Drawing Room?

Charlton Athletic 1 - Birmingham City 1.

In the last week, Charlton have played against teams at the very top and the very bottom of the league.
Obviously, this is not the League table associated with the Championship, I'm talking about the League table of desirable places to live.

Norwich is a place that holds a very special place in my heart.
A calm, walkable town with glorious pubs and an atmosphere I've thoroughly enjoyed, even on the back of a complete thumping at Carrow Road.

Norwich is also a place I've been to visit, purely because I like it and not just because Charlton happen to be playing there.

Middlesborough and Birmingham are at the other end of the spectrum.
Places to be avoided, at all costs.

The Blues fans saw it differently yesterday.
I'm guessing it wasn't a particularly virulent strain of gallows humour when the folk in the Jimmy Seed stand were only too keen to point out their superiority due to being "Brummies," and as we are not, we must by default, be "w*****s".

Another draw at the Valley then.
We don't need to tune in to Downton Abbey with the clipped accents and repressed emotions in the drawing room.
The Valley pitch has become our very own 'drawing' room.

As ever, the positive is the team are still unbeaten this season but we don't have to be Stephen Hawking, Carol Vorderman or even anyone who can count without using their fingers to work out that a loss followed by a win is better than two draws, points wise.

Igor Vetokele opened the scoring for Charlton with a header that even I'd have scored, such was the delightful pin point cross and the absence of defenders on 11 minutes.  He'd earlier made space for himself with a clever trick, only to see his shot squeeze by the upright.

This was going to be easy. 

Birmingham looked rubbish and we were warming up to witness our side finally give someone a tonking.

Unfortunately, from the moment Charlton scored, the high tempo and movement seemed to evaporate.

In my opinion the best player on the pitch, Koby Arthur, got the ball into the Charlton net.  He won't be thanking his mate Donaldson who was standing offside on the goal line and couldn't resist giving the ball a tap as it went over the line.

The Brummies celebrated, (and celebrated), and continued to celebrate way after everyone else in the ground had realised the goal wasn't given and Charlton were playing on.

Surely the slowest ever group of fans to notice a goal being disallowed? 

It was highly amusing to see one bloke still hanging onto his mate, doing fist pumps, grabbing his shirt to clasp the badge and generally making a complete arse of himself, long, long after all the other away fans had sat down and started to grumble.

Lawrie Wilson could have doubled the lead but sent his shot agonisingly over the bar in the first attack of the second half.

 Birmingham scored a deserved equaliser when David Davis turned and struck into the bottom corner, from a well worked corner. I felt at the time that Henderson moved slowly to stop it but he was probably unsighted.

That was it, other than a rather alarming injury to Cousins who seemed to land upside down and was stretchered off.

It now seems the elaborate method of removal for young Jordan was more for precaution than him actually requiring the stretcher but he'll probably need a bit of a time out.

Charlton played the worst I've seen this season but still managed to grab a point. Birmingham weren't much better either but they certainly deserved a point.

Grumpy Lee Clarke showed he didn't know the rules post game when he announced, 

" There was only one team in it and we had a legitimate goal taken off.  I've seen the footage - it's not offside. I've spoken to the ref but I can't take the actual footage in."

It's probably a good job he wasn't allowed to take the footage in with him to visit the referee as he'd have ended up with egg on his face.

We can all have a rest for a couple of weeks now. Some of our players were looking rather tired yesterday so the International break arrives at a good time for us.

Take it easy.

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Peeters on Charlto "

After the f

A Pleasing Start.

Birmingham City 1 - Charlton Athletic 1.

There'll be more days like this over the course of the season I imagine.

Last season, everything seemed to go our way.
There were games we deserved to win, and obviously did, yet others when we seemed to show little and ended up grinding out a result.

I couldn't help thinking of our away game at Bournemouth, just a few months ago, as I plodded out of St Andrews stadium yesterday.

At Bournemouth, we looked out of sorts and for my money, probably deserved a draw at best.
We could tell we were having 'one of those seasons' when all 3 points were claimed after a bit of a scramble, deep into injury time.

How we cheered.

Yesterday, the boot was on the other foot.

Charlton took the game to Birmingham.
For the majority of the game we looked in control and most certainly worthy of a place in the Championship.

There were many chances missed though and at Half Time I was quite worried that Birmingham were going to come back in the second half, energised and filled with purpose.

As it turned out, they really couldn't be bothered and it looked as though Charlton were going to return home with a totally deserved 0-0 draw.
I know for a fact I'd have been pleased with that outcome, had I looked into a crystal ball before the game.

On 82 minutes, Cort nodded in at the far post and the 1600 + Charlton support rose as one to cheer, climb on each other and generally muck about with gay abandon.

It was the catalyst for hundreds and hundreds of Blue Noses to make for the exits, many with faces twisted into more ugly versions of the quite frankly acne ridden ones they had just moments before.

Some seemed to be offering out our support as they made throat slitting gestures.
Ah, kids of today eh?

Those more loyal Birmingham supporters suddenly came alive as they tried to (finally) get behind their team.

I took a picture of the scoreboard, expecting it to be a triumphant memory.

Lee Clark made a switch and a Serbian bean pole came on for the final 4 minutes.
He made quite an impression.
He jogged on, head butted a Charlton player, (difficult to see who from my view), then scored the equaliser with the last action of the game.

A shame not to hang on to all 3 points but the performance must have given Chris Powell and his players a massive boost of confidence.
Pre game, I was worried our team may have been good enough to canter to promotion but may well struggle in what is effectively Premier League 2.

After yesterday, I think we can all sigh a little bit, have a few 'what if?' moments but finally remember we were within seconds of beating a team that lost only once at home last season.

A Casualty Rating
The Lacoste polo is going to Rhoys Wiggins.
He looked composed and fully at home at this level.
"Viva Rhoys Wiggins!" we all sang.

The Primark novelty slogan t -shirt is going to the Birmingham support.

The main reason I haven't been to St Andrews since our game there in 1998 is due to the incredibly intimidating atmosphere outside the ground as I left.
 I'm too old to be chased down unfamiliar roads and I'd sworn never to return.
In the event, I thought I'd give Birmingham a second chance.

Oh dear oh dear.
Birmingham used to be one of those grounds where you couldn't chat to the person next to you because of the terrific passion and volume of their fans.
(I'm not pretending the Valley resembles the home of Galatasaray as we all know it can be pretty quiet too but then we don't trade on our fearsome 'lions den' reputation.)

The period of uninspiring football under McLeish must have sucked the life out of this once quite volatile set of supporters.

So, it's home to Leicester on Tuesday.
I'm pretty sure big Yann Kermorgant will be really up for this one!