Relegation in 1998-99 brought Charlton back down to earth and Division One with a painful bump. A promising start was made to their first season in the Premiership, with 0-0 draws at Newcastle and Arsenal sandwiching the 5-0 drubbing of Southampton at The Valley, but a gruelling battle to stay up ended in the 1-0 home defeat by Sheffield Wednesday in their last game, which ensured Southampton’s survival at their expense. The Wembley play-off euphoria already seemed like ancient history but promising seeds had been sown for a prompt return to the top flight.
Backed by his board, Alan Curbishley managed to keep his play-off squad together in 1999-00 and was rewarded with the Division One title after his side rampaged through most of their opposition. Led magnificently by skipper Mark Kinsella, his champions put together a club record-busting run of 12 consecutive victories, which began with a 2-1 home win over Crystal Palace on Boxing Day 1999 and concluded in 4-2 victory over Walsall at Bescot Stadium on March 7th 2000. The bubble was burst by relegation certainties Swindon Town, who beat the Addicks 1-0 four days later through a freakish goal conceded by the normally impeccable Dean Kiely. The scoring was led by Andy Hunt, whose twenty four league goals included successive hat-tricks at Norwich City and Stockport County, while an injury-hit Clive Mendonca contributed nine goals from 19 starts. After running out of steam, Charlton crawled painfully over the line but secured the title with a 1-1 draw at Blackburn Rovers on April 24th before closing the campaign in the crushing anti-climax of a 3-1 home defeat by Ipswich Town.
Having regained their Premiership status in spectacular style, the South East Londoners settled down to a period of consolidation. A respectable 9th place finish in 2000-01, featuring a league double over Chelsea and 1-0 conquests of Arsenal and Tottenham, was also illuminated by a nerve-tingling 3-3 draw with Manchester United at The Valley. Their 5-0 Boxing Day demolition by West Ham caused only brief concern, followed as it was four days later by the 4-1 rout of Manchester City at Maine Road. With Clive Mendonca already forced to retire through injury, Andy Hunt’s career was ended by illness on September 30th 2000, his 60th minute equaliser against Coventry City turning out to be his final touch in league football. The scoring slack was picked up Finnish international Jonatan Johansson, who notched 11 goals from 27 starts.
A confident manager by now, Curbishley guided the Addicks through a building process with 14th and 12th place finishes keeping them comfortably enough in the Premiership. The departure of both Mendonca and Hunt inevitably reduced their firepower and, in 2001-02, he was grateful for the 11-goal contribution made by Jason Euell to the team’s one-per-game total of 38 league goals. With 10 strikes in 2002-03, Euell again top scored as goals (45 this term) continued to be scarce. The outstanding goalkeeping of ever-present Dean Kiely received stout support from resolute centre back Richard Rufus and imperturbable left back Chris Powell, with elegant Dane Claus Jensen and precocious local boy Scott Parker supplying artistry in midfield. The surprise arrival of Italian firebrand Paolo DiCanio in 2003 added glamour as well as a guarantee of unaccustomed headlines during his brief, rumbustious involvement.
In 2003-04, the Addicks finished in 7th position, their highest top flight position since 1953-54. Despite struggling nobly against superior financial odds, however, Curbishley was beginning to receive inane criticism from a section of the Valley crowd, unable or unwilling to accept that Premiership finishes in the top half of the table represented over-achievement by any reasonable standards. Many of the “experts” had begun following the club since the second promotion in 1999-2000 and knew little about the hard times which preceded Charlton’s dramatic rise. No doubt wearied by the abuse he was apparently expected to endure, a financially secure Curbishley’s mutually agreed resignation at the end of the 2005-06 season signalled the onset of a disastrous slide.
Abruptly, the managerial stability, which had underpinned the club’s unlikely rise, was replaced by chaos at the top. Iain Dowie took over in May 2006, pursued through the door by subpoenas, lawsuits and colourful accusations of wrongdoing between himself and Michael Heseltine lookalike Simon Jordan, his ex-chairman at Crystal Palace. Dowie’s brief tenure ended mercifully in November 2006, with perennial bridesmaid Les Reed filling in until Christmas Eve, when Alan Pardew stepped into the widening breach.
Nobody in football has a higher opinion of Pardew than Pardew himself but he proved incapable of keeping his new employers in the Premiership. Relegation was gamely resisted but proved ultimately inevitable.
Pardew was given the opportunity to revive Charlton’s fortunes in the Championship but following a bright start, a disappointing 11th position was the best they could manage. Rumours of financial takeover by Dubai-based businessmen abounded but came to nothing. A net loss of 13 million pounds was announced at the end of the 2007-08 season, with gloomy bulletins from the boardroom mirrored by depressing results on the field.
Charlton’s second outing in the Championship brought further humiliation. Disastrous results, culminating in a 5-2 home hammering on November 22nd 2008, saw Pardew make an unlamented exit, his spurious big-time-Charlie persona superseded by the workaday personality of Phil Parkinson. What you saw was what you got from the likeable Parkinson.
Handed an impossible task to save the Addicks from relegation to the third tier of English football, the new manager did his best but Charlton were effectively doomed by Easter Monday, by which time they were 12 points adrift at the foot of the league, with just four games to play.
In his first full campaign (2010-11), Parkinson led a spirited attempt to bounce back. Charlton reached the League One play-offs only to suffer the heartache of losing on penalties to Swindon Town in the semi-finals. But the boss had done enough to earn himself a reprieve.
Parkinson began the 2011-12 season still in charge but was summarily -and somewhat harshly – sacked in January 2012, with his side hovering just outside the play-off positions. His surprise successor was a charismatic former Charlton player, who commanded a level of respect reserved for the fabled likes of Sam Bartram, Stuart Leary, Mark Kinsella and various others.
Chris Powell’s new job began promisingly with four consecutive victories but quickly tailed off into a run of 11 games without a win. His credentials would obviously be tested by a full season in charge, for which he prepared in the summer of 2011 by making an almost clean sweep of his playing personnel and replacing them with some 19 shrewdly recruited new signings. Gone were the peripatetic loanees, who had flitted in and out of the 2010-11 team; in came players committed to Charlton. On a tight budget, an almost entirely new side was re-built and the rewards were instant.
To say that Charlton were a class above League One in 2011-12 is no overstatement. Topping the table on September 17th 2011 after a 3-2 win at Rochdale, the Addicks proved impossible to dislodge. Promotion was clinched, as oddly enough it had been on two previous occasions, at Carlisle United on April 14th 2012, where top scorer Bradley Wright-Phillips bundled in the only goal. The championship was delivered at The Valley a week later, where Wycombe Wanderers were beaten 2-1 and a record-equalling total of 101 points was reached on May 5th with the 3-2 home defeat of Hartlepool United, when Yann Kermorgant’s stunning volley added the last goal and an appropriate flourish to a barnstorming season. But the campaign was galvanised by back-to-back 1-0 victories in January over promotion rivals Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United, both of them secured by inspirational captain Johnnie Jackson’s unstoppable free kicks. The rest of the league were struggling in Charlton’s slipstream after those psychological blows had been landed.
Three depressing seasons in League One were finally over. With little or no money to spend, it became Powell’s challenge to maintain the momentum and consolidate his tightly knit group’s place in the far more rarefied air of the Championship, where the opposition reads like a Who’s Who of recent members of the Premier League. The step up in quality, the superior stadiums, the thin line dividing top from bottom in a league where no result is a surprise, all were taken in his stride by the admirably calm boss.
For as this journey through the chequered and- as already disclaimed, unscientific- history of Charlton Athletic hauls itself up to date, the Addicks have completed their first campaign back in the Championship in an entirely creditable 8th position. Though not officially safe from relegation until the concluding stages, their impressive total of 65 points exceeded, by no less than 15, the number normally required for safety. The play-offs, in an ultra-competitive race, were tantalisingly out of reach by the time Yann Kermorgant’s spectacularly volleyed goal lit up the buccaneering 4-1 demolition of Bristol City at The Valley on May 4th. Poor home form, belatedly put right by four consecutive victories at the end of the season, undermined Charlton’s magnificent form on the road, which saw them win nine times and was highlighted by the club’s record-busting romp on April 13th at Barnsley, where six separate scorers staged what amounted to a prize-winning trolley dash through a supermarket on their way to Charlton’s biggest-ever (6-0) away win
Quietly effective captain Johnnie Jackson’s 12 goals led the scoring, with talismanic Kermorgant’s 11 strikes running him close. But the fans’ Player of the Year, for the second consecutive season, was the phenomenally consistent right back Chris Solly, with ball-of-fire left winger Callum Harriott emerging hungrily from a medal-winning group of U-21 professionals who will be clamouring for first-team recognition in 2013-14.
Presiding over the steady improvement, meanwhile, was the imperturbable Chris Powell, arguably the most promising young manager in all four divisions. Dismissed by chin-stroking experts as either too soft, too nice or too inexperienced, he has made fools of his critics. This dude is diamond-hard beneath the sharp suits and affable manner, entirely comfortable with the reality that, in football, you can never please all the people all the time. His decisions are considered and crisp, even when, as in the case of Scott Wagstaff’s release, they cause him personal pain. The club comes first any and every time. Charlton are in affectionate, capable hands. Stand on me.
So there you have it, 108 often turbulent years in the progress of a football club they tried at times to finish off but failed. It all resumes on August 3rd 2013 at Dean Court, or wherever it is that Bournemouth play nowadays, because football only briefly pauses for reflection. I’ll be on board again, wondering how it all turns out. You just can’t tell, can you?…