But beating Kiely proved beyond him and the Charlton keeper pulled off a fine block
Posted in General on 27. Sep, 2010
But beating Kiely proved beyond him and the Charlton keeper pulled off a fine block.Charlton’s reprieve did not last long. A classy move started with Hasselbaink and was carried on by Zenden and Ray Parlour. Jason Euell’s cute threaded pass enabled Johansson to round Mark Schwarzer and score at his leisure.Immediately Franck Queudrue produced a pass of similar quality, this one of at least 40 yards, to send Hasselbaink clear. Viduka was woefully slow on return from injury, while Hasselbaink fluffed the sort of second half chance he used to bury imperiously. Still, manager Steve McClaren was delighted: “Apparently we never win here, never score a goal, so we have made a major breakthrough.”The breakthrough was not long arriving, albeit fortuitously.
The young winger Stewart Downing’s low cross from the left brought a horribly miscued attempt at a clearance from Chris Perry. Two embarrassing defeats in four days have dented Charlton’s home reputation The sequence has not done much for their confidence, either. Here they were hardly ever in with a hope of extending their unbeaten Premiership run at The Valley against a classier Middlesbrough who nowadays are far removed from the sort of outfit who had managed just one goal in six previous trips to this part of South London. Charlton managed a lively few minutes before half-time, only to find Chris Riggott at his sharpest in tackling Jonatan Johansson as he prepared to pull the trigger from close range.The Finn gained revenge a minute into the second half, however. He directed the ball straight to Zenden, who gratefully let fly.
The ball struck Hasselbaink but would not have gone in had it not subsequently struck Talal El Karkouri, and wrong-footed Dean Kiely. But Curbishley still possesses no one in the squad of sufficient quality to replace the departed Paolo Di Canio and Claus Jensen.Huffing and puffing, charging and chasing; such tactics broke against the well-drilled rock that Middlesbrough have become at the back, while in midfield Charlton had no one to match the skilled work rate of Boudewijn Zenden or the commanding presence of George Boateng.It was fortunate for Charlton that Middlesbrough’s front pair of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Mark Viduka were out of sorts. If he happens to fall into conversation with the home manager this afternoon, he will be emphatically advised to carry on for as long as his legs will keep going.Allardyce’s bloodhound jowels looked more lugubrious than ever when he said: “Stopping playing is hugely depressing. No matter what you finish your life with, nothing can ever replace it I finished at 38 and it was horrible It’s a massive drug and it’s very difficult to let it go. Do it as long as you can.”Big Sam, as if anyone ever doubted it, is not the retiring type.. When you are still at this level, you know you’re going to lose more than you win, which is not easy for me to accept.”Even with five wins to two losses this season, he is still in the red overall (38 victories and 45 defeats), which puts the long-term struggle in context.
There have been signs of encouragement, however, in coming through successive games against Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal unbowed and sitting in the top four for the past couple of months. “We have been attacking more, but lost a bit of defensive solidity,” he said.Famed a couple of years ago for fielding a team without a British player, Bolton started with four last weekend, this season’s greatest successes emphasising that, as the manager puts it: “We scout for what we can afford.” Thus Rahdi Jaidi, the goalscoring central defender, was picked up from Tunisia’s African Nations’ Cup team by one of the club’s unsung heroes, the 69-year old scout Jack Chapman, whereas Gary Speed arrived for £750,000 from today’s opponents.At 35, Speed is still going strong in extending his record number of Premiership appearances and shows no sign of stopping, but Alan Shearer, far and away the competition’s leading goal-scorer, has indicated that he will retire at the end of the season. This opportunity capped a frantic spell of pressure from Birmingham and, deflated by the goal, and the blind alley runs of their strikers, the home side grew desperate. Darren Anderton was introduced and showed why he is no longer playing for Tottenham, though, to be fair, his efforts to encourage a shorter passing game were wasted in the surroundings.Gronkjaer blazed over, Yorke saw one effort saved and Kiraly, a Hungarian recruited from Hertha Berlin who played in an outfit that resembled an unwashed Gulag prisoner’s kit, stopped everything else. Consequently, the Indians fell victim to the BCCI’s internecine quarrels.Of course, Ganguly made it worse by getting overly agitated about the surface. He thus instilled an apprehension among his team mates, whereby they lost the match in the mind even before it began.It can be argued that an India bolstered by Harbhajan Singh and Irfan Pathan, not to mention Ganguly (who, it has to be conceded, inspired a fightback in the Second Test), may have given a more respectable account of themselves here. But chopping and changing opening combinations and a hasty reintroduction of a rusty Sachin Tendulkar who had not played any cricket for three months were, perhaps, inadvisable.There is no explanation, though, for the sustained inefficacy of the mainstays in the India middle order.