Bristol City 0 Charlton 1
Charlton 3 Cardiff City 0
Preston 0 Charlton 2
My title this morning, as I once more take up my pen keyboard and resume blogging, after a 3-week lay-off occasioned by the Internationals, and overpressure of work, is taken from a most interesting book which is going the rounds at the moment. Black Swan is by the Lebanese-born Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is a large thick volume, and I am taking it slowly, and looking forward to enjoying it for a few more weeks yet, but although I am only somewhere round about Chapter 3, the main theme is emerging, and it is one that seems to have an awful lot of relevance for football, as well as more earth-shattering events like 9/11, which Professor Taleb uses as a starting-point for outlining his theories.
Professor Taleb
The great and good Alan Pardew, after Charlton lost to QPR, thus registering their third defeat in eight days, said it was just a blip. I remarked at the time that, while hoping and trusting, even, that he was right, he had to say it anyway. He wasn't going to come out and say the wheels had come off Charlton's season already.
And now, a month later, with the win at Southampton, and the three listed above (all of them without conceding a single goal, you will notice) under their belts, the Charlton roller coaster, with 'Premiership' on the destination indicators, is back at full-tilt, so maybe it was a blip, and maybe there won't be any more.
Here, and in honour of those clean sheets, one should praise Nicky Weaver, and here is a picture of him in action against Preston the other day, where he was particularly outstanding, apparently.
Nicky foils the Lilywhites' forwards
However, coming back to Professor Taleb and his theory, I noticed many years ago that certain books can take over one's life to a large extent during the time one is reading them, and especially if they are long books, or if it is taking a time to get through them for whatever reason. I remember spending a nine-day period with an Iris Murdoch novel (The Sacred and Profane Love Machine) when she was all the rage, in the late seventies, and viewing all my friendships and other relationship patterns through a kind of strange Murdochian prism: everyone had mysterious ulterior motives; no one did anything for the obviously apparent reason. Another time, when spending a month with Our Mutual Friend, a number of Victorian villains suddenly appeared in my circle, only to fade away, with one notable exception, when I'd finished it.
And so it is with Professor Taleb. His theory, at least so far, is that no one can predict events from what has gone before. He argues that 9/11 could not have been prevented, as even though the perpetrators made little secret of what they were up to, with their flying lessons and so on, no one could have believed it, and thus any suggestion pointing to the truth would have been rejected out of hand, and thus nothing would be done about it. Events like this he calls Black Swans, as no one would predict the existence of a black swan based on the visual evidence of swans that one had experienced hitherto. For those still unconvinced, he trots (sorry) out the turkey theory. A turkey, being fattened up over 1000 days for the Christmas market, is kept in comfortable surroundings and given good food by a friendly human being for 999 days. On the thousandth day, the turkey contentedly observes the approach of its benefactor, but this time the benefactor is not carrying food. The true facts behind all the kindness are about to be revealed to the hapless bird.
As I say, this is about as far as I am into the book, and I look forward to more revelations as I go on. But, as with Iris Murdoch and Charles Dickens, the ambience of book is with me quite a lot, and I find myself applying the theory to a number of other matters, and especially the world of football. Our pools syndicate at the Centre suffers a great deal from the idea that just because Real Madrid are a good team of world renown, then they are a safe bet for banker away wins right through the season. This and similar thinking is applied to most of the other predictions, except the Second Division fixtures, which most people claim to have little knowledge about. But of course you are on a loser no matter what. The Spanish pools are state-run, and all you have to do is forecast the results, 1, 2 or x, of 15 matches: all the First Division ones and a handful of key Second Division games, and that's all. If form predictions prevail, there are lots of winners collecting a couple of euros. And yet people persist in trying to get the thing right, using their knowledge of what has gone before.
I was bemoaning this to one of my fellow-syndicate members last evening, but he said it was incautious to move off the banker win syndrome where Barcelona and Madrid are concerned, yet if all we get when this turns out right (and it not infrequently doesn't) is €20 to split between the twelve of us, then I think we need a rethink.
So what are we now to make of Charlton's four-match winning streak, as they prepare for tonight's home game against Sheffield United, fellow relegation strugglers last season? Obviously, to expect it to continue indefinitely is to expect too much. And yet form would indicate that with Charlton on a roll, as they say, and Sheffield United, not, as expected, running away with the division, far from it, a home banker is the only prediction.
Well obviously I hope I am wrong, but tonight's game is making me feel slightly uneasy. The away games in Lancashire jinx seems to have gone away after Preston, but what about being at home to sides from Yorkshire / North Lincolnshire? Barnsley... Scunthorpe...
But maybe it is not the season for black swans in SE7. Here's hoping.
Afterword
As it has been a while since I wrote, there are other matters (the quiz team's exploits; the rise and rise of Forest Green; managerial changes at Burnley) which I hope to write about 'ere long. But Charlton's fixture list tends to control the frequency of my postings, for the most part. And time, and overpressure of work.