After the Lord Mayors show ...

Well the dust has settled but I'm still smarting from Saturdays match. A complete lack of direction is what I'm now feeling. But it was summed up in an email to the CAFC list by Richard Hunt. It actually captures most of what I was feeling, and I hope he doesn't mind if I reprint it here. I'm not going to try and pass the thoughts off as mine, but it's definately how I was feeling ...

" After 72 hours ... to recover from travelling all that way to see such a mauling, (Richard travels from the Czech Republic) I am more than ever convinced that we should seriously try to get Parker back.

When I compare Saturday to last Boxing Day the difference was that then we had three Charlton players who took to the field believing they were every bit as good as the Chelsea players: Parker, di Canio and Jensen. Those three inspired the rest. On Saturday I didnt see that from anyone (with the exception of the Elk in the first half, and Thomas before he was clattered by Terry, in a challenge every bit as bad as Koncheskys red card job against Chelsea two years ago ). Steve Brown said afterwards on GLR that after the third goal "the body language was dreadful". Danny Murphy is a good player whose confidence is shot to pieces. Matt Holland does a lot of good work that we rarely notice, but as somebody mentioned to me on Saturday, his nickname at Ipswich was Mr CleanShorts, and his disciplinary record is almost too good for a central midfielder. Parker got his shorts dirty, and drove at the Chelsea defence too. Neither Holland nor Murphy managed that at all.
We were noted for being the team that respected nobody and had a go at all. We have completely lost that. Somebody mentioned that we were in their faces for ten minutes. Were we hell. It took more than a minute before we even touched the ball. We lost that kind of self belief the moment we lost Parker. Of the new signings, what Murphy, Jeffers, Rommedahl and Hughes have in common is that none of them seem to believe they deserve a place in a top Premiership starting line up. In Hughes case, he is probably right, with the other three, I don't know.
Rommedahl did some deeply unimpressive things when he came on, but he also set off on a run which everyone else just stood still and admired.

We seem to have no idea what to do with him, what formation he fits into. That cannot be all his fault."

There you go. There's no point in dwelling on that ONE match but it did show the general direction we have gone in a year. Well in a little bit less than a year to be honest and it's not good.

I finally got the car jump started last night. If I was a car I wouldn't start on cold nights either. And I nearly got in and embarked on a 3 hour journey. I say nearly ... I mean nearly but I think I would have got in trouble.

I'm planning on doing about 3 hours of ironing tonight. The pile is getting bigger and bigger ... Oh I do live on the edge.

My tune of the day: Till I found U - Jasper Street Co