The Championship Welcome Nobody Asked For

 

Well, as predictable as a light drizzle over E20, our grand Championship home opener delivered pure, unadulterated comedy. Three points? No. Attacking football? Also no. A performance that suggested we had spent the summer preparing for life in the Championship? Absolutely not. But at least nobody can accuse us of making the afternoon boring.

Six minutes in, while half the stadium was still queuing for an overpriced lager and the other half was wondering why they’d bothered arriving early, we were already a goal down to a Charlton side playing with all the subtlety of a runaway steamroller.

Our response was a first-half display of build-up play so glacially slow that artisanal cheese makers were watching it and shouting, “For God's sake, hurry up.” Pass, sideways. Pass, backwards. Pause. Contemplate the meaning of existence. Pass sideways again. It was less Championship football and more a particularly tedious group project.

Naturally, the lads were serenaded into the tunnel at half-time by 60,000 supporters offering some extremely detailed performance reviews.

The second half brought more of the same, only with added existential despair. Charlton doubled their lead in the 56th minute, immediately reigniting the chorus of disapproval and prompting eleven men in Claret and Blue to perfect an impression of complete strangers who had accidentally been given the same kit in the car park.

Thankfully, Manor Solomon and Divine Mukasa appeared to have received the memo that this was, in fact, a football match. The pair provided the only genuine sparks of life on the pitch and eventually combined to set up Joël Piroe in the 74th minute. 2–1.

Hope!

Completely irrational, wildly premature and almost certainly a terrible idea, but hope nonetheless.

Then came the late classic.

Taty Castellanos picked up an 83rd-minute booking for simulation, although mercifully he avoids an FA retrospective ban because, apparently, the rules require you to successfully deceive the referee into awarding a goal or red card first. Fortunately, we can still rely on our players to get the important things wrong.

And then, because this afternoon clearly hadn't contained enough comedy, we somehow earned a stoppage-time penalty to rescue an entirely undeserved point.

Up stepped Taty.

One kick. One post.

One enormous collective groan.

Absolute perfection.

So there we have it. Our triumphant return to the Championship at the London Stadium ends in defeat to Charlton, a performance that occasionally resembled football and a late penalty miss that neatly tied the whole afternoon together with a lovely little bow.

Only 49 points left to reach mathematical safety.

Piece of cake.