Over Confidence?

Charlton 2 Leicester 0

Luke Varney in action. He got his first goal for the club against Leicester

The usual Charlton bloggers are well content with this result, which takes Charlton to second place in the table, just tucked nicely in behind Watford. Yet there was a general feeling that there was a danger of them getting too confident. Why, people were saying, did Charlton just sit on the 2-0 lead acquired early on in the game? Is this conviction of superiority a good thing?

Usually it is not, and yet it appears that Charlton were truly superior in all departments. There was even a proper report in the Guardian about it, and this pretty well said as much.

As I write, Charlton are getting ready to play at Luton in the Carling Cup. Pards is thought to be ringing a lot of changes to rest important players, and there are players coming back from injury, Yassin Moutaoukil for example, who are dying for a game, so Pards will have been spoiled for choice. Confidence is not in short supply.

And yet. While in the UK, I actually saw Luton play. Amazing but true. I was staying, as so often, at the home of my dear friends Harry and Liz, who actually live in Tranmere, a real location (so many people think it is just the name of the club and not a place at all), a district of Birkenhead. They live so close to the ground that bits of floodlight pylon can be seen from some of the upstairs windows, and it takes about 3 minutes to walk from their door to the turnstiles. Richard, all-round decent chap and married to my friends' daughter, but a friend of mine too as they have stayed with me in Madrid, is a Tranmere supporter and when he asked if I'd like to go with him, I accepted.

Now Luton looked good; they had Chris Perry at the back anyway, and were 1-0 up after 5 minutes, a lead they kept till the 83rd, when Tranmere equalised; and then 3 minutes after that Tranmere were looking at an unexpected win as they went 2-1 up. Luton reacted, but there were too few minutes left for them to do anything, and that was that. And it just goes to show the vagaries of football fixtures and pairings, for even Richard, through his joyful grins, said, without any prompting from me, that Luton had been a shade unlucky. So we'll see. Of course people are saying that Pards and the boys really have to concentrate on getting back up, but I don't know. They have got, a trifle fortunately, this far in the competition, and it would be a shame tamely to let things falter now.

I flew back to Madrid on the new (started in late February) EasyJet flight from Edinburgh, as the summer ends and life returns to its usual routines, and I have been wondering, too, whether we weren't too confident at last night's quiz. We were almost at full strength again, and apparently had not done well the previous week when Antony and I were both away. Antony was still away last night, but as Mush and I teased out a couple of slightly elusive answers, I suddenly did feel very confident. Sometimes you get the feeling that you can't lose, that you are going to win no matter what, and I did have that feeling last night, and we did indeed win by 119 to the Old Farts' 106 (was it, David? Can't exactly recall). And the other teams (3 of them) came in at just under 100.

But was this over-confidence, or just confidence? And where do you draw the line between the two?