Valencia Preview

Saturday sees the Addicks fly to Spain for a serious test against highly-rated Valencia. League winners twice in the last 5 years, in 2002 and 2004 they finished last season in 3rd place behind Barcelona and Real Madrid. In recent years they have twice made it to the Champions League final in 2000 and 2001 losing both times to Real Madrid and Bayern Munich respectively and in 2004 won the UEFA Cup. Clearly then one of the top teams in Europe.

Like ourselves they've had two pre-season games, both in a tournament at Emerlo in Holland. They beat the Dutch Second Division side Go Ahead Eagles 2-1 and then beat the Turks from Fenerbahce by the same score. That's typical Valencia - score 2 goals and close the game down. Always hard to beat, they have one of the best defensive records in Spain last year with solid centre-backs Ayala and Marchena and a dependable goalkeeper in Cañizares. The whole team always work hard but they don't score many goals.

They've surprisingly disposed of goalscorer but ugly geezer Mista and replaced him with Morientes, who as Mrs Nelson tells me is much better-looking and, of course, del Horno returns to Spain after his unhappy year at Chelski. They also welcome back skilful left winger Vicente from a season long injury that kept him out of the World Cup. So Morientes and David Villa as strikers. Villa's very good and will give our boys a real testing but personally if I was a Valencia fan I'd be envious of an attacking line-up of Hasselbaink and Bent. Hasselbaink had a very good year in Spain in 1999/2000 with Atletico Madrid scoring 24 league and he's well remembered. Shame Darren won't be joining him!

So a Valencia team that won't give Charlton as many chances as Hibs did on Tuesday and they'll be more than content to play keep-ball for long periods of the game. Ten-Thirty kickoff but it'll still be up in the 20's with lots of humidity as well. 25000 tickets sold ( well, probably given away more like ) but it shows the importance of a meaningless kickabout to a Spaniard.

So who is going to be in the Charlton line-up? Darren B still seems to have problems holding a knife so we'll still not see what form of cutting edge he makes with Jimmy-Floyd. Monica has certainly shown that he wants to see what the youngsters can do and he's already making some excuses for them after the Hibs game and showing how he wants to give them some experience while at the same time saying he doesn't expect the earth. Looks like good management to me. Bringing back James Walker after he had been supposedly released shows he's not afraid to follow his own instincts or maybe listen to advice from people he trusts.

The twenty-two players that were used against Millwall and Hibs would be quite a plane full but with the heat in Spain maybe a good idea. But we'll need to be at our best to handle this lot and its possible that because of that we'll get a better idea of Monica's first 11. However, with Monica proving full of surprises and seemingly determined to give as many players a game as possible, maybe we'll even see Lisbie make a showing?

Monica's interviews have emphasized the number of positives coming out of last Tuesdays game despite the defeat, and with end-of-week barbis creating the right atmosphere we seem to be getting half-way there. Unfortunately he's joined a team, not only of a couple of dozen players, but of several thousand pessimists and right now I just wish we would splash out a bit and get that creative midfield player that everyone wants. I'm getting to the stage that I don't care who it is. We do seem to have created lots of chances against Hibs and we did score 4 at Millwall I hear someone say but I remember Hughes, Kish and Holland from last season and I'm still having nightmares about it.

Likely Prediction : Valencia 2 Charlton 1