The race for fourteenth place is on

Bury's failure to win at Bolton on Tuesday evening means that Charlton are safe from relegation to League Two.

Attention now turns to the team's attempt to capture fourteenth place and avoid the ignominy of finishing in the club's lowest league position for ninety one years.

Alex McFarlane's boys of 1925/26 ended the season with a 3-1 defeat of Bristol City in front of a Valley crowd of 5,243. Nevertheless, results over a disappointing season meant that they finished in 21st position with 35 points - better only than QPR who languished fourteen points adrift. It was small consolation that Millwall missed out on promotion by three points and one place.

This was Charlton's worst league season but the knives were not out for MacFarlane. He continued as manager and three years later led the club to promotion as champions of the Third Divison (South). It wasn't until December 1932 that he would be sacked as the club tumbled towards relegation again - thus paving the way for Jimmy Seed.

Since the dark days of 1926 our worst league performance was that of Theo Foley's team of 1973/74 who ended up fourteenth in the Third Division. In fact, Foley was sacked with three games remaining and Les Gore appointed as caretaker manager. He led the team to an unexpected 2-0 win at champions Oldham (in front of a crowd of 18,526) and a final Friday night victory over Aldershot at The Valley (crowd 3,245). A couple of months earlier approximately seventy Charlton supporters had invaded the pitch at Spotland while Charlton played out a 1-1 draw with Rochdale in front of 850 spectators. They were calling for the resignation of chairman Michael Gliksten. Some things never change, do they ?

Karl Robinson now has two games to gather the points needed to achieve a fourteenth place finish and thus at least not be worse than that dire 73/74 team. First in his sights must be AFC Wimbledon who sit one place and two points above us. They travel to Bradford this weekend while Charlton go to Chesterfield and we might be hopeful of being above them by 5pm on Saturday. It looks unlikely that we will be able to overtake Walsall (4 points ahead with a game in hand and playing Coventry on Saturday) but maybe Milton Keynes are catchable. They host Sheffield United on Saturday and travel to Walsall for their final game. We could be kicking off against Swindon with a real chance of gaining thirteenth place. That would be a nail biting finish.

Can Karl Robinson be the new Les Gore?