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2006/07 - Twenty years on....
CAFCTrev
Posts: 6,268
As the curtain falls on 25/26, attention naturally turns to 26/27—a season that also marks twenty years since our Premier League relegation.
It’s a sobering thought that there are Addicks supporters now in their twenties who weren’t around for those top-flight years, relying only on stories from older fans about the players, the atmosphere, and the nights that made the Valley special.
Of course, it all unravelled during 2006/07, and we’ve not been back to the Premier League since.
So, looking back—what are your memories of that season? When did it start to feel inevitable? Were there moments you thought we might pull clear? And despite how it ended, what were the highlights—and the lowest points? Was there a hope that a swift return would be on the cards in 07/08?
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The thing that stands out in my memory was doing the Valley tour about midway through that season and speaking to Colin Powell, who I saw play when I was very young, and he said he thought we would go down. I never really believed it could happen until that moment.0
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Charlton 4 Wet spam 0, we pulverised them, great performance, great atmosphere, Coni club after the game was absolutely jumping. Got a call from a mate who was record hunting in the States amidst the singing & the mayhem, said he'd found something I wanted & could have it for half the going rate, could it get any better ? A great day, we all thought we were staying up, alas sadly it wasn't to be
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I thought we might be able to turn it around when Dowie left & Les Reed took over. I knew of him from a friend who's son he coach in the U16's in the mid 90's and thought he'd do a good job. Sadly not to be.
Didnt help that Curbs left Dowie a crap midfield and then he signed a load of shite (Faye being one of them).2 -
Terrible times -
34 points is awful as well.
There were moments through the season but we just did not have it that year.
We lost to teams we would normally get something from.
The shift when Curbs left was huge.
So grateful for those years - we need a messiah to get back to that level and stability.4 -
We were in Milan, having watched Inter and refreshing the phone for score updates of our April game at Everton.
Absolute joy at Bents injury time equaliser, turned to despair at a late loss. At that moment I felt we were going down.
Naively thought we'd go straight back up, as at the time Pardew didn't seem to be the wanker he turned out to be.9 -
Relegation from the PL was always going to happen at some point. We're never going to be a permanent top flight team.
But what killed us, and we're still dealing with the effects, was the second relegation 2 years later, an absolute disaster.9 -
I realised we’d had it after getting a decent 0 0 draw at Man City at Easter, despite Zheng Zi missing a glorious chance to win it, we couldn’t follow it up with a win at home against Reading (another 0 0).2
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If Pardew came in straight after Dowie, would that have yielded a few extra points and possibly survival?4
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I was 16 when we went down. A few years ago I had the realisation that Charlton had been a dumpster fire for more than half of my life and that was a pretty depressing thought. Since that relegation it feels like there's been maybe 3 years where we haven't been a ridiculous cautionary tale for football teams - penniless in the Championship and suffering yet another relegation, failing to go straight back up from L1, rescued by the spivs and their wonderful money man which all turned out to be a lie, penniless again and taken over by Roland, the protests, the Australian 'takeover', more protests, '...', Nobby Vinegar, another relegation, Russell Slade's tablecloths, Bowyer's promotion, ESI, a secret transfer embargo, bitches and bread, an injury time relegation, Elliott, Farnell, injunctions, the dentist (who in my heart still owns us), good Sandgaard, bad Sandgaard, son of Sandgaard, Methven's failed takeover, the binman's failed takeover, Methven's successful takeover, staring down the barrel of a relegation to L2 and now we're at a point where football is so fundamentally broken there are no non-insane football teams, there's no way to break into the elite and once you got there would you really want to?What really kills me is all the missed opportunities. We chose the worst possible time to do the things we did as a club. We got relegated at a bad time and then all the lies catching up with the spivs meant that we didn't capitalise on our momentum in 12/13 and it was after that point that football became a closed shop. Annoyingly Palace chose the perfect time to sneak up and they were able to cling on on a small budget before the money started rolling in. I remember seeing them bid £10m for Yohan Cabaye and realising that the gulf was just too wide now. You needed to be established in the right place when the rocket took off and we weren't there. 20 years of insanity and lost moments and a lot of it because an old man wanted to annoy a local rival. Absolute madness.18
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I knew we were on our way down the moment I saw the fixture list. At the time I couldn't believe Murray describing it as an 'exciting' fixture list to start with so many tough games and then to finish up the season with two more (Spurs home and Liverpool away)
For me with all the upheaval and change of manager, players we needed a kinder start with the fixture list to get some points early on while all the new players could gel together. Sadly, got drawn an awful fixture list, we were always playing catch up and never managed to recover.
Without being biased I also felt this was about the period when the Premier League peaked. We got relegated with a points total which would more often than not be enough to stay up, either side of that season and it felt like following seasons was the beginning of an era where there would always be a team marooned at the bottom and teams getting relegated with even fewer points than usual.
I felt if we had managed to stay up that year we could have stayed in there for a long time afterwards, hopefully put a bad season behind us and then kick on with what felt like at the time a good appointment in Pardew.
Hopes were raised after the big win over West Ham but it also felt like whoever was 17th place in the table each week kept on winning so we were never able to claw back on the pack above us even with the uptick in form under Pardew.
At the time of 07/08 we still spent a significant amount of money in the summer and this is what I always feel was the starting point of crazy Championship transfer fees we still see today only on a larger scale I feel this is when it all started as it coincided with the money in the Premier League really starting to take off. I remember we started 07/08 well and were well placed for a top six finish but the sale of Andy Reid saw it all slip away.
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My main thoughts are both Pardew and Dowie would have kept us up. It was the Les Reed debacle that sent us down. Think the Wycombe league cup quarter final defeat was a killer blow for the team as well.I went to Thailand for a month and my first day in Koh Samui was the West Ham match. Watched us stuff them 4-0 and then watched West Ham throw the game away against Spurs the next week in Phuket. Was convinced West Ham were down then.Think we didn’t win in the last 6 or 7 games which is unforgivable really5
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I still get oppo fans saying that we shouldn't have forced Curbishley out!!!! How many times - he wouldn't sign a contract, had taken us as far as he thought he could (not the other way round even if a couple of glory boys/imposters may have rang up a radio station to say that) and was probably right so nobody forced him out or wanted him to leave - he was offered a new contract by Richard Murray, we did a whole ground standing ovation with everybody holding up a 'thanks Curbs' sign and clapping him, we named a stand after him and he is a regular on charlton tv (and talks about 'us' as his club) and is revered as a god like figure by the club and fans. Nobody wanted him to leave or disrespected the incredible things he did for us. It's a shame he didn't get to spend the money dowie and pardew wasted is the main regret we can have from that time.11
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I think it was after those 2 defeats Curbs decided to play Tevez more & he basically kept them up. W.Ham should have been docked points & relegated for fielding ineligible players. They weren't & it still stings.MrOneLung said:My main thoughts are both Pardew and Dowie would have kept us up. It was the Les Reed debacle that sent us down. Think the Wycombe league cup quarter final defeat was a killer blow for the team as well.I went to Thailand for a month and my first day in Koh Samui was the West Ham match. Watched us stuff them 4-0 and then watched West Ham throw the game away against Spurs the next week in Phuket. Was convinced West Ham were down then.Think we didn’t win in the last 6 or 7 games which is unforgivable really7 -
When the fixtures were published I thought "we aren't going to win a game until October".
We had a brutal run of games to begin with and you had the sense we were going to be in trouble because we'd be behind everyone else when the clocks went back and that could have an impact on morale, trying to play catch-up etc.
Of course, it didn't help that Dowie pissed up the wall the kind of money that Lord Llewellyn could only dream of spending at Charlton.0 -
Pardew appointment has so much irony to it IMO.
He was obviously a disaster in the championship but when we hired him and had an uptick in form, it seems crazy to think, but we would have maybe stayed up had he come in earlier.
Song on loan and Zheng Zhi made a difference. We looked miles better but the brutal start and the Les Reed period sent us down4 -
We panicked with the bad start (which would have happened regardless of manager) and sacked off Dowie before they had a chance to gel properly, then put in Reed and it was too much to catch up with too little time to do it.0
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I believe i signed up to this forum that season. Was down under when news broke that Curbishley was leaving, I knew things weren't going to be pretty!
Funny enough I was in Fuji for Operation Riverside, and apparently another red was too on a different island according to a Spurs fan. This gave the unique position of being in a tropical paradise but wanting to be in Middlesbrough!2 -
Curbishley leaving and not being given the war chest (at the time for us ) that Dowie was given when the season after the Premier League money was going up .
Murray deciding Curbs on one year left of contract wasn’t the route he wanted .
I don’t think I ever expected us to stay up even when we beat West Ham , I knew who was managing them was a lot better than the Cnut managing us .
when we went down and all the chipper bollox of new grounds and we’ll bounce right back was being waffled on here , I expected it to be shit but nowhere near as shit as it has been , our worst footballing period ever perfectly timed with our near and far neighbours best footballing periods .
football is wank2 -
Was only 7/8 at the time. But remember weirdly a lot from it and my dad telling me when Dowie was appointed in a park one day and I was shocked even back then.
Remember the 2-2 with Fulham and that free kick that wasn't.
Remember beating Wigan I think it was 1-0 and thinking that would be it.
I think also I just didn't think we would ever be in a relegation battle as being in the Premier league was all I knew.
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This may also mark 20 years since we've sung Valley Floyd Road on repeat, rather than stopping after one go and politely golf clapping.7
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What do you call permanent? No club has been in it permanently since the start. Do you have to be like Arsenal? Many would have said that Spurs are ’permanent ’ but they’re in the relegation zone now in May. Are Palarse permanent? They are historically smaller than us. There’s no reason in my mind why we couldn't have stayed up and been there now for 26 years and people would see us as ’permanent’ now.killerandflash said:Relegation from the PL was always going to happen at some point. We're never going to be a permanent top flight team.
But what killed us, and we're still dealing with the effects, was the second relegation 2 years later, an absolute disaster.0 -
Could write a book on that season. So many things went wrong. Curbs leaving was always going to happen but we didn’t replace him with someone capable. Also having Andrew Mills heavily involved in recruitment. Dowie was our first head coach and it showed as he wasn’t allowed his own coaches in. Should have signed sidwell and Bullard as Curbs recommended. Should have gone all out and got Big Sam in my opinion.1
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Quite liked the kits from that season. I think the away is the best of our various black kits over the years, the gold accents and hooped socks clinch it for me. Joma were a mixed bag overall, the black away and the two Catford Southend/Inter Milan aways are my faves from their run.
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Couldn't disagree more.CAFCTrev said:Quite liked the kits from that season. I think the away is the best of our various black kits over the years, the gold accents and hooped socks clinch it for me. Joma were a mixed bag overall, the black away and the two Catford Southend/Inter Milan aways are my faves from their run.
Those kits are some of the worst in living memory, forever tainted with the stench of Dowie, Hasselbank, Faye, Traore and relegation.
The black away kit we wore at Arsenal in the 4-2 game is easily the best of those versions.8 -
Crazy looking at the teams that finished 7th-10th that season.
No way we should’ve been in that position with the time we’d spent up.
Still think Murray led with emotion in getting Dowie in and that ultimately screwed us.8 -
Not only that but all the training wear had an orange-type shade of red as well, not a proper shade of red.Off_it said:
Couldn't disagree more.CAFCTrev said:Quite liked the kits from that season. I think the away is the best of our various black kits over the years, the gold accents and hooped socks clinch it for me. Joma were a mixed bag overall, the black away and the two Catford Southend/Inter Milan aways are my faves from their run.
Those kits are some of the worst in living memory, forever tainted with the stench of Dowie, Hasselbank, Faye, Traore and relegation.
The black away kit we wore at Arsenal in the 4-2 game is easily the best of those versions.1 -
You don’t think Dowie was trying to get sacked?MrOneLung said:My main thoughts are both Pardew and Dowie would have kept us up. It was the Les Reed debacle that sent us down. Think the Wycombe league cup quarter final defeat was a killer blow for the team as well.I went to Thailand for a month and my first day in Koh Samui was the West Ham match. Watched us stuff them 4-0 and then watched West Ham throw the game away against Spurs the next week in Phuket. Was convinced West Ham were down then.Think we didn’t win in the last 6 or 7 games which is unforgivable really0 -
I’d still like to know what Richard Murray was smoking that summer.3
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That press conference that descended into farce when Jordan served the writ on Dowie suggested things weren't going to end happily at the very outset4
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It was a falsehood spread mainly by Alan’s brother, Bill Curbishley (manager of The Who), that the fans wanted Alan to go……an interview with him appeared in the media stating such and from that moment the assumption was that it was factual was sealed.DOUCHER said:I still get oppo fans saying that we shouldn't have forced Curbishley out!!!! How many times - he wouldn't sign a contract, had taken us as far as he thought he could (not the other way round even if a couple of glory boys/imposters may have rang up a radio station to say that) and was probably right so nobody forced him out or wanted him to leave - he was offered a new contract by Richard Murray, we did a whole ground standing ovation with everybody holding up a 'thanks Curbs' sign and clapping him, we named a stand after him and he is a regular on charlton tv (and talks about 'us' as his club) and is revered as a god like figure by the club and fans. Nobody wanted him to leave or disrespected the incredible things he did for us. It's a shame he didn't get to spend the money dowie and pardew wasted is the main regret we can have from that time.
He was of course sticking up for his brother but was a huge slur on the Charlton fan base, one or two aside, such as the idiot DFT (Dave from Thamesmead, remember him😡), who led the tiny minority who sought to see him gone on netaddicks.
He banged on and on about it for months……God he used to drive me (and a good few others), mad.3
