Charlton 0 Bolton 1
Kevin Nolan celebrating the latest of his many goals against Charlton.
"I'm never really surprised when they play well because of the manager and the club - they have just got it absolutely right."
Who do you suppose this quote is from? And talking about whom? Well, surprise surprise! It is none other than Mark Lawrenson, known to his friends (I imagine he must have one or two) as "Lawro", and who features in my new logo, taken with gracious permission from my co-Charlton supporter and blogger, Frankie Valley. And which club is he talking about? Why, Charlton, who else?
Regular readers will know that Frankie and I, and indeed most Portsmouth and Charlton fans, are annoyed with Lawrenson because in his BBC website column last week he hinted that the Portsmouth-Charlton fixture was so unappealing a prospect that people would prefer to go shopping with their mothers in law rather than watch it. (See last Sunday's post).
This caused Frankie to start the great movement whose logo now flies atop this page, but can the great Lawro already be aware of it? His words in yesterday's predictions seem to indicate that he might be.
The little bit of humble pie quoted above was followed by a cautious prediction of a 2-1 scoreline. But of course the man is a curse. Whenever he says Charlton will win, they lose. The last time he predicted a Charlton victory was against Tottenham, and Charlton duly went down 2-3 after being 2-0 up. Last week he tipped Portsmouth to win, for no other reason than that he thought they could do with three points.
Of course Lawro wasn't the only curse Charlton had to cope with yesterday. Charlton fans know that Bolton normally win encounters between our two clubs, and especially those which take place in SE7, and yesterday was no exception. None of the regular Charlton bloggers and commentators who indulge in forecasting (I prefer not to) dared hope for more than a draw, and they only said that because it is impossible to predict defeat for your team (try it next time you fill in a pools coupon). The Bolton curse has been around for quite a while; the Lawro one is a new one, and anyway only works if he says we'll win, so the Kick Him Out campaign either must go on or he must predict defeat for us every week.
Excuses? Darren Bent has flu; Jerome Thomas has a swollen foot. Bolton's goal came about as a result of an accidental deflection. Just one of those things. At least we didn't lose 4-1.
But after the highs of the past week, it was a bit of a come-down, make no mistake.
Quiz News
Thursday night for the quiz is taking time to bed in, though there was a reasonably appreciative crowd the other night, when our team, minus Antony, who was asking the questions, but with our frequent sub, Liz, won with a fine score of 157. Our main rivals were at full strength, but unable to interrupt our winning streak (can two wins in a row be classified as a streak? Perhaps not.) We still haven't seen Edu, though. And Fridays are still more of a struggle to get through than they used to be.