I’m sure even Iain Dowie would admit that the start to his Charlton Athletic career wasn’t exactly what he would have wanted (and frankly who would want a league start that brought only two victories from twelve games?) but to see the former Oldham and Crystal Palace boss removed from his post at this early stage of the season is plainly ridiculous.

Charlton aren’t looking good but I’m quite sure that the workaholic Dowie has been doing everything in his power to set things right and it certainly won’t have been down to lack of effort that his side aren’t performing well.

The simple fact of the matter is that the players Charlton already had before Dowie arrived, and the ones he’s signed, just aren’t very good. Darren Bent and possibly Luke Young are really the only players that could seriously interest other Premiership managers and with a ragtag band of journeymen and has-beens it was always going to be a struggle to do anything of note with Charlton this season.

Detractors point to the fact that Dowie spent ?10m on new players during the transfer window but his hands were tied behind his back with regards the players that he could seriously attract. Andy Reid was a pie eating misfit at Spurs, Djimi Traore is probably the worst player to ever claim a Champion’s League winner’s medal and “Fat Eddie Murphy” Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is well past his sell-by date but they all have Premiership experience and really are the very best that Charlton can expect to attract in this day and age.

With that in mind the knee jerk reaction to sack the manager in mid-November becomes even more disgusting. When Dowie’s former boss and recent nemesis Simon Jordan speaks out on his behalf you start to get even more of a feeling that the Charlton board have made a huge blunder. I hope Charlton fans don’t get their hopes up about getting a quality manager in as a replacement either - word is that Graeme Souness has already been sniffing around.

From bad to worse at The Valley….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 8:17 am and is filed under Charlton Athletic. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.