Friday 26 September 2008

Fleetwood's off, Fortune's injured, I'm confused

It's always a good idea to check the official website before writing a match preview, something which I forgot to do yesterday when writing the Wednesday preview (admittedly after a couple of beers). What you think you know can be completely turned on it's head by the club's communication department or a few words from Alan.

As it turns out, Primus isn't fit to play, Jon Fortune won't be either for the next six weeks, Martin Cranie will be though, Jose Semedo will probably get a game ahead of Yassin, and Zheng Zhi is still 'feeling his way back' (more).

So what to make of all this? Firstly, it looks as though our lack of cover in central is going to be exposed rather sooner than anybody would have liked. It doesn't really help when you bring in a loan player for cover who isn't fit in the first place. According to Pardew, Linvoy Primus still has 'a long way to go' but has 'an outside chance of being ready for Palace. What?! He is either fit or he isn't fit, and if he isn't then the Palace game is no time to bring him back. It will be interesting to see how Cranie plays at centre half tomorrow (if he does indeed start there ahead of Semedo and Youga). Having stated that this is his preffered position I am hoping for good things.

With regards to the Moutaouakil situation, I'm really not sure what he has to do to get a game. I, along with many others, have been saying for some time that we want to see him play but I don't think I can say anything about this that hasn't been said before. Just play him Pards! One suspects that Pardew indifference to bringing Zheng Zhi back probably has something to do with holding him back for the Palace game.

Stuart Fleetwood's one month loan move to Cheltenham (more) could be taken one of two ways. Either he has joined the 'not as good as we thought' category (Dean Sinclair) or he really is just being given the chance at some first team football in the hope he'll be more ready for the Charlton first XI (Chris Dickson). It looks to be the latter fortunately, with Pardew recognising that he has been scoring freely in the reserves.

So all in all, we're nowhere near where I thought we were less than 24 hours ago. No change there then.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn't dream the Fleetwood thing last week! "second division and proud" reports Pardew's comment from last week saying that he could be in the squad for Forest.

This is good news. Bad news is that I believed what pardew said. Nust be getting naive in my old age.

Pembury Addick

Richard said...

Good spot PA ... from first team squad material to a loanee at Cheltenham Town in less than a week. What on earth is going on?!

ChicagoAddick said...

It's easy. He's scored and played well in reserves games, so he now needs to be shipped out for a month to see if he can score goals and play well, before he can be promoted to the first team.

Pardspeak #106