6 Days to go - the season ahead

I don't know about you, but I am beginning to get very excited about the new season and can't wait until Saturday. The performance and spirit shown at Bournemouth has given me a confidence boost, a view shared by the web's best-travelled blogger, whom I had the pleasure of watching the game with. For whatever reason, our midfield has remained intact during the desperate financial struggle of the Summer and it looks like we will kick off with an engine-room that can dominate League One.

It would appear that the possible takeover might be responsible for us hanging on to our most valuable players (Shelvey, Bailey, Racon and Sam), so we have to hope and pray that the club moves into new hands or else we might yet have the disappointment of losing key players during the season which would be as potentially disastrous as when Rob Lee, Scott Parker and Colin Powell moved on in years gone by.

The Times carried a brief piece yesterday saying that Jonjo Shelvey had turned down a £3.25m move to Chelsea because he doesn't believe it would be good for his development. That initial sentence filled me with hope, but it then went on to say he would like a move to West Ham instead but that they didn't have the money. This sounds like a definite case of when rather than if. That sort of fee, of course, could be crucial to our survival in the months ahead.

To the big day then, and I am as confident as I can be that we will collect three points from Wycombe Wanderers and should score a few goals in the process. The Chairboys have a mounting injury list if boss Peter Taylor is to be believed and they went down 3-1 at Bristol City at the weekend. A similar scoreline on Saturday for would do very nicely. We owe Wycombe for the embarrassing cup defeat inflicted on us at the Valley in recent seasons and it would also be good to remind Peter Taylor that Charlton are a much better club than he obviously thought when he turned us down prior to the appointment of the Rocket Scientist.

At this point, I would normally make a lot of inaccurate predictions about the season ahead but I am afraid I know very little about the teams we will play, so think it best I reserve judgement until we get into it. My earlier view was that we would struggle and this was based upon assumptions that Bailey and Shelvey would be gone by now and the damage that would inevitably have done to fragile morale to boot. The fact that they look like featuring on the opening day has instilled more confidence for the season. Much will depend on how long they remain with us and whether or not we can build confidence with a strong start. Completion of the takeover would be an enormous boost and might mean we can hang on to them for longer and perhaps, bring in proven goal-scorer.

In the circumstances, therefore, I am going to go with a decent start. I believe we can win our first two home games against Wycombe and Walsall and remain unbeaten at Hartlepool and Orient. It would be good to avoid defeat at Hereford too, but losing there and exiting the League Cup early wouldn't be the end of the world, especially if we put out a young side.

I have family down from Scotland visiting tomorrow so will have to do my duty but hope to be free to attend the Supporters Trust meeting at the Conservative Club in the evening. Whilst we have had some communication from the club in the intervening weeks since the idea of a ST was first mooted, I think we need to press ahead with this idea, if only for our own piece of mind. The road ahead still looks dark and potentially dangerous for our Club and it would be as well for the supporters to be prepared for the worst as that's where we have been heading for quite some time.

Up the Addicks!