Middlesbrough 0 Charlton 3
I had been a little apprehensive about this one , although my regular readers will know that I am apprehensive about all Charlton's games, as they have been so utterly unpredictable these last two years - I mean, last season they did the double over both Tottenham and Everton, yet got hammered 1-4 at home by West Brom, and there were numerous other strange results, like not beating Liverpool as they quite often do.
But after the flying start to the season, there were all kinds of factors contributing to my state of anxiety. First, because of Liverpool losing to whoever it was in the Champions' League, they weren't available to come to the Valley as programmed in the fixture list, and lose to Charlton, which left Charlton short of match practice, apart from anything else. Then Middlesbrough, fancied by a lot of pundits (though that isn't really saying all that much), recovered from their very poor start to the season and thumped Birmingham City 3-0 at Saint Andrew's.
So the pundits, and the geezers who fix the odds at Hills and Ladbrokes and the like, decided that today's game was a home banker. Middlesbrough had found the form that everyone claimed they were going to have all along, and Charlton hadn't played for a whole week, and yes, they had a 100 per cent record, but well, that was only because their first two games had been against promoted clubs.
The Sky commentator, according to one correspondent, was quite incapable of seeing Charlton as a good team, a bit like a friend of mine here in Madrid, and a Londoner to boot, and an ex-triallist with QPR, for heaven's sake, who, when I mentioned Charlton's game against Manchester United a few months ago, politely asked me why such a fixture was taking place, as Charlton were surely a second or even third division side, and this during Charlton's fifth consecutive season in the Premiership, proving that an awful lot of people simply have blind spots, and see what they would like to see, rather than what is really there. (I bet Mark still thinks that those well-known 'big' clubs, Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday, are still carrying the flag for Yorkshire in the Premiership, whereas in reality Yorkshire has no Premiership sides at all, unless you count Middlesbrough, which used to be in Yorkshire when I was a lad). Thus the Sky commentator went through all kinds of mental contortions to explain what he found it almost impossible to accept, i.e. Charlton refusing to act out the script he had ordained for them, and rolling over to lose by about the same score as they in fact won by. He said that Boateng was "out of position" when the first goal was scored (aren't most defenders when this happens?); that Charlton were "just hanging on", when 80 minutes had gone by and the score was still 0-1 (does that mean he was irritated that Charlton were quite properly deploying their defence (in fact Middlesbrough were not attacking all that much) and thus making it hard for him to stick with his original script?) and then Charlton's second and third goals were ascribed to Middesbrough's having worked very hard in midweek to beat Birmingham, and now being tired.
In fact Charlton absolutely walked it. The 3-0 final scoreline is an accurate reflection of the play and of Charlton's superiority. Dennis Rommedahl, architect of Denmark's defeat of the England side ten days ago, hit the first after 38 minutes. Charlton did relax a little after this, but Middlesbrough were unable to take any advantage; by the 80th minute, as I have said, the Sky commentator was scornfully accusing Charlton of 'hanging on', (meaning that they should have sportingly let Middlesbrough score and give neutral Sky viewers a bit of a thrill, I suppose). Then Chris Perry's 81st minute goal made it 0-2. The Sky guy still refused to acknowledge Charlton's evident superiority, even when Darren Bent again got his name on the scoresheet in the dying minute, just like at Sunderland, when he latched on to a clearance from substitute Bryan Hughes and made it 3-0 to Charlton. It was his fourth goal of the Premiership season.
The Middlesbrough manager Steve McLaren said afterwards that his side were awful, and not a patch on what they had been like against Birmingham, but then of course, they hadn't been playing Birmingham, had they?
So here are Charlton with not just an unbeaten record, as one football web page stated, but a hundred per cent record, three wins; the fact that there are teams above them is because they have played four times and Charlton only three, and that is not Charlton's fault, but Liverpool's, or whoever runs the thing they are spending far too much time on at the moment. They even played another game on Friday night, and thus deprived Arsenal of their fixture this weekend. Is there no end to these meaningless competitions? As a result the Premiership table will never be an accurate reflection of what is going on, and if Liverpool find themselves in the bottom half of the table because they haven't played enough games, it will sap their confidence, as this type of thing always does. At least Charlton are third, despite being a game short on the top two.
The picture above shows Stephan Andersen, by way of a change from Darren Bent, making one of the very few saves that were required of him this afternoon, and a good account of the game can be found here.
As for other matters, I have been writing a journal of my recent visit to England and have neglected the blog somewhat, but something more like normality is just around the corner, I hope.