Some Perspective on Dowie

With Iain Dowie already receiving some criticism from Charlton fans, I thought it would be worthwhile adding some important perspective. With nothing better to do on Sunday, I built a spreadsheet with our results since 2000/01. Hence, the above graph shows our rolling 6-game points totals under Curbs since we returned to the Premiership.

Whilst acknowledging some of the weaknesses of this analysis (not least the fact that some of the observations span more than one season), surely the one aspect of the graph which should jump out of the page is its sheer volatility. In short, whilst Curbs consistently reached the goal of Premiership safety (at an average of 7.6 points per six games), he certainly didn't do it in a linear fashion. Indeed there were occasional bouts of title-winning form, not least the two occasions when 16 points were taken from a possible 18.

Conversely, the thin black line towards the bottom of the graph level with the 3-point mark shows that there were a number of occasions when Curbs had periods of form equivalent to, or worse than, the form Dowie has so far produced. Fortunately for Curbs, they tended to occur towards the end of the season once safety had been ensured, and thus became a source of frustration rather than desperation. However I don't think they can just be discounted as if they never happened.

My concern with Curbs therefore, and it is by definition hypothetical, is one of 'what if'? What if say five of our last six fixtures last season had been Sunderland, Wigan, Middlesbrough, Birmingham and WBA (instead of our opening six) and we approached them with just 32 points on the board? How certain would we have been that the required points for safety would have been won in such a pressure situation? It's an important question to ponder whilst we assess Dowie's abilities in the context of his unusually difficult early fixtures.