Lawro Says ...

Not a bad weekend of results for us, although it could have been a lot better had Wolves and Palace not popped up with last minute equalisers. Still, we remain in the hunt (just about) and the next two games have taken on epic proportions. This hasn’t been lost on Pards and he is targeting four points out of six from the home tie against Wolves and the trip to Home Park to take on Plymouth. I would imagine he sees the win coming from the fixture at the Valley, although frankly this is anybody’s guess at this stage.

It was interesting to read Pardew’s notes on Friday where he took full responsibility for the slide out of the play off places having ‘muddled with the team’. I think it’s a bit too easy to put our decline in form down to team changes though and if anything it is a symptom rather than a cause. If I was asked to pinpoint a moment when our promotion hopes took a nose dive then I would say the two minutes in the second half of the home tie against Watford when we went from being 2-0 up and closing the gap on the chasing pack, to being pegged back to a very nervy 2-2 draw and moving nowhere. I think that took a lot of belief out the players, there for all to see in the 5-3 defeat to Blackpool a week later.

As the ever smug and aloof Mark Lawrenson commented on Football Focus on Saturday, the Championship this season has been extremely competitive but has ultimately lacked quality. It is difficult to disagree with this. No one team has put together a really decent run or shown much consistency. Any team who had would surely have been out of sight by now. It’s thanks largely to this that we remained in the play-off places for so long but with home defeats to Colchester, QPR, Sheffield United, Plymouth and draws against Barnsley, Hull and Scunthorpe to reflect on, we can hardly feel hard done by if we don’t go up. Assuming we do remain in the Championship, I think we will be a lot stronger next season but the problem is so will the rest of the division.

In other news, it seems to be another case of ‘boy done good’ for one of our players out on loan. Thierry Racon has been a bit of a hit at Brighton and Hove Albion by all accounts, following in the footsteps of Chris Dickson, James Walker and co. who have made an impact for their loan clubs this season. It’s a shame the same can’t really be said for our temporary acquisitions, although I struggle to understand how Scott Sinclair has been given such a hard time when he has had hardly had an opportunity to prove himself. The same is true of Lee Cook to an extent.

I can’t make it to the game on Saturday unfortunately but will be watching from afar thanks to Sky making their second trip to the Valley in the space of eight days. At least Wolves have extended us the courtesy of sending Jay Bothroyd out on loan so another Charlton old boy can’t come back and inflict any further damage on us. I’m hoping for a display which starts with the things we got right against West Brom and ends with a goal or two for at least one of confidence drained strikers. Whatever happens from here on in, I think Lawro summed us up best when he said, "If Plan A fails, they could always revert to Plan A."