Its a Midfielder!!

It's unknown whether or not Hayden Mullins made the required phone call yesterday but whatever occurred it seems that Pardew has been looking elsewhere and seen what he likes.

The word is that Dean Sinclair, on trial with the Addicks from the last couple of weeks, has impressed Pards enough for him to made the plunge and sign the Luton-born midfielder for an alleged £125k from Barnet. A little worryingly he's out of contract but because he's under 24 we've come clean, like the honest folk we are, and coughed up the appropriate readies. No dirty business here.

At 22 he's another youngster and I've a reliable report from somebody connected with selling the pies up there that he was Barnets' best player last season when he scored 7 times.

Reports from the Marbella game are that he gets through a lot of work but his first touch can occasionally let him down. Sounds like another Kish except that with figures of 21 goals in 133 appearances for the Bees he looks more like a midfielder in the Pardew mound who himself scored a comparable 27 times in 124 games for the Addicks back there in the 90's.

With the 28 year-old Mullins seemingly preferring to take the money and stay at West Ham, Pards has obviously gone with the young and hungry option.

And with the whole team seeming to get younger and younger I decided to remind myself exactly how old they all are, so after lengthy research here's everybody's age.

Goalies: Weaver 28, Randolph 20, Elliott 21

Fullbacks: Moutaouakil 21, Powell 37, Thatcher 31, Semedo 21, Gibbs 27

Centre-Backs: McCarthy 24, Diawara 28, Fortune 26, Bougherra 24

Midfield: Christensen 19, Holland 33, Reid 24, Thomas 24, Ambrose 23, Sinclair 22, Sam 22

Strikers: Todorov 28, Iwelumo 28, Dickson 22, Varney 24, Marcus Bent 29.

With a likely line-up of Weaver, Moutaouakil, McCarthy, Diawara, Thatcher, Christensen, Sinclair, Reid, Thomas, Todorov and Varney gives an average age of 24.8

But as nothings new in the world I found that someone else has been there first and happened across this which not only shows in one simple page all the info on the Charlton players and staff but lets us know that Andy Reid is without doubt the weeist of them all with Weaver and Iwelumo the biggest. And it also tells us that Amady Faye and Marcus Bent both have 2 years left on their contracts. Oh, dear.

Meanwhile over on the official site, at last it seems that Pards has found a role for old Bent because on Wednesday, August 1st, he's going to be working in the Valley Superstore. Behind the counter, I assume.