Any kind of balls...

Tuesday 14^th November

Those who put money on the new Charlton manager to be the first Premiership one to go cashed in today. Iain Dowie, at Palace for the previous three seasons, the last of which saw them soundly beaten 3-0 at home in the first leg of the play-off semis. So he took them up, came back down and stayed back down. Charlton, propping up Watford and everyone else again, have a squad that should do better.

Mike Newell, our “rivals’” manager, opened his mouth on Saturday after Luton lost 3-2 at home to QPR (whom my dad, on the way to Loftus Road in 1981, said he thought were our real rivals, the logic being that we were the geographically closest club to Luton but QPR were closer to us). Luton’s manager went on a rant taking the “political correctness gone mad” line because the assistant referee who made a decision on a corner that he didn’t agree with and from which QPR scored, was female. Paraphrasing, he said that women were worse than incapable (?).

Even with Charlton’s terrible start, it seems harsh if unsurprising that Dowie has gone. Plenty of other managers have already gone in other divisions. There is too much money involved in the Premiership, especially with next season’s increased TV receipts, for changes not to be made. The managers are sufficiently recompensed for the pressure. A short while out and he’ll be back, mediocre-to-good again, at another Championship club. Glenn Hoddle, meanwhile, who failed to get Wolves into the play-offs in a season and a half, is favourite to take over? These guys on the merry-go-round have got balls. None of them is worse than incapable.

It is probably the fact that he also criticised his chairman in stark terms that means Mike Newell will lose his job this week, but it should be for his idiotically discriminatory remarks. He rightly couldn’t get away with saying it about any other group, not since Tony Blair stuck the boot in on Hoddle’s unfalsifiable “disability and karma” hypothesis when he was managing England. Football does not exist exempt from the rules of society. There are many, like Newell, who believe and encourage the belief that it should.