Us at the FA...Never...

The Addicks are smiling from ear to ear at the moment especially after West Brom missed their chance to overtake us last night with their 1-1 home draw with Stoke, a scoreline that keeps us in that coveted 2nd spot.

But it's been a very strange week. The pictures from the Hull 18 man brawl ( who was missing ?) and the reports that the FA will be "considering the referee's report and investigating the incident and also looking at video evidence before deciding what further action is necessary," make for some strange reading for an Addick. When have we last been involved in such controversy?

But it completes what has been a definite turn-around for the Addicks and its been compounded and put into focus by an obviously misguided mate from Hull, feed twisted reports from various Hull websites, asking if I am embarrassed or ashamed of being associated with a bunch of hooligans.

So it's pretty obvious at the moment that after the prissy behaviour of the Prem, things are definitely changing around the Valley, with the Addicks getting stuck-in and proving that they can deal with the rough as well as the smooth.

The violence appeared to start with Saturdays draw with Coventry where Pardew accused us of "shooting ourselves in the foot" and then we go to Hull where manager Phil Brown claims he "was mugged in his own back yard"

But there's no doubt that toughness is a necessary attribute in the fizzies and our gaffer has already outlined the fact. After the Stoke game back in August, our only defeat, Pardew said "Percentage football is a big factor in the Championship and we need to grow in that department. We need to be big enough and strong enough to deal with it, and we obviously weren't on Saturday"

And then after further disappointment at Coventry he painfully explained, "We need to learn the discipline of winning away in this division; there are certain tricks and traits that you need and we didn't explore them today."

But we obviously did on Tuesday and so our progress back to the top continues apace. Five victories so far and a total of 18 points when, if you recall, Pards said a month ago that he was looking to get 26 wins this season to get an automatic place. Looking back to last year, Sunderland, the champions, won 27 games and finished on 88 points while Birmingham won 26 to finish second with 86 points.

And if you want statistics, Sunderland collected 1.91 points per game average last season; currently we're ahead of that with a nice round 2 points per game....

Roll on Barnsley.