Phew!

Oldham Athletic 0 - Charlton Athletic 1.

Against the odds, Charlton managed to win away at Boundary Park this afternoon.

Yann Kermorgant scored the all important goal but most people will be scrutinising the 'performance' of the referee, Trevor Kettle.

Charlton have history with him.
He was the official in charge when Grant Basey had his leg broken by a horror tackle at Bristol Rovers, yet he decided the offence had been minimal.

Charlton were reduced to 9 men and Oldham to 10, in a game that was far from bad tempered.

The last 15 minutes were all about Charlton hanging on against the Oldham pressure.
Addicks the world over were biting their nails and sharing their experiences via twitter.

We all felt as if we'd played too, such was the emotional energy being expended.

My fingers and toes maths skills are starting to believe another couple of wins, plus a draw, would be enough to send us up.

After today, the pride of South East London certainly deserve it.

A Champions performance?
You bet!

Oldham Get What They Came For.

Charlton Athletic 1- Oldham Athletic 1.

Despite the general euphoria at being top of the league and the feeling we should be beating 'these sort of teams', my pre match prediction was a draw.

I obviously wanted a win but the Oldham team never even dreamed of the possibility. They'd come for a point.

Recent games involving Oldham at the Valley have seen them 'parking the bus' as pundits like to call it.

It wasn't a good game from a Charlton perspective.
There were enough chances to win handsomely but Oldham stayed solid and played to their strengths.

Today, Oldham didn't quite hit the heady heights, (or depths) of 2 seasons ago but they did try to kill the game at every opportunity.
They followed the example of their rather unpleasant manager in his playing days; niggling fouls, kicking the ball away, time wasting and attempting to 'do a job'.

They did it.
Only after Darrel Russell's fine headed debut Charlton goal did Oldham show the kind of team they could be. They moved forward and made a few attempts on goal.

Taylor managed to block a shot but he looked to have hurt himself in the process.
He wasn't moving well and it surely was no coincidence that Oldham scored a few moments later.

With that, Oldham reverted to the most tragic levels of time wasting

A weak referee let Oldham, especially their 'keeper, take as much time as he wanted.
Throw ins took an eternity, all without official reproach.

Due to Huddersfield drawing 4-4 at Sheffield Wednesday, everything stays the same at the top of the table.
We are still 5 points clear.

All teams doing well have little stutters on their way. We are lucky that Stevenage aside, our stutters have still gained us a point.

The less said about the officials the better.
They were booed from the pitch and they deserved every single part of it.
The East stand linesman made some shocking decisions and the referee bottled a very obvious yellow card when he realised it would result in a sending off.

Onwards and upwards.
Top of the league at Christmas and despite the evidence of today, playing good football.
I'll take that.

A Casual Rating.
The Lacoste polo is going to Yann Kermorgant as my Man Of The Match.
For those of us in our 40's, his appearance was reminiscent of Terry Butcher when he refused to lie down, playing on after being patched up again and again.
Well done Kermit.

Morrison also played the hard man when a fierce ball to his face barely made him break stride.

I'd have been off until New Year!

Nothing To Report Here.

Oldham Athletic 0 - Charlton Athletic 0.


For those of us who went through a puerile phase towards the end of the 1980's, 'Oldham' is synonymous with the Viz character Finbarr Saunders, (and his Double Entendres).

"I'm taking your mother on a tour of the north-west, first I'm going to Oldham, then I'm going to Bangor."
(Fnarr, Fnarr).

This is a roundabout way of saying Charlton gained a rather meaningless point yesterday. 
We aren't going up, we aren't going down. 
Another game ticked off on the increasingly interest free list of remaining fixtures.
The spin doctors will claim yesterday was a show of mental fortitude by the Addicks as Christian Dailly got his marching orders, after around half an hour.


What a silly sausage.
Retaliation after a bad foul is not what I'd expect from a senior pro, especially one with such a long and distinguished career.
However, it's now the 3rd time, this season, he's had first dibs on the Imperial Leather so perhaps the "he's not that kind of player" comments are being rather generous to our current club captain.


His ban takes him to the end of the season where I fully expect him to be thanked for all his efforts and then shown the door.
It's not all bad news for Christian. He's probably slouched on the sofa as I write, checking out his options on Expedia.com while his training gear is doing a final spin around in the washing machine.


I wasn't in the North West yesterday.
I chose to enjoy the sunshine in South East London.


It would appear I missed very,very little.

Stalemate at The Valley

Charlton Athletic 1 - Oldham Athletic 1.

Not a game for the purists yesterday at The Valley. 

Ultimately, Oldham gave a much better account of themselves than last season.

They came to play rather than stifle. The result was the same as last season but whereas last season I left the game feeling annoyed with Oldham, this time I felt I owed them respect.

The game had 2 well taken goals, a fussy referee who thought we'd come to see him, a poor crowd (in numbers), a number of let offs for the Addicks that on another day could have seen us losing by 2 or 3 goals and a dramatic ending to the game where it looked like it was all going to kick off with a baseball style bench emptying ruck.

On balance, Oldham were good value for their point.

Charlton weren't bad, the team just didn't 'click' properly.

There are many more games for everything to come together properly.

A Casual Rating

I particularly enjoyed Waggy's second goal in a week but I was really impressed by Furman's equaliser and the general play ofTounkara.

Much as everybody pretends that 'we don't want to see this kind of thing', I think we all enjoyed the antics at the end of the game when Jarrett completely lost his cool after being shown a second yellow card.

I'm awarding the Lacoste polo to Robbie Elliott for his 3, possibly 4 point saving saves, though his woodwork was equally helpful.

The Primark novelty slogan tee shirt is going to the bloke who sat next to me.

Have a wash mate.

You stunk beyond belief and it turned my stomach everytime you waved at the referee to share your opinions.

A clean tee shirt is most certainly the order of the day.

The Impossible Dream

This was my 'handheld', showing the state of play at 4:17pm today.

We were up!

Unfortunately, events changed and we can now look forward to the Play Off semi finals against Swindon.

I wasn't up at Oldham for the game.

( I find myself staying for the weekend on the Hampshire / Surrey border.)

Despite the much trumpeted invitation to listen to the 'Promotion Push' on the Charlton CAFC player service, it wouldn't work for me so I ended up listening online to BBC London.

(Someone please remind me why I pay for the Charlton 'service').

It's still to be decided if this season ends in success or disappointment but we have certainly caught the winning / playing well habit at just the right time.

Come On You Reds!!

Oldham Get What They Came For.

Yawn.

The first 45 minutes of the encounter, (yesterday), with Oldham Athletic was possibly one of the dullest halves of football I've ever had the misfortune to witness.

The opposition had obviously done their homework, padding out the midfield, closing down quickly, keeping Sam man marked by a minimum of 2 players at all times and starving Burton of any form of supply.

The fact that Shelvey looked knackered after the first 5 minutes and Frazer Richardson was finding it impossible to pick out players wearing red made the home teams task all the more difficult.

Well played to Oldham for coming with a game plan and sticking with it but it made for a tedious afternoon.

Unfortunately, Charlton have now been 'found out' and we can expect other teams to try and stifle the game, while hanging on for a point after creating very little.

It could have been the most unbelievable upset if a 'goal' had stood but Oldham had broken some rule or other in the build up, - impossible to tell from my seat but a teenage know all who was keeping a running commentary throughout the game seemed to think it was for a trip. The game had stopped before the ball was crashed into the net anyway.

More likely to send us home with a defeat was the fairly blatant penalty Oldham were denied after Richardson chopped down a forward advancing into the area.

The referee Horwood, waved that the ball had been taken but it was very clearly not the case.

At half time, I said to Crispy that the game had 0-0 written all over it but the second half actually could and should have sent Charlton away with the 3 deserved points.

A 'Mack Attack' from McLeod and McKenzie changed everything for the final 20 minutes. The team went 4-4-2 and started producing wave after wave of chances.

Kelly Youga almost scored the goal of the season with an overhead bicycle kick which bounced back off the crossbar, only for our forwards to have a moment of "After you Claude", only awakening to the chance when the defenders were well placed to block.

Big Mig Hatman Llera showed off his new padding, (now in red), with a powerful header which also hit the crossbar.

Unfortunately, yet again, Izale McLeod had an episode of the Luke Varneys.

Within 5 minutes of entering the field of play, he had managed one complete air shot, missed an absolute sitter with a sliced effort that really should have broken the net from 8 yards out and managed to mistime a jump at the far post, so that instead of heading the ball into the almost unguarded net, he managed to entangle himself with the post.

Oldham had tried to waste time all afternoon and the referee added 5 extra minutes to the 90. The Latics defended resolutely and it was clear we weren't going to score, even if 50 minutes had been added.

It just wasn't our day. The 3 points should have been ours but too many lines were fluffed at the critical moment.

I returned home, passing groups of people chanting "Boring, boring Oldham" near to the railway station.
 After only about 5 minutes of faffing about, I managed to locate a free link for the England against Ukraine game.

I lost interest fairly quickly, -watching football on my MacBook just doesn't feel right.

I soon retired to bed with the mother of all headaches.

Bloody football.

Casual Rating

The Lacoste polo shirt goes to Kelly Youga. If anyone deserves a goal it's him after his efforts in the last few weeks. Yesterday he was one of our most successful creative outlets. Well done Kelly!

The Primark novelty slogan tee shirt goes to teenage Motson. Leave it at home next time will you? At least until your voice breaks properly.