Defeat again at The Cottage

I'm none too qualified to talk about the performance today due to the fact that I was at work from 10 until 8 and I didn't even get the chance to listen to it on the radio, but from the various match reports I have read it looks as if it was just more of the same old tedium. However, thanks to the genius of 3g phones I have already downloaded and watched the goals and to be honest, both were preventable.

The first one was just a calamitous piece of defending from a free kick, Boa Morte managed to score from a ridiculous angle at Myhre's near post without the keeper even making a dive for the ball. I'm not sure whether Jason Euell was meant to be guarding the post or not, but surely he should have sensed the danger and hacked the ball away once he saw it curling past the wall. As for the second goal, Sorondo was far too flat on his feet as Boa Morte burst past him. You have to hand it to the striker, both the run and the finish were excellent but he still managed to get past two of our players and slot it beyond Myhre with barely a hint of a Charlton challenge. No wonder Curbishley was furious at half time.

I've spoken to one or two people who were at the match and both have said that the fans were loud for the majority of the first half, but as the rain set in the noise began to drift away, and quite a large number of the Addicks had departed by the time Mr Atkinson blew for full time. We had a couple of chances to nick a point late on, but a combination of poor finishing and good goalkeeping managed to fend us off.

The fact that Jerome Thomas consistently starts on the bench is really beginning to frustrate me now. I know that I have a soft spot for the bloke, but am I really the only one who thinks that he has been our most positive attacking player in recent weeks? Sankofa again spent the whole 90 minutes watching from the sidelines (he must be wondering how badly the team needs to play in order for him to get his chance), while Powell and Hughes (2 of the better players from the Riverside) were also dropped from the team in favour of Euell and Sorondo. I suppose we don't know whether or not Hughes picked up a slight knock in the Boro match, but I honestly believe that Euell was only brought into the side in order to put him back in the shop window before the transfer window opens again. I wouldn't be surprised to see him start our remaining few games now, and then leave the club in the summer (probably to someone like Sheff Utd for 500k).

So, we have a day to lick our wounds before resurgent Portsmouth arrive in SE7. The form that they are in at the moment means that we will have a tough battle on our hands if we want to stop this run of defeats before it gets too noticeable. I don't think I can stomach another media battering about how our players 'just can't be bothered to turn up once the 40 point barrier is breached'. The papers were talking about us doing this months before the end of the season, and it's so frustrating to see it happening again.

On a separate note, the videos that I have from the trip up to Boro mentioned in this article range from about 30mb to 300mb in size. I haven't had much luck in finding a site which will allow me to host files of that size without having to pay for the privilege. I can't stick up links to the videos until I overcome this little problem, does anyone have any experience in getting such large files hosted?