Premiership History

West Ham United 3 Charlton 1


Just 3 minutes after the penalty, too

OK, the headline is misleading, for this is not going to be yet another doom and gloom piece about how Charlton simply aren't going to get any points out of any of their encounters this season, and will thus become part of the Premiership's, er, past.

Admittedly, losing at West Ham is dispiriting, as it is a fixture in which Charlton frequently get something, and of course next up, tomorrow night, it's Manchester United, which no one thinks Charlton will get anything out of at all; might as well rest the lads and put the youth team out then, I suppose.

And of course it is all a matter of perception: if you add the unknown quantity of the new manager, the indifferent performances in pre-season friendlies, the West Ham game, to the general perception of Charlton as a club who have unaccountably got themselves up in the Premiership, don't really belong there, and soon will be on their way back to the Fourth Division where they belong, then they will not be expected to win anything. And six years unbroken membership of the Premiership has not altered any of this, as far as the media is concerned, and it seems to have spread to the fans as well. (And of course there is my old friend Mark, a Londoner and one-time QPR triallist, who wondered last year why Charlton were playing Manchester United, it having not penetrated his consciousness that Charlton were a Premiership side at all).

But if Charlton are part of the Premiership, there is no reason to assume that they aren't going to get anything out if it; doom and gloom may well have their place in the scheme of things, but not yet.

As for Saturday, well Charlton took the lead, through a penalty, which the BBC Football page, never one to find anything nice to say about Charlton, described as 'dubious'. Other people have described West Ham's second and third goals as 'dubious' too, but not the BBC. And then not three minutes after Charlton's first penalty of the season (and there have been seasons when we're talking months, rather than minutes, for Charlton to be awarded penalties), new signing Djimi Traore rather spoilt his Charlton debut by being sent off. To be fair, the BBC pointed this out, and referred to 'ten-man Charlton' in the rest of the report, and even managed to imply that Carlton Cole's last-minute goal was somehow not as valid as other goals, especially with him being a substitute; do they think he still plays for us?

So wherefore, I hear you cry, the Premiership History referred to in the title? Just this: the report mentions that Teddy Sheringham came on during the second half. Now, as you might recall, the BBC football writer (or do they have more than one?) thinks that Teddy Sheringham is much more interesting than anything else; remember when West Ham played Charlton in the spring? The events of the game, the hopes and aspirations of the two sets of fans, were as nought compared to the fact that it was Sheringham's 40th birthday, and that therefore he should have been allowed to score a goal, Thomas Myhre meanly preventing this from happening.

Well this time it was pointed out that when he took the field, this made him "the oldest outfield player in Premiership history". Am I alone in regarding this apparent milestone as rather convoluted? Not the oldest player, as there have obviously been goalkeepers, and not in British league football history either (I remember seeing Stanley Matthews, aged maybe 48, playing for Stoke at Bury in a midweek evening match when I was a boy), just Premiership history. But the Premiership has only been running for thirteen or fourteen years, and in any case why should it have a separate set of statistics from everything that went before? It is this kind of thinking that prevents people from considering Charlton, Portsmouth, Fulham, etc. as proper Premiership clubs, but apart from that, it might well also lead to a lot more spurious soccer milestones (the youngest gay black number 17 to appear under floodlights since 1998, and the like).

So let's make Premiership History history, to paraphrase something or other.

I am off to Barcelona for a couple of days, and am uncertain of computer access, so whatever the outcome of Charlton v Manchester United tomorrow night, my silence should not be interpreted as anything more than that.