comeback comeback all is forgiven

Johnny Summers

Of late there's been a sense of disillusionment brewing with the modern game. The back pages have been filled with stories of diving, racism, and overpaid attitudes as opposed to the actual game of football being played. I agree that standards have to be set, and subsequently reached, but i don't really want to concern myself too much with an analysis of a referee's performance and his drawn out trial and eventual execution. I also have no interest in who shakes who's hand before a game. I, like many others, do seem to have fallen out of love with our national sport, Rich at The Football Attic touched on the subject eloquently this week and almost had me in tears!

Football though is a beautiful game and claws you back like a heartbroken lover when it thinks you may just close the door for good. The League Cup (or COC (snigger) for short) is not necessarily the most attractive of  proposals, yet in a time of Premier League Super Sundays is probably the closet we get to seeing football how it used to be, perhaps due to the resting of the so called superstars and the chance for young lads who want to play?

Last night Arsenal beat Reading 7-5 at the Madejski Stadium, coming back from four nothing down. This is a scoreline that many of us had never witnessed and possibly the greatest comeback of all time? It certainly grabbed our attention and reminded us why we can never fully walk away from football. It was as i tweeted last night, reminiscent of 'make up sex', hence the loan of Kirk Brandon's lyrics for the title.

I say possibly the greatest comeback because there was one game in history that potentially outshines it. It occurred on the 21st December 1957 when Huddersfield Town came to The Valley.

Back in the glorious days of medicine balls and flannelette jerseys football was a much different game. It was far more attack minded with wingers, inside forwards and the traditional centre forward. Playing five up front  does give a team far more opportunity to score, and of course on the flip side concede. Football's a lot more cagey now with so many more potential high profile windfalls available to the winners and let's not forget the almost carefree abandonment with which chairmen will change managers. In the fifties you could afford to lose a few games in a row and still have the clubs full backing.

As is the way with Charlton supporters, as soon as the goals went flying in at Reading, the twitter timeline was full of boastful pride as Addicks reminded their followers that they weren't watching the greatest of all comebacks. The greatest was a lifetime before, a time when 99% of these tweeters weren't even born.

Charlton entertained Huddersfield in this league fixture and with only a quarter of an hour played they were reduced to ten men, Derek Ufton having been rushed off to hospital after dislocating his shoulder. The notion of substitutes was still a long way off, Keith Peacock was only twelve years old at this point.

Huddersfield had the run of the play and were strolling 5-1 with just half an hour to go. Jimmy Seed the Charlton boss played a masterstroke by pulling Johnny Summers off the left wing where he was getting no joy and moving him into the centre. Summers in true comic book style had changed his boots at half time, this new pair were certainly his shooting boots as he would go on to score five goals all in all. A feat made even more remarkable as this natural left footer got them all with his right peg! John 'Buck' Ryan also netted a brace as the Londoners ran out 7-6 winners, the Terriers still hold a record as the only club to score six and still lose a football league match.

So which is the greatest comeback? Not being alive in 1957, it's very hard to give a true evaluation. Certainly in times past goals were far more frequent. If you look at club records for the majority of sides their biggest win, their heaviest defeat and their highest aggregate scoring match were all long ago in the distant past which would hint towards last night's game being the greater achievement. Arsenal did it with eleven men on the field though so perhaps Charlton's was the greatest.

The only thing i can decide for certain is that their are four goalkeepers that have had a game to forget!

Rhyme or Reason

It is of course the great Jimmy Greaves who says that football is a funny old game. Never has anyone been so on the ball about something.

Look at Arsenal in their Champions League tie against AC Milan. The first leg in Italy was, for Arsenal, truly awful. Even to say it was a capitulation would be kind, but then this week in the return leg they came so close to squaring things up. So much so that most Englishmen, other than of course Tottenham fans, felt both proud and sorry for them after laughing the week before.
I very much doubt even Arsene Wenger would have predicted last nights events.

Charlton's last two outings have been equally bizarre. Snatching a win from a poor performance on Saturday, then losing after dominating last night. How can anyone make sense of such logic defying circumstances? It could only be football. As Addicks, we sometimes feel that it could only be Charlton!

The trip to Bournemouth was supposed to be an early idea of what the promotion party is going to be like. A warm weekend on the coast, many Charlton fans making a long break of it, yes, this had all the makings of a festival representing everything that is great about being Charlton.
And although three more points were added to our already impressive sum, it wasn't quite the footballing extravaganza many had hoped for.

The milder temperatures we had witnessed in the week prior to the game disappeared by the Friday resulting in a much colder, and at times wetter, weekend. On the pitch Charlton never really got going and Bournemouth were for large periods the brighter of the two sides.
If anyone deserved all the points you could be forgiven for saying it was probably the hosts but in fairness a nil nil draw was very much on the cards.
Teams that win championships though have, not only a never say die attitude, but also more than their fair slice of luck. Combined, these two elements sent nearly two thousand travelling Londoners home happy as Yann Kermorgant headed home in the last minute of stoppage time.
It was a close call and the ball did cross the line, but on another day we've seen the exact same thing not given.

If we can pull something like that out the hat away from home on an off day, just imagine what damage we can inflict on some poor unsuspecting also ran when we're firing on all cylinders in our own back yard!
Colchester came to The Valley Tuesday evening attempting to become the first side to win a league fixture there all season.

They got off to the greatest of starts with a wonderful strike from Anthony Wordsworth after only five minutes. It was the kind of goal that would beat the best of keepers and meant Charlton had to chase the game from the off. Chase they did though and most of the play was in and around the Colchester half of the pitch.
Chances came and went without the home side making them count until with a quarter of an hour to go a mistake from keeper Ben Hamer gifted Colchester their second goal and effectively put the game to bed. For the record it really must be said that Charlton continued to look for that elusive goal right through to the final whistle, all alas to no avail.
Looking at the stats, it's only the third defeat of the season, and the first at home for almost eleven months.

Fortune does however favour the brave and closet rivals Sheffield United also stuttered going down at Walsall, a second defeat on the spin. This all means of course that we are still thirteen points clear of second and fourteen clear of third. The big red panic button doesn't yet need hitting, although this was a gentle reminder that the trophy isn't yet in our cupboard and a few more results still need to be ground out. I'm no manager but perhaps one or two changes could be called for, just to shake everybody up a little.

Notts County visit SE7 on Saturday and from what I've been reading Chris Powell's team are down in the dumps and ready to put affairs back in order for this one. It really could be a case of back with a vengeance and a possible hammering. I'm not even going to tempt fate and mention any other possible scenarios, suffice to say your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen on the day.
I say this because as we all know, football really is a funny old game.

Come on you reds!