Charlton Corner - The Parky Debate

I have never really been one for sharing my every waking thought with the world. The idea of Twitter, and telling a hundred different followers, 98 of whom you have never met, that you are off to the store to buy mushrooms because you forgot them during your weekly shop not once set my heart racing. But something happened on Saturday that ignited a fire within me and drove me to act.

Charlton lost 4-0. On the face of it, that isn't such a big deal. I have seen far worse results, the Leeds demolition springs to mind, but on this Saturday a nagging feeling that had been festering away beneath the surface finally erupted into a volcano of disgust.

Those who know me are all aware that I have never been a big fan of Phil Parkinson. In my mind he failed to earn his job at Charlton and then continued down the same path to complete failure. Under Curbishley we had a fighting spirit, when Pardew took over, that spirit returned. That was lacking Saturday, it has been lacking every day since Parkinson took over.

I doubt his credentials as a motivator and a tactician. It was clear from the start that tactically we were in a weaker position than Brighton, the came to frustrate us and hit us on the break and that plan worked out a treat. I am a huge admirer of Christian Dailly but he is 36 and he lacks the pace he used to have. Next to him was Gary Doherty, who I feel is competing with Llera for worst centre back since Carl Tiler, who turns and moves as fast as a cruise liner. The Seagulls realised this within the first 10 minutes and began to exploit it.

Balls were played into the right hand corner and their speedy number 7 beat our defenders to the ball every time. A better manager would have changed something, Martin loves to get forward and cut inside so he was always unlikely to get back in time to help against a counter. The best option would have been to switch Doherty and Fortune. Fortune isn't as fast as he used to be but he is certainly faster the Doherty and that extra pace would have been of far greater use on the right hand side of our defence.

Next came the short corners, everyone who watches football knows how dangerous set pieces are, and you have to hope we work on them in training during the week. So how they could use the same trick twice in a matter of minutes and punish us with a goal is unforgivable. Parkinson seems to love the inexplicable idea of bringing everyone back into the penalty area to defend corners so a lack of players to defend the corner was not the reason. Also, if you bring everyone back, as soon as the ball goes out of the penalty area you have to push out, and yet Brighton were able to pass the ball to the edge of our area, take a touch and chip it back in, without anyone closing down. We then failed to clear that chip leading directly to the goal.

My final tactical grip for this post relates to our attacking options. Parkinson clearly had his heart set on bringing in Paul Benson, for me the jury is still out on whether or not this was a good decision, but now that he has him he has not adapted his tactics to suit his game. I spoke to someone who saw him at D&R, and they said that if you play him the ball in the box he will find the back of the net but instead PP decides to use him as a targetman to lay the ball off to another striker, this time Abbott who is also a targetman. We were never going to break through their defence with two strikers who lacked pace.

In all his appearances this season Joe Anyinsah has looked dangerous. He has the pace that defenders at this level hate. We can use that pace to force centre backs to sit deeper in their own half thus giving Benson a chance to get the ball in and around the area. If they squeeze up, Benson can flick it on for Anyinsah to chase. It won't work every time, but it gives us a different dimension. Right now our plan of knock it long to the strikers who then move it to the wingers to cross has clearly been blunted, and with the loss of Kyel Reid, it could become totally useless. We need some fresh ideas and I think it is time for a new manager to bring in those ideas.

Parkinson's defenders will argue that we can't afford to get rid of him and in any case who would replace him? Well my retort is, how can we afford not to replace him? He is leading us to the 2nd relegation of his tenure, do they really think that this would be the cheaper option? And in response to their second point, there are a number of options available to us. When Parkinson was first appointed I argued that I wanted a young up and coming manager named Paul Tisdale to take over. For those of you who are unaware of who Paul is, he is the man leading Exeter City to a possible promotion push to the Championship, something Parkinson has failed to do with a far stronger team. I doubt we could attract Paul now but there are some other options available.

On the LMA official website there is a list of managers out of work, some potential options could be:

Jim Magilton - Although, he may not be the most savoury of characters, he built competitive teams, and at Charlton he shouldn't have to deal with any big ego's.

Lawrie Sanchez - He has a record of taking poor teams and making them over-achieve

Paulo Sousa - Possibly too expensive, but with the Leicester City pay off maybe he would agree to a pay-cut with a significant increase following promotion.