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How pleasant from that dome-crowned hill, To view the varied scene below, Woods, ships and spires and, lovelier still, The encircling Thames' majestic flow! That is how Poet William Gifford wrote of the view from Greenwich Hill and how it would also have been from Charlton House before being largely surrounded by urban sprawl and apartment towers. Crossing Blackheath from the top end of Greenwich Park and you will find yourself in Charlton. One of the oldest settlements in London laying bear an Iron Age Hill Fort uncovered in the 1920's in Maryon Park and there is a likelihood Stone Age inhabitants were also in the area. Charlton is blessed with swathes of parkland stretching from the Thames barrier right up to Charlton Village and the Jacobean splendour of Charlton House arguably the finest example in Britain built from a John Thorpe design between 1607 and 1612, during the reign of James I, for Adam Newton the Dean of Durham. Visiting Charlton Church and the House, the village green and a very old pub and one can still find a sense that this was once one of London's true Kentish villages. In the heart of Charlton, at the Valley, is Charlton Athletic Football Club. Formed in 1905 by a group of teenagers, it arguably resembles a revamped Ashton Gate stand format, with three enclosed sides and a small stand sitting rather lonely on its own. it also has a similar capacity to the new City ground. The club have plans for increasing capacity to 30,000 and then on to 40,000 but if the Belgium owners' recent decision making is anything to go by the club probably won't be needing those increases anytime soon. Charlton's other commonality with City is finishing 2nd in the top flight, for them, in 1937 and they won the FA Cup once, appearing in a final one more time than us; losing in 1946 but coming back a year later to win it. Either side of World War II then was and remains the most successful time in their history and The Addicks were managed throughout by Jimmy Seed. Charlton were late entrants to the Football League though; Not until August 1921 did they play their first match winning 1-0 against Exeter City. The Seed era of the late thirties saw the club being the first to gain a double promotion from Division 3 to 1. The pivotal game being a local derby win over West Ham in front of 41,000 fans that saw centre half John Oakes playing through a broken nose and concussion. They were hard players back then. After their runner up spot in 1937 they finished 3rd in each of the following two seasons. Amazingly Charlton continued their dominance immediately after the war; Jimmy Seed must have been a truly innovative and top manager in his day to have carried on where he left off. It is worth remembering that up until Charlton moved away from the Valley to ground share with Palace, back in the 80's, they resided in a ground with huge banks of terracing that in the immediate aftermath of the War were attracting crowds in excess of 70,000 in what was, at the time, the largest ground capacity in the country. How short sighted then that the clubs owners allowed little investment in the club and by the early 50's this undermined Jimmy Seed's development of the squad; Chairman Stanley Gliksten asked that Seed resign after 23 years in charge. The club were relegated a year later. It seems they did exactly the same thing some 40 odd years later when then Chairman Richard Murray seemingly announced, to national ridicule, that Alan Curbishley had 'taken the club as far as he could and it was time to go to the next level. That it was Curbishley who said he would not renew his contract seems lost in the larger order of things; that the club and the fans drifted in their support for the man who, like Seed before him, gained two promotions for the club and when he left at the end of the 2005-6 season he had presided over 729 matches, just one less than Jimmy Seed. Charlton arrive at Ashton Gate today perhaps considered a similarly sized club with a more recent and very admirable Premier League journey and in a similar league position. The supporter base is similar, the ground capacity and its layout is or will also be very similar. End there the similarities. Ownership of Charlton is in the hands of a Belgian who seems to have polarised opinions inside The Valley and the club face a real battle to remain in the Second Tier. Time will tell how it plays out in the remaining 4 months of the campaign but all the ingredients are there, today, for this somewhat pivotal game, and how many times have we said that, to know a little more who is best placed to use it as a platform to rein in Fulham in 18th. City have shown enough for me to believe that in this final home game of 2015, assuming we take Steve Lansdown's words on face value regarding team strengthening in January, the club have the wherewithal not to squander the incredible journey we all enjoyed last season. And the history of todays opponents should teach our clubs majority owner that coveting the best manager we may end up enjoying in the years to come requires work, a lot of it. Charlton tried to change the paradigm of Premiership status by replacing a supremely successful manager and 'kicking on'. I hope we can wallow and be hysterically happy in mid table Premiership obscurity and boredom and not press the trap door for what I hope will still be Steve Cotterill. I hope everybody who has had the patience to read this far and find at least part of my post of some interest will have enjoyed a wonderful Christmas day. Now it is down to Steve Cotterill and his band of tirelessly working playing staff to give us a Boxing day to remember by resoundingly beating Charlton Athletic. 3-1. Kodjia, Wilbraham, Kodjia 15,576 And Big Tone... lets be a little more deferential to our fellow Championship Club today yeah? Go exploring next time you are in that part of London.. in large part it is actually a very nice little spot. I have been to the Valley on a couple of previous occasions and always felt the staff to make it one of the more friendlier grounds to visit.. lets all make it a hospitable welcome to Charlton off the pitch; goes without saying what happens on it. By the way... we will be heading to the Valley for the return fixture as early as February 6th. Forgive me right now if there is even a glimmer of repetition. UTC

Have to say it Loads (not all) on here dont deserve Championship football Only sing when we are winning Now is the time to support the team

We just dropped 2 points against a team who look nailed on for relegation at home; I think it is fair to say the team deserve some critique, especially as it has returned us to the drop zone and likely emboldened our rivals. If we can't be pissed at this, what are we all doing here?

Yes you're right, the business plan for a £40 million 27,000 seater stadium is no doubt based on third division football and does not show any ambition to reach higher at all does it. Just like bidding huge sums for the likes of Gayle and Gray shows how they are "happy" with third division football. What complete and utter nonsense you are talking.

We certainly shouldn't be complacent but the team should take the bull by the horns and attack Charlton assertively from the start. City are the home team with a 15,000 strong Boxing Day crowd behind them and Charlton have lost 8 of their last 9 away games in the Championship. We really, really need to win this game and it will be a huge disappointment if we don't take the 3 points.

I understand what you are saying but be honest as I said earlier, after the almost inevitable miss of a rare BCFC penalty award, most on here and I bet many at AG could have successfully written the rest of the unwritten script that was about to follow and when life becomes that predictable there is something badly wrong IMO.

Really? And replace him with whom? Any Russian Billionaires knocking around?

Sub standard team and Manager for the Championship. Now back in the bottom three. Who the hell will want to join us in January.Those running our club, both on and off the field, should hang their heads in shame for turning last season's success in to this year's pitiful shambles.

The usual reactionary nonsense. These players may lack quality but "spineless" they are not. Spineless implies a lack of effort and that is not the issue at all.

YeP, we have 23 games to go; keep up our stonking form over the previous 23 games and we are going one way. I'll give you a clue,; it ain't to the play offs.

Would love to see how many goals we concede (or neatly concede - Cardiff for example) when cotts won't make subs to bring on fresh legs or at least run down the clock. One today - after the goal had gone in.

Steady on old bean.

Pack had only missed 1 penalty in his career before today, so you are blatantly chatting rubbish.

Come on City score another, I want to go to the loo!

Irish?

Baker's first ever Senior goal and the 8th City player to score this season.

Don't you love it when time wasters concede at +6 ?

Dont care if its dreadful, 3 Points its all about.

or Teddy, Joseph, John H ...etc Anyway whats the Kennedy's gotta do with it?

ADicks ,in hommage to our great ex-manager .

I used to live in Charlton. Its a ####hole.

So not chucking the towel in is 'being a happy clapper' now, is it? Stick to crying about JET.

Well done on being a happy clapper. 23 games on from our god awful summer and our position is no surprise, even though the small amount of players we do possess are reasonably talented. No reinforcements, no confidence, mismanaged by the higher-ups. We've brought it all upon ourselves.

I'd like to think 'belief' will keep us up but I don't think it will be enough. Belief's are dangerous things that lead you to accept the status quo and not questioning the path they're taking you down.

Never! We beat Boro 20 games ago. We'll be ok.

agreed but a lack of quality and a stubborn manager will see us down, not reactionary being saying it since day one of this season. Also not reactionary as I questioned cotts lack of use of subs last season when we were winning. Change is needed now or we're down, team spirit can only take you so far, and won't last long at this rate.

I don't rate Pack and don't believe he will ever make a quality Championship midfielder, BUT although he has missed the pen - can't really blame him for failing to get 3 pts today. Wilbs and Kodger both missed easy chances, and the fact that Pack (who never looks like scoring) is taking it, presumably is because none of our other more favoured players have the bottle to take responsibility from 12 yards. Hacked off with Cotts for once again not using his subs, either Wilbs or Kodger should have come off with 15 mins to go, pointless waiting until our lead was lost. Jan window has to deliver for us, or we are down.

And that's fair enough. A bit different from 'needs to consider his position' though, don't you think?

You're blaming Cotts for Pack missing the penalty!? Good one! He's scored our last 2 penalties why wouldn't he pick him?! We had less possession than Charlton yet had 18 shots and twice the corners. You're a loony if you think we're building this stadium for the third division. We're making profit every year whilst teams like Bolton Fulham and forest are investigated for breaking FFP!? How the **** are we badly run? Love the idea of getting rid of lansdowne by the way that's a good one. I'm sure there are loads of billionaire Bristol city fans who won't run up large amounts of debt

My point about Lansdown is that he has to up his game and accept that modern football at this level requires additional investors -plus use of expert football consultant

Its not easy being a City fan is it?

Jesus H Christ. I used a little exaggeration to make a point. I can't be arsed to trawl through your post history or anything, but your posts on this thread alone have shown that you don't want him playing. "He's lucky to be playing" out of interest who would you have in his position instead? Reid who is a more attacking player and not suited to that role at all? You refuse to accept he may have been able to be any good at anything, when confronted with the fact that he had only missed 1 career penalty before today, you immediately claim it to be 100% failure, not 8O% success as was the case. Maybe you can't remember the 2-2 draw with Barnsley last season where he scored the opener from the spot.

If I hear the "Boro result" once more I think I might scream. One decent and unexpected result and we're clinging on to it like thats the norm. Based on the season so far, the Boro result was a pure fluke. Our season so far does not have us beating the likes of Boro on a regular basis; our season so far has us drawing at home with other relegation fodder (when were lucky) and being tonked by the likes of Rotherham.

Freeman needs to be dropped. I like Cotts and he's 100% the man to keep us up but he needs to be a bit more reactionary. To see we are only winning 1-0 against a team that was worse than the majority we played last year he should've changed it. Burns Reid Cox Little any of those on would've helped I'm sure. Instead he once again left a sub for the last 5 minutes and they scored. I'm still pretty certain we'll stay up but he NEEDS to use those subs!

Half way through the season and people still talking of bad luck. It's not bad luck it's lack of quality . I think Lansdown is preparing for life in the 3rd division ,thinking that we can come back at the first attempt . I was abused by some on here when i started a thread about being promoted too soon but the more i hear of Lansdown the more i'm convinced that it was case.

Think we all saw that one coming, were too naive for this league. Should have won that by at least 5

Midfielders who cannot score. Pack should not be taking penalties. We need a new striking coach. Pathetic and almost exactly how our season has gone in lots of games. Better possession, better attacking, better shots. SPINELESS PLAYERS WHO ARE LOSING US THE GAMES AND CANNOT SEE WHERE THE GOAL IS.

I think the point is whatever anybody thinks of Pack as a player, very few on here or at the ground would I suspect have felt enthused when Pack picked up the ball to take the penalty.

When you need a calm composed head in a high pressure situation up steps PACK

WTF is Pack doing taking a penalty? He's lucky to be in the team let alone taking pens.

I think Freeman is getting stronger per game. It's a step up but he seems to be gaining confidence at the right time. COYRS!

Sounds like the Beeb are having a shocker then. Goals in three other games.

Yes Yes Yes!!! Come on you reds!!!

Well judged, my Swedish friend

Come on you reds!!!

Just heard it's on MW and DAB. So take your choice!

At least, Oxo

Big game for our Joe. Let's hope he's brought his crossing boots. In other good news... Baileys and Cointreau is a definite winner.

Lets get a win. 2-0 City. Come on you reds!!!

Tis a real challenge Kev but somehow I manage it! More on the Addicks and the Juveniles on February 6th.