Esprit de corpses

Another frustrating afternoon at the office for Charlton, an afternoon where we got exactly what we deserved from White Hart Lane.

The attitude of the team was wrong right from the start and for the majority of the first half it was embarrassingly one sided. Our passing was off again, and there was a criminal lack of both urgency and desire.
No surprise that the first goal came early, and no surprises about the scorer either, Jermain Defoe’s shot coming off of Fortune, Young, Myhre, and the bar before eventually finding the net.

I was hoping that we would react positively to falling behind but there was no discernible change to the way we approached the match. Marcus Bent’s first touch remained awful, no invention in midfield, no width to speak of, and no clear cut chances. It was almost as if we were going through the motions at times, and the second goal was just inevitable.

I’m beginning to get fed up with the way we are playing. It’s not so much the poor football, but the lack of passion and fire within the players really worries me.

When we first got into this league every game was such a big event for the whole squad. You could see in their faces and tell by their work rates that they were going to give their all for the shirt. Players like John Robinson, Mark Kinsella, Steve Brown, Andy Hunt, and Richard Rufus, you never minded as much when we lost games in those days because you knew that the players couldn’t have given any more than they did. That’s just not the case anymore.

Perhaps it’s to do with the lack of home grown players we have in the team at the moment? There is next to nothing breaking into the first team from our academy, I want to know how much it costs us to keep the damn thing open each year.

Look at the likes of Wigan and West Ham this season, that is what I am getting at. They don’t know when they are beaten, either of them.
Yesterday at The Reebok I wouldn’t have given this current Charlton side a prayer of coming back in the last 10 minutes after going 1-0 down late on, but the Wigan players sweated blood, fought, and refused to give up, and they got their rewards in the end.

If we had gone 1-0 down in the 80th, I’m positive we would see more heads dropping down than sleeves rolling up.
We need to rekindle that spirit within ourselves, that esprit de corps that came as standard with any Charlton side back in the likes of 1998 and 2001.

Until we harden ourselves up and grind ourselves in again, we are going to keep getting turned over like we did today. The only time we looked like we had any kind of attacking threat was when Jerome Thomas came on. For those 10 minutes we looked like we had a purpose, surely he needs to start more games for us. We have two strikers who aren’t bad in the air, so playing without wingers who can cross the ball is senseless.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on the side, I don’t know.

I just felt like I knew what was written in the script today long before it played out on the pitch, and it’s depressing when you find out that you were right.