Hope-Les, Clue-Les, Passion-Les

No, I sent you that letter
To ask you if the end was worth the means
Was there really no in between?
And I still don't feel better
I just wondered if it could be like before
And I think you just made me sure!
But then that's typically you
And I might have been a bit rude
But I wrote it in a bad mood
I'm not being funny with you
But it's hard to be engaging
When the things you love keep changing
Brassneck, Brassneck, I just decided I don't trust you anymore
I just decided I don't trust you anymore.
["BRASSNECK", WEDDING PRESENT, 1990]

Saturday, 9.45am. Weekend ruined.

I hope Chicago Addick doesn't mind if I reveal the text message he sent to me just after Traore's attempted decapitation of Pennant. It was so eloquently apt, I might have to start callling him the 'Bard of Illinois'. "It's great isn't it? Got the worst f*cking hangover too and I'm surrounded by Yankee Scousers!" Woe betide a Charlton fan in America in 2006.

Don't let the two late goals fool you. This was as comprehensive a defeat as last week's, perhaps even more so. At half-time my old man suggested we were lucky not to be 4-0 down; I meanwhile had thought we were lucky not to be 5-0 down. Such is the emotional battle between the optimists and pessimists, that it's even dividing families now. However I can at least take comfort from having correctly predicted a full-time 3-0 reverse. Killer, eat your heart out.

If anyone can explain how we are better off now than we were under Iain Dowie, then the comments section below provides a forum. If the Board were so convinced of Les Reed's acumen then they could have offered him the job in the summer. Therefore given that by implication they weren't, why on earth did they post-Dowie not initially offer him the job in a caretaker's capacity thus leaving our options open? Now we are stuck with him not only now, but next season, and potentially and terrifyingly beyond. At one point during the second half, he appeared on TV to try to rally his players and it was a pitiful sight; he reminded me of my old geography teacher (and we used to throw pencils at him). The Board have asked us to trust them, and whilst I'm not quite yet ready to quote lyrics by The Wedding Present at them, they are testing us, that's for sure.

As for the players on the pitch, I've seen more bottle in a Muslim minibar; I won't even bother trying to write my player ratings because my thesaurus only offers nine alternatives for 'diabolical.' Virtually no-one came out of the game with any credit, but at least their performances beg some interesting questions like, "When Jimmy Floyd writes his inevitable post-retirement autobiography 'Hassel-Free', do you think his Charlton performances will warrant a paragraph or merely a footnote?"

As a waiter once said to George Best, "Where did it all go wrong?" However, as I suggested in my Preparing for the Worst post last week, there will be a time for quiet reflection by the Board on mistakes made, but now is the time to be worrying about the long-term stability of the club, not merely near-term Premiership survival. Some readers slated me for suggesting that our relegation odds (66%) ignored the fact that survival remained within our hands; well, it is still within our hands, but the probability of relegation is now 73%. Perhaps someone should tell the players.

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STOP PRESS: some selected gems from Les Reed:

"There were some great performances from the lads."

"Bryan Hughes came on and did a very good job."

"We're off our target a little bit, not necessarily because of the result today, but because of two results in a row we didn't get."

"There are some away games which we need to try and win."

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I'm laughing because I'm determined not to cry.