Time to move on from Murphy
Charlton manager Alan Curbishley has moved to explain to the club's supporters why midfielder Danny Murphy was allowed to join Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday.
The former Liverpool star switched across London to White Hart Lane minutes before the January transfer deadline, after snubbing Spurs to join Charlton for £2.5m just 18 months ago.
And Curbishley revealed that the England hopeful had been unsettled by transfer talk - predominantly linking him with a move to Newcastle United - and was unhappy with the manager's decision to leave him out of the team in recent weeks.
Reacting to comments made by Murphy following his £2m move to North London, the Addicks chief said: "When you bring a player into a club and you fit a system around him and give him an opportunity to go out and express himself, you do feel very disappointed, and I'm sure the fans do too, with some of the comments he made regarding Spurs and ourselves.
"I suppose that now he's a Spurs player his social diary will be fuller because I'm sure Spurs players get invited to premieres and openings that the little old Charlton players don't.
"I'm also sure that Sven Goran Eriksson goes to White Hart Lane more than he does The Valley.
"And if Martin Jol decides that he's never going to leave him out of the side then it'll be a great move for him because he wasn't happy with that when he got left out of the side here.
"We've read about how much bigger Spurs are than us and what else they've got going for them but our average league position over the past five years is better than theirs.
"So I'm a little bit disappointed with comments like that but, for me, a line's been drawn under it now. I just want to let our fans know what happened.”
The 28-year-old made 64 appearances for the Valley outfit, scoring 10 goals, before his departure.
His final appearance in a Charlton shirt was at Goodison Park at the start of January.
Curbishley continued: "The transfer was a last minute thing and I still wasn't too sure if it was going to go through after the West Brom game. "Danny became increasingly unsettled over the last month with all the Newcastle stuff, although I kept reassuring him that there was nothing in it.
"But when the Tottenham thing reared up he made it quite clear that he wanted to go there. Just because a player wants to leave a club doesn't necessarily mean that he goes, but he forced the issue a little bit and kept on at it - we're all very disappointed.
"It was only two months ago he was being championed for the England squad after playing so well for us. But he became increasingly disillusioned in terms of he felt there was another club out there for him, he wanted to go and he made that quite clear.
"During the last month, I made six changes to the team for Arsenal and he was kept in the side and got himself sent off. After that, he went up to Everton and played poorly. I didn't think he was in the right frame of mind for us, I told him that and he agreed.
"The speculation wasn't doing him any favours and then I decided that because we needed to turn the results around we were going to have to change and change we did.”
That change resulted in Murphy being dropped from the team, although the playmaker did have treatment on a hamstring injury after the Everton match.
"When it's all going well, great, but when it's not going so well you have to dig in a little bit,” added Alan.
"The team has changed and the players that have gone out for us recently have dug in, they've tried their hardest to turn this run of results around and to get us back on track.
"We've go a squad big enough, I didn't need to bring anyone else in at the 11th hour.”
Charlton travel to White Hart Lane this Sunday for a live on Sky Premiership game - Murphy is not expected to face his old teammates.
The Murphy saga aside, Curbishley expects a show-stopping game for the TV cameras.
"We got to Spurs on Sunday in full knowledge that the 3-2 at The Valley earlier in the season was a great game, but one we should have won.
"We will also remind ourselves of what we did last season at White Hart Lane when we won 3-2 because we normally put on a good show there and that's what I'm hoping for this weekend.
"Forget Danny Murphy's just been transferred to them - that has nothing to do with it.
"We'll go over to Spurs and we'll try our hardest.”
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