I look around our squad and all I see is nothingness

[manikin]

I hope Jones can find something in the squad that as yet hasn't been found.

[ExeterAddick]

I've seen squads with less passion and more fear in them, and they've ultimately taken us down.

But I don't think I can ever remember a squad with such little flair or attacking ability than this one. We don't have a player out there who can beat a man, or deliver a dangerous cross, or pick an incisive through ball. It's worrying.

[aaronaldo]

Feb 5, 2024 18:01:54 GMT ExeterAddick said:

I've seen squads with less passion and more fear in them, and they've ultimately taken us down.

But I don't think I can ever remember a squad with such little flair or attacking ability than this one. We don't have a player out there who can beat a man, or deliver a dangerous cross, or pick an incisive through ball. It's worrying.

Completely agree unfortunately

[Mundell]

Feb 5, 2024 18:01:54 GMT ExeterAddick said:

I've seen squads with less passion and more fear in them, and they've ultimately taken us down.

But I don't think I can ever remember a squad with such little flair or attacking ability than this one. We don't have a player out there who can beat a man, or deliver a dangerous cross, or pick an incisive through ball. It's worrying.

I think the squad Phil Parkinson had in the 2010-11 season was much weaker on paper than this one. Remarkably, he had us in the playoff positions when he was sacked almost immediately after the Jimenez, Slater, Cash takeover completed. Credit to Parky for that, but in my view the big difference between that season and this is the standard of the competition. 

There is still a conventional wisdom that League One is a low standard of football, a pub league played in by cloggers, has beens and never were’s that is beneath a club of Charlton’s stature. It’s not though and it isn’t. The quality of football in League One is higher than it has ever been. It is a very competitive league with some very good teams and few, if any poor ones. 

There are two ways of thinking about how this has come about. First, the extraordinary influx of foreign talent into the Premier League and the Championship has led to a cascading down of talent that in a previous generation would have been playing at a much higher level. The gene pool has exploded and League One now has much better players than ever before. 

Second, the local owner of the local club who employed a traditional manager who drove up and down the M1 during midweek scouting players, while his own players were at home drinking heavily in the local pub, has been replaced by a wealthier and much more professional owner who employs a much more professional head coach who benefits from a more structured player recruitment process and a playing squad that is more likely to be found in the gym than in the local pub. The competition is much more professional. 

There is something else going on which is more technical. As standards rise in a sport, as they inexorably do and as they have in football, the differences between the best performers and the rest shrink. We can see this very clearly in athletics, for example, in a sport like baseball while in cricket they’ll never be another Don Bradman.

In football the way this manifests is that the margins between success and failure shrink. If you have a huge financial advantage, the best players and the best coach then you’ll dominate like Manchester City and Liverpool, but in League One, where there can be no such dominance, there isn’t much difference between a side that’s winning and one that’s losing. 

Results this season have been very disappointing and clearly not good enough, but we should be careful before we condemn the players as the worst we’ve seen at the club. They’re almost certainly not. They’re playing in a very competitive league where the margins between success and failure are wafer thin and are falling just the wrong side of the line. We need to be wary of outcome bias. I’m not excusing the players, just trying to find some perspective. 

[Occam’s Razor]

“A very competitive league “ 🤔 🤦‍♂️

Every single club around us operates on less than 50% of our budget, many on significantly less.

Claiming that the likes of Fleetwood, Orient & Cheltenham (and there’s plenty more) somehow make this league competitive is just excuse making, and wordy toleration of ever declining standards at Charlton.
Any CAFC fan who blithely accepts us being below Lincoln, Cambridge, Exeter and Shrewsbury in the league table should wrap up their tools, and spend the rest of their days doing puzzle books instead.
If both Reading and Port Vale win tonight, there is every chance we will be in the Bottom 4.
Not sure for how long you have been watching us live Mundell but this is my 47th season and this is by far our worst squad in that time. The league table confirms it. Sometimes you are prone to see a 🌹 where there’s only a stinging nettle.

Just my perspective.

[chertseyaddick]

Players worth keeping:-

Ramsay
Thomas
Taylor
Coventry
May
Miles
Chuks (obviously fitness proviso)

Bench:-
AMB
Ness
Small (unseen but pedigree)
Mitchell
Anderson
Kanu

Thats a lot of players to ship out. Assuming 3-4-1-2 and May as a ten, we need a keeper, LB, two CBs and a decent striker type to rotate the front three. Plus cover.

[aaronaldo]

Feb 6, 2024 14:13:02 GMT chertseyaddick said:

Players worth keeping:-

Ramsay
Thomas
Taylor
Coventry
May
Miles
Chuks (obviously fitness proviso)

Bench:-
AMB
Ness
Small (unseen but pedigree)
Mitchell
Anderson
Kanu

Thats a lot of players to ship out. Assuming 3-4-1-2 and May as a ten, we need a keeper, LB, two CBs and a decent striker type to rotate the front three. Plus cover.

So you're writing off new signings Gillesphey and Edmonds-Green after a few games?

Also not a fan of Jones (Lloyd)?

[chertseyaddick]

Feb 6, 2024 14:25:44 GMT aaronaldo said:

Feb 6, 2024 14:13:02 GMT chertseyaddick said:

Players worth keeping:-

Ramsay
Thomas
Taylor
Coventry
May
Miles
Chuks (obviously fitness proviso)

Bench:-
AMB
Ness
Small (unseen but pedigree)
Mitchell
Anderson
Kanu

Thats a lot of players to ship out. Assuming 3-4-1-2 and May as a ten, we need a keeper, LB, two CBs (pacy) and a decent striker type to rotate the front three. Plus cover.

So you're writing off new signings Gillesphey and Edmonds-Green after a few games?

Also not a fan of Jones (Lloyd)?

Yes REG too small for a CB and we have better elsewhere. Gillesphey too slow and done nothing to show he will improve. Jones, meh. None capable of playing in a decent Championship side, hence they are here.

[earlpurple]

Maybe not quite true, but worth posting:

[seriouslyred]

If we all agreed then there would be no need for message boards and no market for social media. How boring would that be? "If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man’s experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.”

Then again, “If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.”

Nor should we plough all our efforts into convincing others, let alone closing down discussion. “The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters.”

“Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.”

As far as we know, nobody has died arguing about our great club but “It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.”

“The genuine rationalist [such as Mundell ] does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.”

And finally “True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” For “No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.”

In short most of us have been watching the decline of our club since 2004 with the occasional promotion thrown in for good measure. And most of us will attend games, watch them on streams and form both emotional responses at the time as well as what we consider rational frameworks to explain and explore cause and effect.

The OP is a very articulate representation of a particular view. And I would hesitate to criticise. Why?

It would be impolite bordering upon rude for one thing. Most importantly a post refuting the OP could and would be interpreted as an attempt to both shut down debate as well as turning a blind eye to our reality.

As ever when this situation arises I'd refer to the inherent uncertainty of our club and our great game. As well as the fact that GFP & SE7 have been in charge for just six months, six players have been here for less than six weeks and our new manager has had around six hours contact time with the players. In other words, let's see where we are at 5pm on Saturday!

PS We might also be completely agnostic about Andy Scott! Perhaps this squad deserves to be 19th and " the table doesn't lie"? Alternatively some wins will appear, we climb the league and make a fresh appraisal of the team and the squad. Why are people in a hurry to make that judgement today? The reality is that two of the investors have flown over to meet the SMT and "participate" in the Jones appointment, they will have been presented with a plethora of data and reasons as to why we are where we are. In other words, what happens next will determine decisions made in the close season, so let's enjoy the games and the discussions.

PPS the quotes are from Karl Popper - until today I only knew one of them - if nothing else writing this post has been educational

[crapgame]

Bolton, Peterborough and now Derby are the opposition teams with players that I have seen this season that look far better than what we have got. They all looked fit, athletic, strong and organised sides with some experienced and skillful individuals that can really hurt sides. To be fair, we did compete with Derby and showed some grit, but we didnt test their keeper and I think of them 3 sides, we lacked maybe 5, 6 or 7 of their standard! Coventry looks classy to me and maybe him, May, Leaburn, Dobson, Camara (if fit),could get into their squads. Therein lies the problem. So what about the 888? How many 'elite' league 1 players do we have? There are some with potential and I include the defenders in that but they haven't shown 'elitism' yet to me. So even the SMT must admit we are a long way from their 888 'model' squad and would need big investment next summer to get anywhere near it.

[revilo]

Feb 4, 2024 15:01:22 GMT revilo said:

To add to your point Reams, we can even look at players who have left us and are now much the better for doing so: Jake Forster-Caskey at Stevenage, Albie Morgan at Blackpool, Alex Gilbey and Jack Payne at Milton Keynes, hate to say it but Lyle Taylor at Cambridge United. And soon Scott Fraser to be tearing it up at Hearts.

For some reason playing under Charlton Athletic is a completely different challenge and our head coach or manager can't get the best out of them. What is it about our club that we show the weakness in players who on paper are good players.

Add Jayden Stockley to that list, he's scoring for fun at Fleetwood Town

[Occam’s Razor]

We are deep in a relegation battle after tonight’s results. Even certain clipboards must be trembling at this point.

As things stand, it’s a toss up between us, Reading and Port Vale (who have games in hand).

As seriouslyred would say, let’s “embrace the journey” …even if it could finish with us in Division 4 for the first time in our history.

[aaronaldo]

Feb 6, 2024 21:51:50 GMT Occam’s Razor said:

We are deep in a relegation battle after tonight’s results. Even certain clipboards must be trembling at this point.

As things stand, it’s a toss up between us, Reading and Port Vale (who have games in hand).

As seriouslyred would say, let’s “embrace the journey” …even if it could finish with us in Division 4 for the first time in our history.

I don't think Reading will be in a relegation fight soon, unless they get docked more points ofc.

[seriouslyred]

Feb 6, 2024 21:51:50 GMT Occam’s Razor said:

We are deep in a relegation battle after tonight’s results. Even certain clipboards must be trembling at this point.

As things stand, it’s a toss up between us, Reading and Port Vale (who have games in hand).

As seriouslyred would say, let’s “embrace the journey” …even if it could finish with us in Division 4 for the first time in our history.

Why tremble FFS?

Just man up and support the lads on Saturday, then again on Tuesday at The Valley vs Lincoln.

Of course we embrace the club, and the journey! "It's easy to be a fan when we're doing well" - Nathan Jones

Too much rhetoric, flip flopping and blame says I.

[earlpurple]

We brought in Gillesphey presumably to strengthen our defence and take away the problems there but he gave the ball away against Northampton for their winning goal and to Derby for theirs in our last two home games.

Why? Because of a combination of bad decision making and failing to link up properly with his team mates.

If Nathan Jones gets us better playing as a team, being in the right places and making the right runs, I guess any decent set of players would be capable of achieving results at this level, and in theory the players we have are good enough.

He needs to coach the midfielders how to be more creative, the front players how to make the right runs. Unfortunately the two players we had that were most capable of doing that were CBT and Fraser, both of whom we let go. But maybe he can find something in the players we have to fill that role and do it at least with reasonable effect.