ALAN Pardew claims he was unsurprised to discover Zabeel Investment would not to be taking over Charlton Athletic.

The Addicks boss was told the news yesterday morning, 24 hours before the Charlton fans were stunned by the revelation the proposed takeover was off.

Pardew dropped the bombshell to his squad this morning at the training ground and although it came as no shock to him personally, the manager was the first to admit the news could well have serious implications in SE7.

He explained: “I think it was no great surprise to myself. I had one which collapsed at West Ham, they happen.

“The reason I’m not surprised is because the world is moving in strange waters at the minute with the credit crisis, banks collapsing and refunding etc etc.

“It is not a time that you would want to pitch in in business. That was in my mind – will it go ahead because these are turbulent times?

“There is a situation where we now have to regroup a little bit here, the board, myself and the chief executive, and decide where we are going to go, whether we are going to continue to look for buyers or are we going to start focusing on the next two or three years?

“It is pretty evident the board were very keen to move the club on.

“I suppose that is the best way of putting it, but we have to protect ourselves.”

Pardew added: “It is very difficult because it is like all companies and organisations around the world, it is about leadership.

“It drives the thing forward, so I think in the next couple of weeks we are going to have to sit down and decide what we are going to do.

“My view at the minute, and where we are with results, is that I’m going to have to seriously look at the youngsters in this team because I don’t think there is any investment and that is pretty obvious.

“In terms of bringing someone in on loan, which is something I talked about after the game on Tuesday, that is now out of the equation.

“I think in the next window we might have to have a bit more trimming to be done, so in terms of how we go about that we are going to have to be very careful because we are in a vulnerable position at the minute.”

Pardew conceded he wasn’t sure if all the takeover talk had been a distraction on the pitch or not.

He said; “It is very hard to put your finger on something like that.

“Everybody was looking at what would happen if they came in and you can’t help but talk about that sort of stuff, players, staff and valley staff.

“I just told the players this morning because it was announced at 10am in the City, which I think was the procedure. I told them at 10.30am and said there isn’t going to be a radical change in the foreseeable future of new ownership and maybe new investment, which was sort of worded around.

“But now we need to look each other in the eye and get on with business and the business for us in the short term is results.

“We need to get some results quickly.

“I looked at the team and analysed the last two games and I think we’ve been a bit unfortunate, but I can’t get away from the fact we are just not scoring enough goals.”

Charlton were booed off the pitch by the Valley faithful after Tuesday’s 2-0 defeat at the hands of Bristol City and the manager had few complaints with their reaction.

He said: “Quite rightly so because the second half was our worst display of the season.

“We lost our way and the air came out of our balloon a little bit because we had that brilliant spell in the first half and didn’t score.

“If the fans can give us what they gave us on Tuesday night I will be delighted because I thought they were brilliant.

“It is obvious if you are the manager of a football team which isn’t winning games you are going to get criticism.

“My view of that always is you have to earn your money, that is when good managers should come to their fore in difficult times.

“When things are going well and you are winning games it is an easy job, but it isn’t easy when things are tough.”

Pardew added: “One or two players look like they are losing confidence and I’ve got to nip that in the bud quickly. I’ve tried to do that and I thought we were in a great mood prior to the game on Saturday at Cardiff and on Tuesday.

“We’ve not had a break, not had a goal and unfortunately that wore off. I genuinely feel we have good players here and we will get results.

“I’m going to change the team a little bit on Saturday and I’m going to change maybe the formula of the way we play because I need to put something in place which is going to get us better results over the season, not just looking short term.”