Angry Young Man

Luke Young has pledged his future to the Addicks after Iain Dowie finally tracked down his phone number ("He was always a player I wanted to keep and I was certainly very proactive about speaking to him about the future as soon as I got the opportunity.")

Anyone that has mislaid a mobile phone will know how much trouble it is to re-input everybody's numbers, so imagine what a pain it must be for football managers that move to a new club. I wonder whether he thought about clicking on 'delete all' but then cheekily retained the numbers of Ben Watson and Gabor Kiraly in case he tries to re-sign them.

SE7 Addick has done a far better job than I could of trying to unravel what might have happened in this whole Luke Young/Tyrone Mears saga, and there is clearly scope for a conspiracy theory.

The thing that concerns me the most is the fact that it took Dowie nearly a month to speak with the club's only remaining England international. Call me old-fashioned, but if you're an employee on perhaps a seven-figure package, then is it unreasonable to answer your phone on holiday? Doing the same for very long as an employee of Goldman Sachs for example is considered misconduct as I understand it (and there's still a few left there on less than £1million per year).

I suspect infact that Young and Dowie probably had plenty of conversations and instead the club is perhaps being economical with the truth. I think they're correct to conduct their transfer negotiations away from the glare of the media and curious fans, but the flipside ensures a hefty dose of cynicism from interested observers.

Pre-season training has either already begun or is about to begin, and a few fans are a little edgy about our lack of new arrivals; put it this way, there won't be any 11-a-side practice matches for the timebeing. However with Young now staying and assuming Gibbs gets fit and is able, then the back five doesn't look in bad shape especially if El Karkouri is persuaded to stay.

The central midfield is clearly the problem area though, hence the ubiquitous Sidwell rumours. If we can find some competition for Kish as the holding midfielder and a poor-man's Scott Parker in front of him, then we may be able to scrape together another midtable season with a bit of luck. Dowie would then have the varied options of the flair-minded triumivrate of Rommedahl/Thomas/Ambrose behind a Bent or two.

Looked at this way, things may not be quite as worrying as they seem since we will no doubt make more than two more signings, though the World Cup has a habit of inflating transfer fees as short-term form is mistaken for true long-term potential (what price Owen Hargreaves today compared to a month ago?). Perhaps then Dowie will be more cavalier about using the likes of Youga, Sam, Sankofa and Gislason? Anyhow, not time to panic just yet.