Oh Dear.

Charlton Athletic 0 - Millwall 2.

Well that didn't go as planned did it?

I've had a self imposed twitter and general internet blackout since yesterday.
I know there'll be Spanners crowing about their success, along with other Addicks making dicks of themselves all over the places I'd usually frequent.

 I knew it wouldn't help my state of mind one bit.

I've also refused to watch any (ahem) 'highlights', despite our game being flagged up as one of the featured games on the Football League Show.

If this means I'm flying in the face of the general consensus about yesterday, so be it.

The omens were all fairly good before the game.
The Spanners had played twice since our win at Huddersfield and surely we'd be the fresher outfit?

Crispy had demolished a Lion bar while traveling to the Valley and we decided this was highly significant.

Millwall were pretty poor in the first half.

Charlton had most of the decent chances and played some attractive shapes, despite a pitch more suited to lumping it up into the penalty area and hoping for the best.

The Millwall 'keeper Ford kept them in it, with an excellent save from Pritchard and another from Harriott.

Despite the most obvious Charlton domination, it wasn't the kind of domination where you felt a goal was just around the corner.

Millwall were happy to soak up the pressure and whenever there was a break on goal, Danny Shittu seemed to be on hand to nudge (usually Haynes) off the ball, mostly by fair means.

After hearing the Spanners shouting "it's what we do, it's what we do, Danny Shittu, it's what we do" over and over again, I fear for the future of our language.
It makes no sense, (unless they're all having carnal knowledge of him), which as much as I'd find amusing, I do find rather unlikely.

On the subject of the Millwall support, weren't they awful?

Until they scored, they were among the quietest of visitors to The Valley all season.
Nottingham Forest, Burnley, Brighton, Ipswich and of course Crystal Palace all made much more noise than our supposedly 'famous for their support' neighbours.

Now before anybody starts comparing our crowd with theirs, yes ours was poor too.

The difference being that we all know we are a relatively quiet set of fans, don't trade on our nutjob reputation and are in the middle of a horrific home game slump.
There's not much to cheer about at the Valley this season. Most of us have started arriving with trepidation rather than expectation.

Our announced crowd yesterday told it's own tale, being a rather disappointing 18,000.

Given the weather, the ridiculously early kick off and the profound lack of people who normally come along with their kids, it was understandable.

Needless to say, the same size crowd at our fixture at The New Den was described as a bumper turnout in Bermondsey so I suppose it depends on where you're coming from.

The second half started with Charlton piling on the pressure.
In the East stand we were all up on our feet, believing Kermorgant had scored a curling free kick but the rest of the ground knew the ball had whizzed past the upright.

The turning point for me was when the ball came in from the left and Kermorgant was grabbed around the neck to stop him making contact with the ball.

As clear a penalty as you'd ever expect to see.

Last season, absolutely everything went for us but this year, the footballing gods have decided we are worthy of nothing.
The ball went past Kermorgant and onto Wilson who seemed to have a bit of a collision with the keeper and the post.

The ball went over the bar and we all rose as one waiting for the referee to point to the spot.

Except he didn't.

Once play started again, Millwall had a rare foray forward and scored a breakaway goal that could be described as
a) a sucker punch, or
b) one of those the keeper Button "won't want to see again".

The ball seemed to go through his legs, though I may be being unkind given the distance I was from the action.

The Millwall crowd woke up, their team suddenly looked a yard faster while ours looked deflated.

Only around 5 minutes later, Pritchard made a half hearted challenge that gave away a free kick.
It was so far out, nobody was too bothered.

Unfortunately, once the ball left the players boot, it flew straight towards Button's top left hand corner.

He saw it coming, adjusted himself and launched himself to perform what seemed a rather routine save.
Oddly, he chose to block with two hands rather than one needed to push it around the post and ended up making a right old horlicks of it.

Two nil and game over.

Fuller and Waggy came on but nothing changed.

Fuller deserved a penalty but again the referee was having none of it, and later when Fuller had a chance to place the ball into the net he rather optimistically decided to leather it and sent the ball into the top tier of the North Stand.

As the charmless oiks up to town from the Medway announced, "You might as well **** off!"

Many Addicks chose to do just that and by the time the referee put us all out of our misery, (or started a whole knew chapter of it), around half of the home support were already out of the ground.

Part of the deal when you are an away supporter is that you are inconvenienced so the home support can get away without much hassle.

I've been kept behind in grounds all over the country, not least at Millwall when we were penned in behind the away stand for around 45 minutes a few years ago.

Not yesterday.

Not content with bending over on the pitch, the supporters also found we had to go on a rather pointless journey so the Spanners could have a more comfortable journey home.

No wonder people weren't happy.

I don't know what more Chris Powell can do with the current squad.
He's introduced Harriott who has been one of the few successes but beyond that, it's a treading water season.

As I said right at the beginning of this campaign, the target is consolidation.
Anything better than relegation is fine by me.

However, I'd really rather it wasn't quite so gloomy, especially as I see the majority of my football at what used to be known as Fortress Valley but is becoming more of a 'Help Yourself' convenience store for visitors to our club.