Apologies for starting yet another new thread but I've been too down to read much of CL over the weekend, valid as no doubt all the other views expressed are. It hurts.
I have felt, and said so on here, all season that this is still a group of, (mostly) decent or above, players rather than a team but at least it was a group with spirit as shown v Bournemouth, Orient and Plymouth. But Saturday was a return to the worst days of last season and the Pardew era. As soon as the 2nd goal went in I felt it would be 3 or 4 as we had so little invention or team play and they knew if they kept working the ball around we would slip up just as we already had.
I was baffled by Parky's team selection. Dailly RB when Francis is fit. No, play your strongest CH pairing (CD and JF) and get rid of the liability that is Doc. No wonder the team doesn't gel when it changes so often. Yes the injuries and suspensions have been a major disruption and 20 out and 11 in is going to take time but by now some semblance of team play and pattern should be emerging. That means set plays, at both ends, working and relying on more than the individual skills of Reid and Martin to open up a side.
I've been a defender of Parky as I could see the good players he has brought in and who often have re-signed for him which I see as testament to him as a man manager. Yet those players have still not gelled into a team.
No team, and especially at this level, plays well every week. There will always be bad days but Saturday was a lot more than that to my eyes and there are too few good days when we dominate or show our ability consistently over 90 minutes.
Is that the players or the management? Both, in my view, and when the whistle blows mainly the players but I am reminded of Theo Foley and Andy Nelson.
It was Theo who recruited Hales, Flanagan, Powell etc, yet couldn't build them into a side capable of getting out of division 3. Theo was and is still greatly respected at Charlton as a decent, likeable man. It would be hard to find many Charlton fans who would say the same about Andy Nelson despite it being he who took what was largely Foley's team and got it promoted.
I fear that Phil Parkinson is Theo Foley, a hard-working, intelligent man with a good eye for a player but not someone to mould those players into a consistently winning team. So do we then need an Andy Nelson figure. Maybe we can do without someone who calls the fans "Village Idiots" but something needs to change.
That change either has to come now (not soon but now) under Parky or we have to take the gamble (and gamble it must be) of going for someone else.
It is easy to throw out names, often ex-Charlton players, but how may of us know if they are now or will ever be management material? And even if they are can they cope with Charlton as it is now. Both Foley and his predecessor Eddie Firmani struggled at a Club that was potless and on a slide. Bad managers or wrong men for the job in the circumstances as they stood? And the same question could be asked of the present incumbent.
I don't envy Richard Murray. He can see what is happening and will know how fans are feeling. He will also see what Parky is doing and trying to do to turn things around.
As I said, I was too depressed to read much of CL over the weekend so apologies if this has all been covered before but if, and I still say this reluctantly, Parky leaves then I will wish him well and suggest that we whoever we appoint we make sure that Damian Matthew is part of the first team set up. He is the an excellent coach, he may even be a good manager but he is an excellent coach. So pair him with Chris Powell or even Christian Dailly but just get him coaching the first team.
Comments
He knows the players already. He knows the set up and is VERY respected amongst his peers I believe. We should be looking to maybe give him a chance to assert his style of play on the first team and see where it gets us.
It would certainly be easier on the eye and he wouldn't cost the earth - and anything that secures an asset to this club for a long time certainly deserves to be looked into
A helping hand when it's needed.
Just what is the basis of your judgement. How often have you seen Damian Matthew at work with players? How many times have you seen his players play? Training young players/reserve players/being a development coach is very often the first step before senior management. I'd certainly like to see him move up and be a bigger influence on the first team as Henry suggests, even if he isn't the actual manager. I know that other clubs are keeping an eye on his progress.
I wondered why you had gone so quiet - and funnily enough on Saturday night I refered to you as Parkinson's ''most eloquent, articulate and reasoned supporter.'' Without wanting to give your ego a boost it hardly needs, I reckon that post is a bit of a game-changer, as they say.
Initially I had Yeovil on Nov 20 marked down as the likely date when he goes. But I'm getting a growing feeling that if we lose at Carlisle and fail to beat Shef Wed at home, Parky will be gone by 6pm on Saturday week.
As you know, Ben Tegg sat with us on Saturday ( a long term supporter, youthful Valley Party activist, ex Club employee) He hasn't been attending matches for a while, so I was interested to hear his views on what was happening ( or not) on the pitch.
In a nutshell, he felt "something" was intrinsically wrong both on & off the pitch...Players not talking to each other, lacking in confidence, nowhere near enough movement off the ball and hence giving each other little or no options when in possession. Regarding the fans, he felt we were very flat - seemingly accepting with a shrug what was happening / apathetic. He did feel that we had some quality players with more than a little skill but I could tell he was perplexed by what he was witnessing and why.
Like Henry, I too have been a Parky supporter and the family sponsors his training top this season. However, sadly I am beginning to wonder whether he is the man to get this group of lads playing to their strengths . We are all too aware , as Airman has stated often enough , that bums on seats is the main source of revenue for the Club. How many non season ticket holders in attendance on Saturday will keep the faith and return again unless the product on offer significanly improves ? Not too many, I fear. And without that income, the gloomy picture painted of our financial frailty will inevitably darken still more .
A very worrying time for our Chairman indeed and one where crucial decisions made or postponed could be of paramount importance for the future of our beloved Club.
decisions.
introduce his style of football on a team, it may take a bit of time, but his style is the same as Poyet's and look what he is achieving.If you train all week continously on keeping and passing the ball, in the end it is going to reap dividends, but you must and I mean must have the balls to follow your beliefs and give it time to come to fruition.
Lennie anyone?
Thoroughly bloody nice bloke. See the pic.
I think the days of the Sargent major rule by fear manager are largely gone. People don't take that in any workplace and other than Fergie (who has a bit more than just a hairdryer up his sleeve plus his track record) who else is there?
At this level the difference between sides is the coaching and organisation. We have the raw talent but it needs to be moulded.
Powell/Matthew gives us both coaching and a marquee name. Personally I think the "Marquee name" concept is over rated. Nigel Adkins was the physio at Scunthorpe, he is not a shouter or hard man.
I don't know much about Damien and have never even met him so I don't know if he can do or even wants a first team job. People are right to question if he can make the step up from youths to pros but wrong to dismiss him on the same grounds.
PS: Theo Foley was his right hand man too.
in mgmt at our club
please god no
As I said he inherited a good squad.
Also signed Michael Turner for Hull
Benson pedigree in the league below us
Francis highly rated in this league (how i dont know)
Doherty League 1 team of year last season
Dailey (enough said great signing)
Reid again good signing
Martin (gamble but i believe he is a good player)
Abbott scored goals in this league last season
it is his abiltity to coach and motivate that is in question
You always remember your first team and era and this was mine . I won't claim that I remember this well ( I was under 10 ). Foley never succeded elsewhere as a Manager but as others have stated had great success as George Graham's number 2 at Arsenal and Millwall where he would have helped developed and scouted many youngsters like David Rocastle and lower league players like Perry Groves . Before Graham and Foley arrived Arsenal were a sleeping giant.
Likewise most people were impressed by Parky's transfer activity during the summer and respect his eye for a player . Parky clearly is a nice bloke ( like Foley ).
A final thought , one of our least impressive players of the period was Eamon Dunphy who wrote the book ' Only a Game' where he joins Charlton at the end. Dunphy was a Millwall legend and remains their most capped player. He tells that Foley phoned him at home ( clearly tapping up happened then ).He was so disillusioned with life with the Lions that he signed despite describing Charlton as 'nancy boys' and questioning their passion.
In the postscript we learn that Eamon is concerned by Andy Nelson's( who had been a coach at Millwall) arrival because he seems to want a more physical player , but Nelson utilised Dunphy and he was part of the rotation which led to promotion . Indeed he added another Millwall player Harry Cripps to the mix .
The point is this a modern Millwall player could have described us as Dunphy did , but this description would never have been valid for Nelson's team ( he actually beat Millwall twice) or for most of the last 10 years.
You could not have had two more contrasting players in Dunphy and Harry Boy but what they both had was the inherent desire to win. That is something we lack and whilst the motivation to do so has to come from the Manager, the same shortcomings are apparen in the players. How many of them look around for someone else to perform rather than acting as the catalyst themselves?
Will say Parky did a good job last season, and it seems that's being easily forgotten. Considering many insisted he was nowhere near good enough, didn't have a clue, even after keeping our better players, it still takes a decent manager to make the play-offs.
Remember last season he made us hard to beat. We lost 8 times in the league. A few disasters along the way I agree, but we were up there all season and were very close to 2nd place, it went right down to the last day.
If you look at it as promotion = success and no promotion = failure then yes he did fail. You can't judge everything like that though. It's a long season so there's no way if he was as bad as some insist he is, that we'd have been in the top 6 all year. Our players should not have 'walked League One', despite what some thought at the time.
He turned Wagstaff around from a player with no confidence to one that offered something off the bench, and now with his goals to go with his energy, offers more from the start. He's still improving and that's all with Parky as manager.
As NLA said, his signings are generally good. Even this season you can see we should be able to get that bit more from players like Martin and Jackson. If we go up under another manager, part of it will be down to Parky re-building the squad this summer. No one gets a completely new team in January.
When it comes to tactics and subs I just think he's average. There are a good number of examples of when he has got it right. Our good start, the run after the Northwich defeat, several other games and moments over the season.
That said it might just be time for a change. There's a good base for another manager to work from, unlike 08/09 when only a few managers would have kept us up. That squad was complete unbalanced mess with a losing mentality. If a new manager comes in I expect to see gradual improvements until we eventually get a more consistent team. We'll have to be patient, but if we don't eventually see an improvement, he won't be able to blame it on the way Parky built this squad.
Any replacement simply must be a clear improvement, unfortunately not every possible replacement will be a clear improvement. Murray and the board have make the right decisions.
We are in division 3. Most teams are slow at the back, particularly in the middle.