Have the Wheels Come Off?

Charlton 1 Plymouth Argyle 2 // Charlton 0 QPR 1

An organisation I used to work for was once described by someone in my hearing as having a propensity to jump on a bandwagon just when the wheels are coming off it. This was when it was considering outsourcing all the more useful sections of the organisation to other, less reliable organisations, and thus creating more space for more people in suits to sit about having meetings all over the place, and producing reams of unintelligible mumbo jumbo about things that don't matter. Anyway, in the end even they were persuaded that outsourcing doesn't work properly, and abandoned the rest of the scheme.

Thus it is that I am already familiar with the metaphor of wheels coming off, which was used by one of the correspondents on The Inspector's (I think) page after the débâcle against Plymouth on Tuesday. This correspondent in fact said that just because Charlton had lost twice in four days, that was no reason to suppose that the wheels had come off, and that there was a long way to go.

Admittedly, at that stage, people were saying that the defeat against Wolves and then the Plymouth result were tactical failures rather than being symptomatic of anything being seriously wrong, although when I read somewhere (and I genuinely do not remember where) that Charlton would have to be sure they beat QPR in order to save Pards's job, I did begin to wonder whether all the managerial sacking that has been going on in London these past weeks wasn't getting to people.

As I said last time, Wolves won because Mick McCarthy had a stratagem, and it worked. Ian Holloway of Plymouth also had one, and that worked too, though Premiership reject referee (if they're not good enough, then they should just be dismissed, not inflicted on the other leagues) Mr "Rob" Styles of Waterlooville (did he mis-read the team sheets, and think it was Portsmouth in SE7 the other night?) did help them rather a lot.
For example, Charlton striker Svetoslav Todorov was so badly damaged after being attacked by a Plymouth player that he is out for the rest of the season, and as he is on a one-year deal, will probably not play for Charlton again. "Rob" waved play on at that point.

However, moving on to yesterday, judging from the reports I have seen and the reactions of the bloggers whom I link to (see helpful links, at right), this time there is almost nothing that can give Charlton supporters any comfort, and no one is taking any. Charlton were awful; clueless, directionless, and if QPR had had more go about them it could have been 3-0 or 4-0 quite easily. The Sporting Life is fair and unbiased, while the Kent Messenger supports Charlton but even they can't find much to say that is positive.

My QPR-supporting quiz team-mate Mush (who rang and asked me if I wanted to go with him to find a pub showing the game yesterday - thank goodness I couldn't accept) will be pleased, as his team seem to be turning their poor start to the season round, but on the other side of London, Charlton have had to leave the fast lane of the motorway that was taking them back to the Premiership at first shot, as the wheels come off, and sit on the hard shoulder and wait for help to arrive. Or can they fix the wheels back on? Time will tell. And just because loads of London managers are being fired doesn't mean that Pards's time is up yet, surely? (He says that this nightmare eight days is just a blip, but then he would, wouldn't he?) I've always had a lot of respect for that nice Mr. Jol, though, even if he does rather resemble a rather dour conserje who we often see having drinks in the bar we go to after work.

Finally, for those of you who like to follow the doings of the quiz team, we have been through a relatively indifferent run in these past two or three weeks. Certainly whenever Edu arrives late and cannot join his team as they are full, and thus joins the Old Farts, there is no stopping them. We have also been hampered by the fact that Antony has been quiz master a couple of times, and whether it is that he avoids giving us questions that suit us, in order not to incur criticisms of favouritism, or, a view which I incline to, that he asks questions of the type that he likes to answer, and of course isn't actually in our team when they need to be answered, the net result is that we tend not to win.

I am hopeful of tomorrow, however, as Antony will be sitting with us, and Edu will be asking the questions, or some of them, anyway. And next week, Lesley and me, and it'll be Bonfire Night too, though I doubt whether our beloved landlady would be keen on me opening the proceedings by burning an effigy of Rob Styles on an improvised bonfire, much though I'd like to.