Exodus continues apace...

So the club bids farewell to Perry and Bothroyd within 24 hours of new manager Iain Dowie taking the reins. I can understand the release of Bothroyd, he never really had the necessary skill to make it in the Premiership and the odd powerful free-kick aside, he didn't do much for Charlton during his year at the club.

Perry is a little more difficult to understand. He's a player who many have called our most consistent centre back over the last couple of seasons and although his age is against him, he's certainly a decent option to have in the squad. I can't imagine that his wages are particularly high in comparison with what others are earning, and his departure leaves us lacking in defensive options right now. Obviously Dowie is going to bring his own centre backs into the club but wouldn't it be prudent to get them signed before releasing what we already have?

With Sorondo (who Dowie knows well from his Palace days) notoriously injury prone and El Karkouri seemingly unlikely to return from his loan spell in Qatar, HH and Fortune are just about all we have left in the middle of the back four. Gibbs is a full back, the youth players aren't up to it yet, and if Luke Young really is off to East London then shouldn't we all be a little bit worried right now?

The situation is similar at the other end of the pitch aswell. JJ, Bartlett and Jeffers leaving the club is all well and good, but they are leaving behind only the two Bent's and Lisbie. Once again, I'm sure that players are on the shortlist in order to replace what we have let go, but players were on the shortlist at this stage last summer as well and it turned out that deals we thought were in the bag hit late snags and didn't go through.
I got fed up of Curbishley constantly telling us that he was trying to spend money all summer but couldn't because other clubs wouldn't let their players go without first signing replacements. We've gone the other way, and released five of our squad players before getting the relevant staff in place to cover their positions.

It could be argued of course that last year we had the biggest squad we've had in ages and all Dowie's doing is in fact trimming it back down to size, I'd just feel a bit more comfortable if he'd given the outgoing players rolling week-to-week contracts until the new guys were in. If they were being given free transfers anyway, it wouldn't matter that other clubs could come in and pick them up at anytime they pleased. Another few weeks on the payroll wouldn’t have crippled us.

In other news, I finally renewed my season ticket yesterday through fear that there were less than 24 hours to go until the deadline, but this morning the club have extended that deadline until midnight on Friday 2nd June. They claim that there has been a real surge in re-applications over the last couple of days.

Simon Jordan has continued to give interviews to anyone who will sit there and listen to him, whilst last night the official site claimed that Charlton were ready fight fire with fire in the High Court, claiming that Jordan's antics yesterday were nothing more than a "sad and pathetic publicity stunt".
Dowie himself allegedly spoke to Simon Jordan after leaving Palace and told him face to face that he was going to meet with Charlton representatives about the Valley vacancy. Surely that fact would seem to support the claims that Peter Varney made last night. If dramatic effect wasn't an issue, why didn't Jordan say his piece to Dowie before he even had an interview?

With regards to the audio feed from yesterday's press conference, I haven't forgotten, I've just been lazy. Apologies for that, and it will be up early tomorrow morning I promise.