Should We Be Worried?

Perhaps the artificial lull in the season caused by international games is to blame but only three games into the season and the fans are already anxious at the amount of money spent during the summer.

And with the uncertainties of new management not helped by 2 early season defeats against West Ham and manure with 6 goals conceded some of us are clearly expecting the worst. Not only that but the new manager, sorry coach, has seemingly dispensed with our legendary spending restraints and outlaid a cool £12m on new players. Even Richard Murray, himself, during a recent interview, expressed just a little tension when asked about the outlay and confirmed that some of the budgeted sum earmarked for next summers transfers has already been spent.

This has clearly upset a lot of people. For those of the fans that have put greater emphasis on Charlton´s financial management skills over the years rather that the footballing prowess this is a surprising occurence, but he´s clearly told Monica to keep us in the Division, whatever you have to do and Monica has obliged. And in any business, a manager has to have people, in this case players, that he can work with. The players may all be professionals but a managers methods and success will depend on him having players that he can motivate and get to perform adequately.

And whilst the quality of the agruments written have been noticeably high perhaps we should instead be applauding the management for at least showing action rather than doing nothing while Rome burns around us and patiently wait to see where we are at Christmas before we start to question Monica´s dealings.

For Monica's part, he has always been anxious to emphasize that he appreciated the squad he inherited and has given them all a generous try-out during pre-season before his subsequent spending spree tells us that he wasn´t entirely happy with his inherited squad. Like most of us, he clearly thought that, whatever he may have said, the performances against West Ham and manure were clearly not good enough. Since then he has blown the budget by the acquisition of Diawara and Pouso.

We have already seen new-boys Carson, Traore, Faye, Reid and Jimmy-Floyd in Premier action and although there may still be doubts over the attributes of Traore and Faye the others look better than the ones they have displaced. We even have Pouso and Diawara in the wings yet to show us what they can do so it seems a little premature to be worrying what the management are up to. Whatever we may think, they know their jobs better than we do and the question about whether we are good enough or have the money to belong to this Division will be answered on the pitch and nowhere else.

With 9 (nine) new signings and with only Jason Euell leaving for a fee we´ve spend a cool 12 million although the wage bill has been eased but the departure of Spector, Jeffers, Johansson, Perry and Bartlett. Loan deals have also been made to give some players more experience and to cut the bill even further. But with more internationals arriving its a good bet that the wage bill will also be significantly higher than its ever been and perhaps people would worry even more if they knew what it was.

And with 34 players now in our numbered squad we´re in danger of running out of numbers although any injury problems will be easier to handle. Its odds on that quite a few of the old names will be finding new homes in the January transfer window. Lets hope that by then Monica will have proved to us that his transfer dealings were based on depth of knowledge rather than Richard Murrays obliging pocket.

So perhaps its time to see where we are at the moment with 3 games played.

The worst performance has to be the one against manure. Or is that me. Still hoping for something against that lot maybe I failed to appreciate someones contribution, or maybe not. It was the usual predictable defeat – seems we need a Jorge Costa or dare I say it a Shawn Bartlett to get even a point out of them. It appears that even the players have given up believing they can win as well as the fans. But, nevertheless it was disappointing with 2 defensive howlers gifting them 2 goals just when 3 shots hitting the woodwork appeared to suggest that lady luck was on our side.

In our other 2 games the final results were perhaps the reverse of what had been expected. We usually get something from games against the Hammers with only 1 defeat in the last 6 played. And while we have the excuse of the sending off to explain the defeat perhaps we should be thankful that we have played them before the argies arrived.

The games against Bolton has been getting harder of late and its been 8 games since we beat them. Ironical then that the game should turn our way after the Herminator was sent off and we were down to 10 me.

In similar fashion to the manure game we once again rode our luck early on with 3 good opportunities being spawned by Bolton in the first half before the sending off strangely turned things around. We definitely played better with 10 men. Maybe it was Kish that made the difference. Faye had been largely anonymous during the first half-hour but then stepped back into central defence as if he belonged there. The relationship he had with Traore in the second-half was clearly one of the highlights of the second period.

But rather than worrying about the results from the first 3 games with only 3 points to show, perhaps we should be thankful that the fixtures have allowed the management to immediately see our shortcomings and act before the transfer window closed. It was obvious that the Bolton result, although earned by our resilience, illustrated the fact that the defence needed strengthing urgently. The arrival of Diawara and Pouso is Monica´s answer.