I approached the home game v Sheffield Wednesday expecting us to lose. I was right.

That says it all really. We've bought badly, used decent players in a way that completely negates their qualities (particularly Ashton but that also applies to Huckerby this season, as well as Helveg, Bentley and Jonson last season), displayed a lack of invention and guile ever since the Fulham game, and the players obviously completely lack belief in the manager. It's a complete farce.

Intelligent, adventurous signings this summer would have seen us mount a genuine challenge to go back up, at least through the play-offs if not automatically. A failed play-off would at least have kept up some momentum, even if we did lose Ashton and one or two others. Instead, the best we can hope for this season is a mid-table finish, and another relegation is a distinct possibility.

I believe that Worthington introduced a negative atmosphere into the club as soon as we went up - I don't know how responsible the board are for that. Remember the interview in The Guardian, when Worthy was asked what we'd need to stay up, and he 'joked', "About ?35 million".
Or the tactics against Palace on the first day.

Or the Everton game, when he said publicly after we lost that at 2-2, he thought we'd lose.

Or (most importantly) the signings, which - Helveg, Bentley and perhaps Jonson apart - looked like signings for a promotion campaign. We were down before we kicked a ball, and it still astonishes me that we came so close to staying up.

And so that atmosphere has been carried into this season, regardless of the Ins and Outs over the summer. Because Worthington has continued to be negative, both tactically and in the transfer market. Hughes, Thorne, Jarrett, Louis-Jean - these signings betray no invention or ambition at all - they have 'consolidation' written all over them. As did Colin and Marney, although I held out a little more hope for them before I saw them play. Lisbie was a total farce - he's a standing joke at Charlton.

Why the board has not acted at any point is completely beyond me - the players clearly expect to lose, they know the squad isn't good enough, the fans expect to lose, and it seems Worthy isn't too surprised by a defeat these days, either. If a new man had been appointed by now, he could have assessed the squad and scoured the country, or the world, for new players to sign in January.

As it stands, Worthington cannot be trusted with any money - at all - and yet we cannot get through the transfer window without making major structural improvements to the squad. Necessary improvements that, I imagine, Nigel doesn't even believe are needed. Which is a crying shame, because the overhaul of the squad he performed in 2001 was very well judged, and until this year (really it was the signing of Graham Stuart that first raised alarm bells for me) his record on the transfer market really wasn't too bad.

Now we're looking at a post-January situation where a bad team with 3 or 4 good players just becomes a Bad Team. With no hope of moving forward in several years, given how poor our Academy has been. And if Worthington had done the decent thing after Fulham - or if the Board had after any of the embarrassing surrenders this season - wouldn't be the case. And it really needn't have been the case. And that's what makes me so angry.

Posted By: Ottosson Foxtrot on December 6th 2005 at 00:48:07

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