Next... Blackpool away

I'm not going, which is a disappointment as I would have loved to have done but I have a family commitment. The deal with my long suffering wife is that all events with family and friends come second to Charlton home games, including changing flights for a family holiday last year when the Spurs game was moved, but she has priority over away fixtures. Fair enough. How I managed to get her to marry me in the first place is, to this day, a mystery, I really don't want to push my luck too far.

So, I'm not going, but this is the sort of game that I was looking forward to (if that's the right expression) when we were relegated. I know that Blackpool away is not a glamour tie, and the ground is not Old Trafford, but it is a chance for us to breeze into town like the 'Big' club we are, take over the away end and play them off the park. I know, I know, the last statement is neither guaranteed or likely, but the rest is close to the truth.

Pardew's comments in the Watford program made me laugh out loud, and I applaud his efforts. We will never know what the effect of that request was as we might have sold 1,500 tickets either way, but I can't help just loving the things that man says (and writes). He always seems to say exactly what I'm thinking or what I, in retrospect, wish I had been thinking. That alone makes me think that I would follow him to the end of the earth if he asked me to. As discussed before I feel that he has slightly less steel (spitefulness) than he needs, but you can't have everything.

So Blackpool away. I have literally no idea what the score will be. We should win, but we should have won at Scunthorpe and Sheffield Wednesday. I think that we have our work cut out to make the top two now, and as none of the top five are playing each other again until 4th March I think we have to expect that anything less than winning tomorrow and next week will leave us out of the picture when Bristol City come to The Valley. Let's hope that that game, at least, is a six pointer.

I see that we are only three points above Plymouth and five above Hull and Burnley (who both have a game in hand), so even if the top two is beyond us we need to keep winning to secure sixth place as a minimum. Blackpool are not in a relegation scrap (luckily for us) so I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that we will win this one. We were so, so much better than them at The Valley and maybe the players will raise their game. They must now believe that anything less than a win and they could well find themselves facing another season of Blackpool away rather than Man Utd.

Come on you Rip Roaring, Goal Scoring Addicks!