Deadline Day

With just hours to go until the end of transfer deadline day, it looks increasingly like Curbs will not be adding to the nine players we signed in the summer, with the exception of young Icelander, Rurik Gislason. Indeed, he is the third unknown young foreign player we have signed this season (Kelly Youga and Goncalo Brandao being the others), an interesting and unusual (for Charlton) trend which suggests that we may be waiting even longer for a homegrown player to get into the first team, Jonathan Fortune being the last to do so and become a regular.

It is in our interest to find talent wherever it exists, but it does perhaps suggest that our well-regarded academy has in recent years done little more than provide lower division fodder, Alex Varney seemingly the latest. Of course the emergence and subsequent sale of Scott Parker not only helped the team whilst he played, but the £10m transfer fee has enabled us to improve the depth of our squad, but as I have mentioned before he made his debut back in August 1997 and he was perhaps a highly talented one-off. Given the sour memories of Jermaine Defoe and Jay-Lloyd Samuel, and the seeming inability of any club to prevent its very best young teenagers being poached, it does beg the question whether our investment in the academy is necessarily always money well spent.

Elsewhere, the transfer of Michael Owen has obviously denominated the headlines. A ridiculous 20,000 fans turned out at St James' Park and I would hate to suggest that the job centres in the city must have been quiet today. I intend to write in due course about our poor away support (and the fact that is doesn't matter), but in short there is a fine line between heartfelt support for your team, and irrational fanaticism and those Newcastle fans have clearly crossed it. This is a team which through its players, directors and managers has continually let down its fans and singularly failed to win a single trophy for decades. Radio Five Live have suggested it is little more than a 'glorified loan deal', and the type of transfer which is so clearly overpriced that there is likely no realistic contribution that Owen could make which will justify it.

He has always struck me as an over-rated player, albeit one blessed with genuine pace and neat finishes. His most obvious flaw is a left-foot so rarely used that, to mis-use a common cliché, he must have trouble even standing on it. Admittedly he wouldn't be the first one-footed player to have made a big impact on the game, but how a striker can be considered world class when he cannot shoot with both feet is beyond me. Defenders know they can always show him onto this left foot and neutralise his threat. The Premier League is blessed by only three genuine world class strikers (Van Nistelrooy, Rooney and Henry).....I'm afraid Owen is not amongst them.

Elsewhere Jermaine Jenas left Newcastle for £8m, and whilst one again has to question where exactly the money is coming from at Spurs (the next Leeds anyone?), I suppose they are another club trying to appease frustrated fans by at least showing some ambition. Unfortunately perhaps for Martin Jol, prior managers could always claim they weren't getting the support from the board and thus had a viable excuse for their failings - Jol will not have this option available, and whilst having a 40-man squad may look great on the back of the programme, there will no doubt be some negative vibes emanating from those players not in his immediate plans. For example in central midfield alone, they have to pick 2 or 3 from Davids, Brown, Davis, Mendes, Tainio, Carrick, and Jenas. Still, it's their problem not ours.