A difficult subject

Friends and acquaintances don't know how to broach the subject of Charlton these days. Of course, there's the blunt 'so you reckon you're down then?' or the slightly more sophisticated variant 'I've seen lots of teams with good individual players who have played quite well go down.' There's the sympathetic 'it's not over until it's over/a long way to go yet'. And there's the genuinely enquiring, 'so what went wrong?' which at least enables you to talk about Dowie, Reed etc.

In the last few days, I have encountered three variants on this approach:
The predictable: From a Palace fan, 'Wyn's not very happy because his team is going down.'
The ignorant: From someone with no interest in football, 'How is your team doing these days?'
The surprising: A nice young friend of mine has always made it clear that she regards Charlton as a down market club and my interest in it as hopelessly retro. Her response this week was not to raise the subject and just give me a hug.

Not hard to say which approach I prefer.