The Bowyer Paradox

There's a rule-of-thumb in football that says don't consider the early season table until ten games have been played. Historically, that's a good yardstick for how the season will pan-out. That didn't stop me as a boy from eagerly adjusting my Shoot League Ladder after the first game of the season to show Charlton in a typically unrealistic position following a rare winning start to the season (having started at home) so I could begin the dream.

I still follow the ten-game mantra but it's impossible not to look at the Championship table after six games as Charlton fans and draw some startling conclusions. The most obvious is that we are, somehow, incredibly sitting in an unlikely second-place. Second, from following the games (from a distance for me), is that it's no fluke, we have been competitive in this division for the first time in twenty years despite all the logic suggesting that would not be possible before we kicked-off.

This impressive and heart-warming start is all the more amazing considering the relative state of the football club, it's operating budget, the owner's lack of ambition or interest and the high question-marks surrounding our medium term future. 

Home wins over Stoke and Brentford, away wins at Blackburn and Reading as well as draws at home to Forest and away at Barnsley, have seen Lee Bowyer's battling side take 14 points from a possible 18 and remain unbeaten in second-place. Confidence is high both amongst the players and increasingly so, once again, amongst the club's barely believing supporters who are already beginning to pick up the support levels from where we left off at the end of last season where we appeared to sweep all before us with a blooming chorus of 'allez, allez..' The team spirit and fight from last year remains and the new boys have evidently all bought into it. 

I think we are all largely agreed that Bowyer, Gallen and Jackson are the primary reason for this. They have managed again to pick up loans and free transfers as well as players prepared to play within their small budget who have ability but, as importantly, the right attitude to the game and whose collective output is far greater than the sum of their parts. In football management this really is the Holy Grail, especially outside the Top Six of the PL where managers can get by by playing fantasy football and simply buying proven top quality players and hoping they continue to perform. 

The paradox is that Bowyer & Co are managing this in spite of everything around them. We were told by Roland Duchatelet that Bowyer's contract wouldn't be extended this season because he hadn't accepted the offer he had been made and that he was being greedy asking for a Championship-sized increase. The fact that Duchatelet caved in that same day and secured Bowyer may appear extremely fortunate for the supporters. Maybe it was just a case that Duchatelet facing paying a similar amount for a new face if he had rejected Bowyer and acknowledging it wasn't worth the damage to supporter relations or the risk of hiring another in his long line of duds? 

The fact is Bowyer stayed and he did so knowing his budget would again be challenged and that he would have to fill the holes in his squad on the cheap as well as having to gear his team to compete at a higher level. Six games in and he has clearly demonstrated that he has managed that and is rightly receiving the plaudits for it.

Realistically, we cannot expect to hold on to an automatic promotion place or even seriously hope for a third successive play-off place. Finishing mid-table would represent significant success in the circumstances and would match the impressive Chris Wilder's first season back in the Championship two years ago as the Blades developed into a Championship-challenging side. 

However, given the progress Bowyer's Boys have made already, Charlton fans are daring to dream that we can have a go this season and once again upset the apple-cart. 

My decision to boycott matches from the start of the 2017-18 season was borne from a refusal to give any more money to a billionaire who was simply using it to cut his losses and under whom I was absolutely convinced we had no chance of any footballing progress. This was evident from his ongoing mis-management of the club but also because I was convinced he was quite happy for the club to operate in League One where his costs (and subsequent losses) were considerably less but also because I was equally convinced he did not want a return to the "financial graveyard" of the Championship and that he would act to prevent that. He proved me right when he failed to back Bowyer in January last year when we didn't get the missing striking jigsaw piece and, instead, he sold our joint top scorer. The fact that Bowyer defied the odds and won promotion was close to a fairytale.

This close season has followed Duchatelet form. He has cut his budget by allowing several of the better players to move on when better management a small investment could have kept them on. He has also cashed-in on youngster Joe Aribo and I believe he would have taken the money for Lyle Taylor had we been able to line-up a replacement on deadline day. That didn't happen but I fully expect him to cash in come January on Taylor whose head was clearly turned during the transfer window. We risk a deja vu then from last season when Grant moved on, and yet Bowyer completed the task in spite of Duchatelet and a who would rule out a repeat if we are still properly in the mix come New Year?

There is one other key difference that we have to consider in the unlikely situation that Bowyer is still trading punches with the heavyweights at the half-way stage. There is also the previously impossible prospect that Duchatelet might see a possible route to his desperate personal need to be able to sell the club without taking a stonking loss. A hitherto-to unlikely investment in the squad might just be a gamble he is willing to take even if it goes against his modus operandi and risks his determination to turn a profit and start to reduce his huge overall ownership losses. 

There is a long way yet to go but very few would seriously have predicted this start to the season without wishful thinking or naive bias. Bowyer also has me itching to return to The Valley to witness his ongoing miracle. I still don't want to give the Belgian Billionaire a bean but the prospect, however unlikely, that Bowyer could win a second promotion that might, ironically, get rid of Duchatelet once and for all is a tantalising prospect and begins to approach justifying the expenditure and change of mind. Every cell in my brain tells me this is impossible but the blood pumping through my heart reminds me of that incredible feeling at 5pm on 26th May.