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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Only 4 Steps to Heaven, or Hell!

So anyone given up yet? Not Pards, thats for sure. After Sundays cruel defeat when a point seemed in the bag he'll have to lift the team and get them believing, once again, that survival in the premiership is possible. And if a team needs a positive driver, he's your man. He's given the boys a day off today to get them to relax a bit and no doubt take the pressure off. But you can bet that another reason is so that he can prepare himself, find the right words of encouragement and do some planning to turn Saturday into a veritable launch pad for survival.

As for us what can we do? I like what I read in addicksdiary - "Supporters need to retain belief, if only to communicate confidence to the team", but belief is not something you can teach people. They'll always be people that give up and those that don't and then again we didn't choose to support Charlton because we expected them to win anything so perhaps belief in success is something we've never needed much in the past. In fact we probably didn't "choose" Charlton at all, it just happened. And we've taken the good with the bad and haven't grumbled too much. Well, booed a bit, maybe.....

So, anyway there's now only 360 minutes left of a very difficult season. Six hours of football that will decide whether or not we will play in the Premiership next season. Three managers and, at the moment a total 32 points are at the moment not enough, we need more.

And our failures so far mean that every game from now on will be a "must-win" game, a policy that Warnock adapted at the weekend when he told his players that their season would end if they didn't beat the Hammers. Pards has already said that he doesn't like must-win games. Too much pressure and the players can't relax, hence todays rest day.

And to help the supporters relax before Saturday we can take a look at the Current Form Table in sportinglife. Forget the fact that Fulham at "currently" bottom - things can chance fast in this business - lets take a look at our last 4 opponents of the season.

Two very low teams are next up - Sheff U (h) and Blackburn (a) - followed by two top 5 teams - Spurs (h) and lastly Liverpool (a) - are the 4 teams remaining to the Addicks. Sheff U have lost their last 8 away games, scoring just 4 goals and conceding 21! They've won 3 on the road at Newcastle, Watford and Wigan all by the same score, 1-0. And of their 17 away games they have failed to score in 10 of them. So they'll defend and hope to snick a goal.

After Sheff U its away at Blackburn who might be having a bad time of late with only 3 wins and 6 defeats in their last 9 games - but only 4 teams, manure, Chelski, the Arse and Bolton have stopped them from scoring at home this season. So obviously the best plan is to make them think they're playing away. With a capacity of over 31000 and crowds of only 16000 against Fulham, 17000 against Wigan and Portsmouth and 18000 against the Hammers and with the disppointment of losing a Cup Semi-Final its possible that with 4000 noisy fans in the away end we could change it into the Valley. And with a game tonight against Watford they could be safely in midtable by the time they face us.

Spurs then. The good news is that they've played 5 of the bottom six away and only managed to beat West Ham with draws at Watford, Wigan and Fulham and a defeat at Sheff U...

And lastly Liverpool. With 16 games played at home and with 12 wins and only 1 defeat and with only 5 goals conceded its obviously not the best place to visit for what could be a relegation decider. It looks an impossible task to expect anything from this one and it'll possibly depend of what's at stake for Liverpool. Lets hope they're well clear of the arse by then and that we're safe as well....

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