No News Today

Charlton 0 Chelsea 1


Seats of the type reputed to be available for the Watford game

So, there we are, Charlton did not manage to get anything out of Saturday's encounter with Chelsea, and yet I, and the other Charlton bloggers and commentators, are not unduly depressed. And Pards isn't, either, as in his opinion Charlton gave a very good account of themselves, and in fact even independent accounts indicate that Charlton could have managed a draw.

So Charlton fans have nothing much to moan about, and (might it be as a result of Frankie and me warning about him?) honorary Bolton Wanderer and great personal Chum of Big Sam himself, referee Mike Halsey, for once did nothing against our interests. All the same, I still think that if referees have links with a football club, then they should not be involved in matches in their club's division, so Mr Halsey to League One, I say. But then maybe he supports Oldham, too, or possibly hates them...

I followed the match using Livescore, from around half-time, when 0-1 didn't sound too bad, and right up to the end there was hope that the score might turn to 1-1, but as I say, it was not to be on this occasion, but it was a reasonably hopeful performance, especially, as I said last time, as Darren Bent is still out, and Andy Reid as well.

As on most days, I also checked in with the BBC news and sports pages, and I fell to ruminating about this phenomenon called news. I was struck by a tag or banner running across the BBC main news pages, which told me that I could download something called The Best of the Ten o' Clock News.

Now I cannot imagine why anyone in their right mind would even want to watch the Ten o' Clock News, with its insufferable air of being indispensable, and its smug assumption that everyone agrees with its biased views, and its awful news readers and reporters who, whatever else they might know how to do, have never been taught to read aloud properly - to emphasise the important words and gloss over articles and pronouns - in the first place. And have they been specifically instructed to twist their lips and sound as though they are going to throw up every time they have to mention the President of the United States? It isn't that I have a high opinion of this man, either, but I do want the BBC to be totally impartial in what it says and how it says it, or it will lose its world-wide reputation for telling the truth - well I think that disappeared some time ago. And as for needing to download the best of it, do they think that, like other "best of" titles (Ken Dodd; Max Bygraves etc.) we might want to keep them and treasure them for ever and ever? Not very likely.

But news is, now, everywhere. And of course the days when, if nothing much had happened, the newsreader would simply say that there would be no news today, are but a folk memory. As with so many things nowadays, you don't evaluate your commodity and then look for a channel to get it across to people. Now there are loads of channels, and things have to be found to fill them, newsworthy or not.

This leads to increasingly ridiculous headlines. The BBC led on a story that experts had announced that the avian flu scare would have an adverse effect on sales of chicken. Well yes, most people could have worked that one out. There was a headline about José Mourinho, too. It said he was pleased that Chelsea had beaten Charlton. But he is the Chelsea manager; we imagine he is pleased, and we certainly don't need to be reminded of it, and is it really of any interest to anyone who is not actually living with him whether he is pleased or not?

Checking in a bit later with the League One page (looking for a home for Mr Halsey) I read that the cheery-looking manager of Cheltenham Town was pleased, for his side had won too, and, said the report, their promotion hopes had been given a boost. Now any side playing in a league will have their promotion hopes boosted to some extent by winning, as they will have three more points than they had before. But all the same, when I checked, I found that this win had hoisted Cheltenham to 21st position. It was four hours later before anyone got round to changing the headline to something about allaying their relegation fears.

And now this morning, after the England game, which I watched with some friends in an almost deserted, uninterested Spanish bar, comes the earth-shattering tidings that Steve MacLaren isn't too pleased. Well, like Charlton v Chelsea, it was only 0-1; no need to get too dejected yet, is there? Or maybe this is different.

But whatever the story, you can be sure that the BBC will be there, telling us the obvious, and also what people are feeling about it. And I regret to report that they are not alone. Logging on to the CAFC official page earlier, I saw that the second most important story of the day is that seats are on sale for Charlton's game at Watford in three weeks or so. The story was accompanied by a fine picture of... some seats, possibly, as they are bright yellow, the very ones on offer up at Vicarage Road. So as there were no nice pics of any Charlton squad members performing well against Chelsea, I thought I'd share them with you.