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Inside View with Charlton Athletic midfielder Johnnie Jackson

08:00, 10 February 2011

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We're three games into Chris Powell’s reign as manager and to say things are going well would be an understatement.

You can’t improve on three wins and three clean sheets – I’m told it’s the best start a manager has made in the club’s history.

But that doesn’t mean we are resting on our laurels.

The manager has this reputation as ‘the nicest man in football’ but as he himself says, you don’t enjoy the successful career he has done, play at the top level and get called-up for England without having a passionate desire to win.

One of the press boys told me a while ago that he once got sent-off while playing for Charlton in a pre-season friendly after a tussle with an opposing player and I can well imagine that after seeing him at half-time against Yeovil last weekend.

He wasn’t happy with our first-half performance and made that clear to us and, of course, it worked because we went out and grabbed a winning goal in the second half.

Former manager Phil Parkinson signed me three times during my career, so I was sad to see him go. To see someone lose their job isn’t nice but we’ve all been in football long enough to know that it happens.

There was a great atmosphere for Chris’ first game against Plymouth and the same was true against Colchester, even though I think everyone went quiet wondering what exactly was going on with their ‘goal’ when it was disallowed, given and disallowed again!

It’s great when the crowd get behind us and with the club making all tickets for the Exeter match this month just £5, I’m sure The Valley will be packed. It’s definitely not a game to miss.

Before that, though, we face Peterborough this weekend. We won 5-1 at London Road this season but won’t be expecting an easy ride because they are one of our rivals for promotion.

They’re scoring and conceding a lot of goals, so it could be an entertaining game. If we can keep another clean sheet, we’ve got to be confident of a positive result.

Our matchwinner in the last two games has been Bradley Wright-Phillips and I’m delighted for him, even if he has taken over my position as the club’s top scorer!

He’s a quality striker and a great addition to the squad.

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