Carlisle & Other Things

It is surprising how people view the same event in completely different ways. Monday's fare was toe curlingly dull in the extreme. Following on from two games where the opposition managers both felt with some justification, that their teams should have won, Charlton should have buried Carlisle; damn right we should have. Were we ever going to?, of course not. This is Charlton after all. At this stage of the season, nobody does pretty any more, and if a seven point haul from an available nine on offer is the result, then I for one am not going to complain about it. Oh, and Bailey got an enforced rest over most of those three games, something that was quite frankly not before time. Sodje Senior was immense yesterday, and another good performance from Mooney, this time as provider deserves praise after the opprobrium he has received of late.

As for other things, the club are congratulating themselves on convincing 60% of the season ticket holding base to renew early. I suspect it will be a little higher come 5pm this afternoon, but now the club has a different issue to tackle, namely what of the near 40% who have not renewed at this time? As has been pointed out elsewhere, the club has now put themselves in a bit of a corner, as nothing more can happen with the absentees until the club's fate for next season has been decided. Simplistically, the missing 4,000 will fall into two broad categories; those that have no intention of renewing, and those that have chosen not to at this time for a myriad of reasons, ranging from budgetary to general dissatisfaction. I suspect, and hope that the latter category is carrying the majority, but the clubs actions now will determine whether the former category gets bigger.

Achievement on the pitch will have an impact, there is little doubt about that, and the Board obviously has no control over that, but there is a secondary elephant trap that the club does have the power to do something about, namely seat allocation. I would strongly urge the club to hold off allocating seats to those who renewed early, where the seat in question is being held by a current season ticket holder, who has not yet renewed. It seems unreasonable that somebody who has budgeted for their season ticket to be paid for in the conventional season ticket buying window, should lose their seat because they are not able to change when they can afford to pay for it. Just a thought.