Our Pre-season is crap.

ShootersHillGuru

Does anyone on here actually think that the team plays enough decent competative matches in pre season. Not dissing Bromley, Welling and Ebbsfleet but its hardly a test ? No matches in Spain apart from a game against a Gibraltar XI .......FFS. Then possibly the only meaningful game against Brighton ! Before anyone mentions the Basque giants Bilbao, its hadly going to prove similar to facing Swansea and Watford is it. Not saying I know whats best but I would think playing several division one sides would prepare us a little better. Just my opinion.

Rothko

Compared to whom in the Championship?

BlackForestReds

[cite]Posted By: Rothko[/cite]Compared to whom in the Championship?

Norwich played Spurs for example.

It'd be good to stop messing around with lower league clubs and try and play a premiership team every now and again.

LenGlover

Welling is tradition.

Other than that though we should be looking to play stronger teams I agree.

leftbehind

WHat i was saying

http://www.charltonlife.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=17934&page=1#Item_6

Stu_of_Kunming

I'd be more concerned with getting palyers fit than giving them a challenge.

Pavo

All of our squad, including Fleetwood (Cardiff) know what our division is about - the sort of opposition, styles of play etc. These games are purely to help get our players match fit, fine tune the different tactical approaches we're going to take throughout the season, bed a few new players in, help management decide who their 1st team is likely to be and my personal view to build confidence in the side - CAFC management may see this differently. The latter is so important after the disappointment of our last 1/3rd in 2007/08 season, so a number of games against lower league teams where we score a hat full of goals is no bad thing IMHO. The converse is playing Spurs, Utd, Ajax etc and getting heavily beaten possibly which I don't think is right for us at the minute.

_MrDick

[cite]Posted By: Stu of SE7[/cite]I'd be more concerned with getting palyers fit than giving them a challenge.

Exactly...They just need one match as a benchmark and that's against Athletic Bilbobaggins

JohnnyH2

Providing the pre season schedule ensures we are right to go on day one I could not care less who we play. If you have a bad start then we can always look back and say we got the pre season wrong, like the China tour in 04/05 which Curbishley admitted in his book was an error.

Amos on the wing

Personally, I don't care who we play in pre-season matches. Pre-season games are about match fitness and I could not care less about who we are playing against. I agree with the points made by JohnnyH2 and Stu of SE7.

Tavern

we should have had millwall and palarse at home to get us in the mood!lol!

ShootersHillGuru

I do see what you are all saying about getting fit that is the priority, however, as soon as you expand the argument into using tactics and getting players playing to a shape and knowing what they should be doing (ala Parkys blog) I think it starts to fall down a bit. Playing too inferior opposition will not provide enough of a test to team shape and tactics because you invariably are able to boss the game and do pretty much what you want. I am not advocating playing Man. Utd and other top sides and end up getting completely the opposite effect to the above but still think our games have to be more meaninful.

Ledge

always someone got to find something to moan about - for crying out loud their just friendlies.

if we'd played tottenham or arsenal , for arguments sake, and lost 5 or 6 nil what good would that have done as well.

ShootersHillGuru

Read what I said Ledge before you jave a pop.

Ledge

i have read it and I am not having a pop as such. merely saying they are just friendlies so don't see what the problem is. I'd rather us play lower teams and win games ,score a few goals then get tonked and have have the likes of Golf addick etc doom mongering before a ball has been kicked in anger.

ShootersHillGuru

Yeah I do really understand what you are saying but I suppose I feel we should be playing teams like Gillingham, Brighton (yeah I know), Colchester. Teams with professional players with fitness levels similar to Charltons. Not part timers who are just not able to put us through our paces....Bromley aside..lol

collegeparkaddick

I understand that these are just tune-ups for the season, but I don't understand why, training in Spain, there aren't any more pre-season friendlies with Spanish sides. Last year, we saw a Charlton side (I think) that expected to roll over competition in the Championship and the attitude proved problematic, beginning with a missed two points in the opener hosting Scunthorpe. Netting five or six or seven times a game against weak sides may boost confidence, but doesn't it also, perhaps, potentially lead to overestimating the abilities of the team when the Swansea fixture rolls around?

Kap10

[cite]Posted By: Tavern[/cite]we should have had millwall and palarse at home to get us in the mood!lol!

Didn't we used to do that in the late 70's or early 80's a pre season South london Cup tournament or was that just me and my subuteo competition.

randy andy

We're only 3 weeks through a 6 week pre-season program. I imagine the plan is to start off with the easier games and then build up as you approach the start of the season. So we've played fairly low level opposition so far to get a bit of sharpness back, improve fitness, etc. and we've got 3 more games to go, now Dover admittedly aren't any better than the opposition we've faced so far, and seem to be a last minute fill in due to the team not playing an additional game in spain. But after that we've got brighton and Bilboa, two teams who will do exactly what some of the comments above demand, i.e. test the team more physically and tactically.

Complaining we've played only week teams when we're only half way through the pre-season schedule is a little silly, that's what you do at the start of pre-season. Teams playing against the big-boys early in their pre-season are stupid, they're looking at money more than preperation. If you play a tottenham, etc. in the first week or two of pre-season and take a beating then you lose the next week or two of pre-season trying to build the players up. Any confidence you've instilled into them goes out the window and you're back to square one, just with less time left.

cfgs

I think you can only judge the preseason after we have started the season, if we hit the ground running and have a great first third of the season then it has been a successful one. The opposition really does not matter it is the fitness levels and whether the team gels or not that is important.

Oggy Red

These Premier League teams also want paying to play, not just expenses.

So if you're going to cover the expenses, extra policing because of high profile - then their must be ample budget or
gate money generated on the day, etc

Nutte11a

We would benefit from a a large mix of pre-season friendlies starting with 'easy' lower league teams (improving fitness and sharpness) and building up to more challenging Premiership or foreign teams (improving technique and team bonding ie a tour). The possiblitiy of playing against our under-18s could also be helpful as it gives the 'yoofs' an oportunity to play against the first team.

northstandsteve

Pards likes playing against teams like Ebsfleet and Bromley as thats where he sees his next signings coming from.

pickwick

Our pre=season opponents don't appear to have changes for years - Welling is traditional but the rest is always lowere division with one game against a fireign team of dubious quality seems to have been the order of the day since about 1997

Valley_floyd_red

the only change I would like to see to the pre-season friendlies would be to play more foreign teams abroad like we did against Utrecht. Paris would be nice this time of the year and it's cheap to get to. Maybe somewhere in Germany because the beer is fantastic and I've got lots of friends there. Why couldn't we have played Bilbao in Bilbao? I could have made a nice long weekend out of that one. The club could charter a flight, get 300 fans out there, what could possibly go wrong?

Oggy Red

Don't forget the Spanish season ends & starts again after the English Prem, plus with the Euroos, many Spanish teams will only begin pre season training about now.

So Charlton's Spanish trip was never going to include fully fledged public friendly matches - the best to hope for would have been behind closed doors training games.

Which is why, I guess, we could only play a Gibraltar XI this year, especially after the Euros.

Which begs the question, why go to Spain?
But after the Euros, many higher profile continental teams will have delayed the start of their own preseason training, so games are just not readily available in Europe just yet.