Bound to Lose?

Luton Town 3 Charlton 1

While enjoying a few beers with most of the quiz team and other colleagues last evening I was told by Mush, who is a QPR fan, that their game against West Brom is being televised on Sunday, and this led us to remark upon the fact that when second tier matches are being aired on TV, they nearly always seem to feature West Brom. In the end we decided that the people in charge of organising all this will have decided on what games to show some time ago, and that they must have thought that Albion would be front-runners; for otherwise the prime target for a televisual feast this weekend would surely be the visit of Charlton to Coventry.

Coventry led the table for the first two or three weeks, and are of course managed by Iain "Monica" Dowie, who proved such a disaster down at SE7; is it a year ago now? How time flies. And meanwhile Charlton, with that nice Mr Pardew at the helm, are now up in second place.

But not only is there the attraction of it being a top-of-the table (more or less) affair; and the drama of meeting up with our ex-manager who departed in ignominious circumstances. There is also the factor of the midweek League Cup results.

For, as I had rather feared, Luton proved too good for a half-reserves, half first-team squad, combo put out on Tuesday evening by Pards at Kenilworth Road, and then one night later, at Old Trafford, Coventry out-manoeuvred Manchester United and won 2-0; and 2-0 away victories at Old Trafford are very few and far-between, no matter who you are.

There used, in the old Sinclair Spectrum days, to be a game called Football Manager with which many of us used to while away the long winter evenings. Unlike present-day football simulations, where you are in charge of everything right down to the vegetarian options on the club canteen menus, this game merely required you to shuffle a basic squad around according to the exigencies of form and injury. And then a random score would be generated for your side, taking into account the form of the opposition. Then a randomised set of results for other matches, also randomised as the same teams seemed to meet each other rather a lot, would appear and a league table would be generated.

And there was one other factor which went into the loading of the computerised dice which gave you your score, and that was morale. If you were on the end of a fine sequence of wins, or had been awarded a lucky unexpected away win, then this factor was very high. Over a few months playing the game as Bury, trying to get out of Division 4 as it then was, I came to realise that this factor loaded the dice much more than anything else, so that if you were on a losing streak, it got worse and worse until a random win threw the levers into reverse again.

So as we come to this afternoon, if Football Manager criteria were going to apply, then Coventry would, as Frankie seems to think, be looking at something like a 3-1 win. But of course we ought all to know, and professional forecasters especially, that where two sides meet after one has won, and the other lost last time round, then a win for the winners does not occur 100% of the time, and bear in mind, also, that Charlton may well have 11 totally different players on the field at Highfield Road whatever the new stadium is called; after a Japanese watch, I think.

Obviously Coventry's early form, and the fact that old Monica (in today's Daily Mail he is claiming that he'd have kept Charlton up if he hadn't been fired) will be hoping to prove a point, may well help Frankie to win a few bob at the bookie's. Of course he did forecast a 3-1 score for the Luton game, but he was only right in as far as the numbers were correct; just ascribed to the wrong teams. So here's hoping for a similar reverse this afternoon then.

PS: Have just checked Wyn Grant's page, and he takes the line that pride goes before a fall, and also points out that it was Manchester United's youth team who lost to Coventry, anyway, and favours 1-1; I'd settle for that.