It's All Over Now

Whilst those Addicks fans present at The Valley were having their hearts ripped to shreds, I was desperately trying to follow events from New York via email updates from my Dad.

Fully 35 separate emails pay testimony to the ups and downs of an extraordinary night, although as implied on my previous post I am rather unmoved by the eventual outcome.

Firstly victory last night we now learn, would only have set up a one-off game against a Millwall side, that outclassed us 4-0 just weeks ago.

In other words, if our probability of gaining promotion were about 25% when the first penalty was struck, then it would only be about 44% now.

Every club in the domestic football pyramid deserves to be where it is, and Charlton is no different.

It is irrelevant for example that The Valley is the 28th largest stadium in England, or that our average attendances in League One were higher than those at 14 Championship venues.

We must face up to the fact that the clubs we must now seek to emulate are the likes of Doncaster and Scunthorpe, not Fulham or Stoke.

We began the season so promisingly, those opening six wins achieved with some flowing football from a stable team selection, and not a single loan player on view.

The confidence that those quickfire 18 points engendered, should have been the basis for a successful season that culminated in automatic promotion.

Even at Christmas, the team had 46 points from 22 games and was still thus on course for nearly 100 points.

However just as the club had done in 2007/8 when form began to deteriorate, it desperately sought to plug holes with another smattering of loan signings and seemingly random team selection.

The philosophy seemed to be that if you try enough things, then eventually you must stumble across a winning solution.

Except that we didn't, and the inevitable result was extraordinary inconsistency and finally play-off defeat.

Unfortunately whilst one accepts Phil Parkinson tried his best, to believe that he is the right manager for Charlton is to tolerate mediocrity.

I've maintained all season that we do not appear to play to any consistent system, and the players appear under-coached.

How many individual players have categorically improved under his stewardship for example?

He does appear to have engendered good team spirit however, which allied with the decent (albeit revolving) quality of the squad he utilised, was enough to ensure the season didn't degenerate into total failure after Christmas.

Nonetheless a record as manager of just 27 wins from 74 League matches is a tough one to defend, and let's not mention those Cup defeats.

However whilst the club's finances are so unclear, it is hard to make predictions for the future or even to suggest an appropriate way forward.

Some appear to believe that administration is an inevitability, but this ignores the fact that the debts are largely owed to the same people (ie. the directors) who are responsible for deciding whether to opt for administration!

In short, to assess the likelihood of administration, one would need to know more about the individual financial situations of the directors, and this is of course not a matter of public record.

Either way, the debts are sizeable and must either be restructured (via administration), repaid (via brutal cost-cutting, surprisingly quick onfield success or the sale of the club) or converted to equity.

Whichever route the club takes, surely we must stop all this short-termist nonsense and build for the medium to long-term future, even if it means taking some steps back to take several forward.

It's just like 1992 all over again unfortunately. The stadium may look much better, but the challenges are similar.

We need to acknowledge that although those Premiership years are so vivid in the memory (and readily available to recall on YouTube), they are as far away today as they were back then.

When fans speak fondly of the Curbishley years, it is often forgotten that it took the club eight seasons to reach the Premiership, and ten seasons to begin to become established there.

In short, it didn't happen overnight but the club had stability, and did not panic when there were short-term blips (like twice finishing 15th in 1994/95 and 1996/97 respectively).

Instead Curbs slowly built a consistent playing system on a tight budget, that incorporated both homegrown youngsters and hidden gems in whom he could see potential.

Why is the club seemingly so unwilling to revisit this route? The one that sees the likes of Keith Jones or John Robinson signed for virtually nothing, yet ultimately coached into Premiership players?

You find the right characters that can fit into the system you wish to deploy, and you coach them to improve. And you do it consistently.

Ask Accrington Stanley fans whether being long-termist works. Their boss John Coleman has improved their League position every year for the past eleven seasons.

This is not easy of course, it takes coaching and tactical prowess and the belief not to be blown off course by a few bad results. Unfortunately Parkinson displayed neither.

Curbs utilised the odd successful loan signing of course (eg. Heaney, Costa etc.) but it was hardly the bedrock of his managerial strategy.

How could the best medium-term interests of the club be served by utilising Reid instead of Wagstaff, or Borrowdale instead of Solly?

If these kids aren't good enough then kick them out, but if they've got a chance for goodness sake play them. At least they'll be here next season.

So what if it takes us a few seasons to rebuild from here? At least when we eventually win promotion, we will have done so with a stable squad that will be better set up to cope with the new challenges of the Championship.

What would the squad have looked like next season had we won promotion? We may well have been an embarrassment again, and that would have set us back further than where we stand now.

Clearly the club has royally screwed up the past four seasons, but they had set the expectations bar pretty high, having built the club into one that was rightly viewed as a model for so many others.

I've no wish to sound like David Brent upon learning of his redundancy, but if lessons are learned then last night's defeat may well be the best bloody thing that's happened to our club in a long time.