" thanks to this and other sites. I think Charlton could be the most blogged club in the Premiership, and I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. In fact, please welcome a new one - Darcy Sarto's Missing Page.

Which is very nice, especially when I've just fished out fanzine king-turned-gamekeeper Rick Everitt deciding to reply further to my coach-from-Ramsgate post to two men and a dog on the mailing list, with the comment "Good to see the blogger's on the ball again", rather than trying to engage in any kind of debate here. That's not to say he has to, but to make his points elsewhere to an audience he probably knows personally, and not to address them to the person who's questioning the club's policy, seems a bit odd to me. But what do I know?

The grandaddy of all football blogs is Arseblog - but even then, the Gunners only have one other site, East Lower, to the best of my knowledge. Although there's probably lots of Manchester United fans in Thailand or Woking knocking out reams about a ground they've never visited right now.

I've just been alerted to a very good West Ham site, though - Upton Lark. And a new Newcastle one - Black and White and Read All Over. Geddit?

All of which brings me to Reet Smoot - really getting into his stride after a few weeks, and guaranteed to be the only Charlton site with the lyrics to Up Town, Top Ranking by Althea & Donna at the foot of the page. It'd be nice to know these sites are being read inside the club - so how about hearing Althea & Donna as part of the pre-match tunes before the Southampton game? Come on Dave, you know you want to do it.

Let's all laugh at Southampton

Rupert Lowe, 27 July 2004:

"We are a bigger club than Charlton."

One month later, Lowe has already crapped himself and sacked his manager after just two games - a disgraceful way to behave. Big clubs aren't run by cowards, Rupert.

But, enter "Southampton FC" into Google, and you'll get this fantastic advert...



...ah, yes. If you've got some of that stuff, I'd feed it to the dog, if I were you.

So, having shown Paul Sturrock the door, new head coach Steve Wigley is now looking down the Lowe shotgun as he tries to get the Saints back into shape. Some people have a pop at the Charlton website, but to be honest, we're lucky. Have you seen some of the crap on the Southampton site?



A "veiled swipe"? Hang on, why would Southampton describe their own comments as a "veiled swipe"? Isn't that for someone else to interpret? Ah, it's that pygmy club patronising its fans again.

So, as for the hapless Steve Wigley, after seeing his side slip to defeat against Bolton, what can he say about this weekend's opponents, Chelsea?



Mmmmmm. Tomorrow, "Wigs" on why traffic lights have a large impact on the way motorists drive their cars on public roads.

In short - Southampton are a club in decline with a chairman who's shown why he's all mouth but no trousers. After this month, Rupe, who's the bigger club now?