Five Goals for Darren

Brentford 0 Charlton 0
QPR 0 Charlton 3

Charlton have three players called Darren, I realised today, as they have published their list of who is wearing which number shirt during the upcoming season. Darren Ambrose, who appeared in my last post shaking hands for the cameraman with Alan Curbishley (for surely they must have met before that) on the day he was "unveiled" (of which more soon) at The Valley, is actually the third Darren on the books, and will wear shirt number 18.

The second one, pictured here, is Darren Bent, signed from Ipswich in June, and who has scored 5 goals in the past ten days, which looks good. He will be the new number 10.

The first Darren, who was there all the time, is goalkeeper Darren Randolph who will be wearing number 33, and this is the first time he has had a squad number. I tried to find a picture of him at CAFC, but they are evidently making changes to the page in time for the new season, and that bit didn't work. Another day.

The last few days have seen Charlton draw 0-0 at Brentford, which was a bit of a disappointment after the two 5-goal wins of last week. But last night at Loftus Road, a convincing and comfortable 3-0 win was registered. The Inspector went to both of these, and has written about them here.

And now, after a whole year without any penalties, as I mentioned last time, Charlton have now had one in each of the past three games. Jason Euell missed his chance at Griffin Park, and last night it was obviously going to be Bent (Euell being on the bench anyway) who took the 80th minute spot kick, to complete his hat trick, which he duly did. Add in the goal at Bournemouth and the goal at Torquay, and that makes the five.

Next up on Saturday is a visit to Watford, so obviously there are high hopes of a good performance there, though in fact a "strong Charlton XI" according to CAFC, has been playing at Aldershot this evening, but no details as yet.

And although not too much ought to be made of pre-season friendlies, I was nonetheless heartened to note that the dreaded Pussy Black Cats, Charlton's first league opponents at the preposterously-named Stadium of Light in just over a fortnight's time, lost 1-0 at Hull this evening.