Are you watching?

Watford v Charlton Athletic

Saturday 19^th January

The news that Calum Davenport had come in on loan from West Ham was insufficient to quell doubts about our future after the week that saw Watford reject a four-and-a-half million pound bid for Marlon King, Aidy Boothroyd saying “We don’t need to sell”, before accepting a five-million pound bid, with the manager now saying “We are a selling club”.

It is the lack of ambition that is disturbing. We have sold “The King of Vicarage Road” to Fulham, currently second bottom of the Premiership with exactly the same number of points (15) that we had at the same stage (23 games) last season. Why would he want to go there? Ten or fifteen thousand more a week is the answer. Why would we want to sell him? Do we need the money? What happened to the ambition the club has been talking about? If promotion is worth £60 million, why wouldn’t we look at investing for that?

As we walked down Hagden Lane, Joss created a new version of an old favourite: “Ee, i, ee, i, ee, i, oh, down the football league we go. When we get relegation, this is what we sing, we sold Marlon, we sold Marlon, we sold Marlon King.” We got in with a few minutes to spare and sat a few rows back to stay out of the drizzle. Nathan Ellington, in the starting line-up, got a big round of applause as did the new loanee defender.

Davenport started well and looked a far better player than Matt Jackson but did make a small mistake in the middle of the first half. Twenty minutes later, though, he was stretchered from their six-yard box after a four-man collision. We clapped the prostrate figure off and Adrian Mariappa came on, necessitating a change around at the back. Four minutes of stoppage time saw Charlton go nearest to scoring but it was goalless at half-time.

Tommy Smith was our man of the match, running at and passing his man time after time but Damien Francis had looked closest to scoring in the first half. In the second, he dummied a Darius Henderson ball, allowing the Duke to pass the ball into the net in front of us. Things might just be OK after all. The back row sang “Are you watching Marlon King?” and “Fulham are going down” and even added the line “We hate Marlon King” to the “ee, i,” song, which, considering the number of members of staff leaving the club recently, was a bit harsh.

But it was not to be three points. Richard Lee, who’d already made one great stop and made another with five minutes to go, somehow mistimed a dive and allowed the ball to bounce through him and in for a Charlton point. They even threatened to score again but I think honours-even was a fair result.