Sunday 20 November 2016

Charlton Athletic 2 v Port Vale 0

Birthday celebrations for two family members saw me decide to give this one a miss. I fancied Port Vale so the turn of events was a bit of a welcome surprise. 

Following the debacle at Swindon and the dismissal of Slade on Tuesday, I was expecting another half-hearted performance which wouldn't be enough to beat high-flying Vale. The loss of Ricky Holmes for a couple of months was added bad news and the rumour was Magennis would also miss out due to injury. 

As it was, Big Mag started and it was he who rose to backward-head home a fine cross from Morgan Fox after half-an-hour. It was Fox again as the provider before half-time feeding Nicky Ajose who stroked home the second. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone comes in for Fox at the end of the season. After the break Vale put us under more pressure and despite having more possession and more attempts on goal, they couldn't get onto the scoresheet.

Kevin Nugent's press conference after the game was a thinly disguised pitch for the job, claiming Slade had laid the foundations and that it would be a great job for someone, if not him. Karl Robinson, meanwhile, has emerged as a possible candidate and he'd be free to take the job having been sacked recently by MK Dons. The job's a poisoned chalice but there are no shortage of Desperadoes who need to get another shot in order to possibly re-ignite their careers. Money talks and if they negotiate a good enough exit package, then why not.

The win lifts us to 14th and takes some of the pressure off. However, this has been a two-steps-forward-one-step-back season, so I expect we will falter at Brizzle Rovers on Tuesday or maybe at home to Sheffield United on Saturday.

The official gate of 8900-odd has been laughed-off by those I have spoken to who went. Conventional wisdom suggests the actual figure was much closer to 6,000. I think this is the new benchmark and Meire might do well to start a Target 10,000 committee because that's more realistic given where we find ourselves. How depressing.

1 comment:

  1. No shortage of desperados... has me thinking, what other profession can you think of where constant failure is rewarded with similar paying jobs with the expectations of being able to engineer overnight success, coz no one thinks long term in this business anymore. Granted, the actual number of successful managers is quite low when you consider the hurdle being making the playoffs (not acceptable to some), promotion or in some cases avoiding the drop - so maybe a 25% success rate.

    Plenty more desperados for us to get through then...

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