Charlton head coach Les Reed has left the club by mutual consent to be replaced by recently sacked West Ham United manager Alan Pardew.

Pardew has signed a three-and-a-half year deal at the Valley and becomes the team's third manager this season.

 

Reed was originally drafted in to replace Iain Dowie but has failed to turn the club's fortunes around.

 

He managed just one victory at the helm and lost to League Two side Wycombe in the Carling Cup quarter-finals.

 

Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Middlesbrough left Charlton seven points adrift of Premiership safety and in increasing danger of losing their top-flight status for the first time in seven years.

 

Reed was promoted from his job as assistant manager after Charlton parted company with Dowie 12 games into the Premiership season in the middle of November.

 

Reed lasted just 41 days in charge - one of the shortest ever Premiership reigns - even though chief executive Peter Varney said his job was not under threat last week.

 

Dowie himself had only been appointed in the close-season to replace the long-serving Alan Curbishley, who ironically has now taken over from Pardew at Upton Park.

 

The news was announced at 1900 GMT on Christmas Eve and Charlton say they will make no further comment until holding a press conference at 1330 GMT on Boxing Day.

 

Their next match is not until Wednesday night when they entertain Fulham.

 

Curbishley had been in charge at The Valley for 15 years.

 

Pardew was sacked by West Ham two weeks ago, after just over three years in charge, less than a month after Eggert Magnusson's £85m takeover of the club.

 

In that time he led them into the Premiership via the play-offs and then last season took them to the FA Cup final where they were seconds away from lifting the trophy against Liverpool.

 

Steven Gerrard punctured their dream by hammering in a spectacular last-minute equaliser to make the score 3-3 and force a penalty shoot-out which the Hammers lost 3-1.

 

However, their efforts earned them a place in this season's Uefa Cup but they went out at the first hurdle to Palermo.

 

Pardew was previously in charge at Reading and, while there, led them into the League's second tier in 2001/02. They reached the play-offs for promotion to the Premiership the following season but failed to go up and early on in the next campaign he moved to Upton Park.

 

 

 

Well its a good move by Charlton cause if they kept read then they would surely have been releagted at the end of the season.

 

 

It was visable from day one that Les Reed didn't have a clue and wasn't going to last but Charlton Chairman Richard Murray is getting himself into a tricky situation here. He appointed Dowie and gave him the money to buy the players of his choice, he then unfairly after not giving him much of a chance sacked him and made a silly appointment in a fifty odd year old who's never managed a club in his life before Les Reed, his record in charge was worse than Dowie's yet last week Chairman Richard Murray came out and backed Reed and took yet another swipe at Dowie blaming him for their still poor position and insisted that they would give Reed time and not fire him. I haven't seen a poorer performance than Saturdays Charlton defeat to Middlesborough for a long time. They didn't have a single shot until the last five or ten minutes of the game. Murray then fired Reed and has appointed Pardew. The trouble with that is that Pardew started the current season off really poorly and just like Dowie did, unexpectly took his team into the relegation zone just like Charlton. Also, their poor form started when Pardew's assistant Peter Grant left to become manager of Norwich City so it is possible that the mastermind behind of all West Ham's success was Peter Grant so Pardew may be just as unsuccessful as Charlton's other two axed managers in charge of them this season. Also, who is going to want to join a club second from bottom which is less than halfway into The Premiership season, is already on its third manager? Answer - Not many players.

:lol: knew it was going to happen

 

if he couldn't beat Boro on their current form, then he was well and truly buggered

Glad he's gone.. Les Reed scared me :unsure:

Source: BBC Sport

 

Alan Pardew has conceded that he faces a tall order to keep Charlton in the Premiership after being officially unveiled as their new manager.

 

Charlton are stuck in the bottom three of the table and Pardew told the club website: "I'd be naive if I didn't say the odds were stacked against us.

 

We need to win half our games and that is a tough call.

 

"But the message to the players is that we are going to fight all the way to the end and draw in someone else."

 

Pardew was appointed late on Christmas Eve to replace Les Reed, who left the club by mutual consent.

 

The former Charlton player is the club's third manager of the season after Reed and Iain Dowie.

 

His first game in charge will be on Wednesday night against Fulham and he added: "The reaction of the players has been exactly what I wanted.

 

"I feel we need to come in in a really positive mode.

 

"It was an easy decision to come here because it was my old club, the chairman and chief executive were here before and sometimes in life it is nice to go somewhere you feel you can get a good shot at it and I trust and I feel I will get that here."

 

 

BOLLOCKS :manson:

Shortest reign as a Premiership manager? Haha.

 

But I really don't see what other option they had. Well they shouldn't have appointed Reed as manager in the first place but, considering their situation, they didn't really have many more choices. Reed was driving them further and further into the drop zone and they looked awful. No structure, bad tactical errors, not playing to their strengths. The basics were lacking. Imo they HAD to sack him.

 

Plus he was being far too leniant on a side being held off the bottom by Watford.