The old adage that you can predict your season after ten games isn't looking good for Addicks fans. Following yesterday's dismal defeat at Barnsley, we sit in 16th position and a few sides beneath us also have a game in hand. We have only won twice so far this season and the football we are serving up (Plymouth match aside) doesn't have the pulse racing.
I didn't see the match yesterday, but once again our failure to recruit goals in the Summer cost us again as we wasted the chances we did create. Barnsley scored three goals despite Ben Garner saying they "failed to open us up." For once his post-match comments sounded hollow and cliche-riddled. Those Charlton fans present were not enamoured with our defending either and we look a bit of a mess right now. All the tosh of "Garnerball" is coming home to roost and the manager is coming in for some stick too.
Thomas Sandgaard has gone from Hero to Zero and his hopes of break-even in two years is looking increasingly laughable. The actual gate on Saturday for the visit of fellow-strugglers Oxford United looks likely to be small again and those cash tills won't be doing overtime.
Sandgaard will surely have realised by now that his cost-cutting recruitment has left us with a very average League One side and that we have more chance of going down than getting promoted. His options to change things are limited and involve significant expenditure he doesn't want to make. He must already be looking to sell us as an established League One club now rather than watching our value drop further this season. You really have to wonder what he really thinks he can get for the club. Cutting the losses will make us more attractive obviously but there is precious little value in what he bought without the Valley or Sparrows Lane. Any prospective buyer will understand that he has been cutting costs and has tried to get by with a makeshift squad. Changing that will cost money so seeing even a slight improvement in the losses is hardly going to be a deal clincher.
He is going to have to do a deal similar to the one Duchatelet sold to him and that was pretty much, 'take the football club losses on and it's yours.' We can only hope that it comes sooner rather than later and that the next owners have genuine ambition as well as money. It would good to bring in a non-Bonne goal-scorer in January even if it takes new ownership.
What's the point of playing nice football when you're unable to score goals ? He has failed miserably in giving Garner a fighting chance, he failed miserably last year on the recruitment front and he has failed miserably in learning the lessons of last seasons failed recruitment. We are in relegation free fall. The sooner he finds a buyer the better.
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