Colchester 3 Charlton 0

Last night was just a bad day at the office, but one that I have little confidence will get any better on Saturday. We are now playing teams in the top half of the league, and both the team and Parkinson need to show that they can be a force in this division. At the start of the month, I mentioned in a posting that I was unconvinced about Parkinson, and I was asked in return, what would convince me that he could do a job in the third division. After last nights result, I think it is worth posting my reply to that question.

How he conducts himself when the team starts to lose, or at a lower level, when they go behind during a match. Given the abject misery of last season, it wouldn't take too many losses on the spin, for fans to turn against him. The true test for me, is how he reacts in the above scenarios. Whether he is able to motivate a losing team, and what tactics he deploys to achieve a turnaround, will indicate to me, whether he is a good manager at this level, or not. Although not of his creation, he did not manage that last season, although I am happy to concede that we were playing better football towards the end of the last campaign. His conduct thus far has gone a long way to repairing damaged faith, but I still have lingering doubts, as to whether he possesses the wherewithal to dig the team out of a hole. In fairness to him, he hasn't had that opportunity yet, although he did manage to almost single handedly create that situation during the Wycombe game by switching to 4-4-2 for no apparent reason. That caused the team to take on pressure that wasn't present until that point. There was no further input from the bench to alleviate that pressure, and thus I still have my doubts.