Time to end the feud

Charlton have called an end to their simmering feud with Chelsea. When Roman Abramovich and his entourage of Stamford Bridge VIPs arrive at The Valley tomorrow they should receive a warm welcome.

After three serious confrontations about players and a pitch it is hard to be sure there will be no remnants of bad feeling.

But the Premier League should be able to rest relatively easy that they will not be called upon to pull the two clubs apart again.

Charlton chairman Richard Murray said: "Our relationship with Chelsea is now good and there are no problems.

"We sit next to each other at league meetings and I have a lot of time for the people I deal with there."

If things go smoothly it should signal the end of an unusual rivalry which has spanned two Stamford Bridge regimes.

First, there was the row over the Stamford Bridge 'beach' in January last year when the Premier League fined Chelsea £5,000 for failing to inform Charlton about the state of the surface.

They felt less bruised about the outcome of the Scott Parker stand-off a year later, their first confrontation with the Abramovich regime.

While unhappy that their star player had pushed too hard for a move and suspicious about the advice Parker was getting, the basic £10million fee Charlton eventually agreed was good business. Outside the boardroom, this issue is what will matter most to fans at The Valley tomorrow.

Parker's move turned him from hero to villain amid stories of training ground spats in an unedifying transfer saga. Tomorrow will be his first chance to return and face the fans but he is still a bit-part player at Chelsea and unlikely to start.

Murray said: "My view is the reception will be mixed. Plenty of people will applaud him because of what he did for us but others will feel it was the wrong time for him to leave.

"I still thank him for everything he did for the club. He was a real talisman for a couple of years and for a man who came out of the youth system we got a fair price. You cannot say whether Chelsea would still have been there for him if he had waited until the summer to leave."

If Parker does make it on to the pitch tomorrow Charlton fans will see a different type of midfielder. He said: "At Charlton I was something of an up and downer but now I'm playing as the anchor midfielder which is pretty much defensive. I'm more restricted but it suits my attributes. It's a position I really want to nail down and make my own."

Parker's transfer should have been the end of the Siberian chill between Charlton and Chelsea.

But part of the midfielder's deal included provision for striker Carlton Cole to stay for a second season on loan with Charlton.

When he chose not to stay in the summer another row blew up. Chelsea loaned Cole to Villa instead and when the Stamford Bridge club could not offer Charlton an acceptable alternative, Valley lawyers combed the small print of their contracts.

The Premier League again were called in but the clubs managed to settle things on their own and Chelsea paid an undisclosed but significant compensation fee.

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