Charlton Athletic pounced as Brighton released striker - It wasn't a good move | OneFootball

Charlton Athletic's decision to sign striker Tomer Hemed after his release by Brighton & Hove Albion proved to be a disaster.

Charlton Athletic are preparing to return to the Championship for the first time in five years after winning promotion from League One last season.

Charlton sat as low as 14th in the League One table in mid-December, but they surged up the table in the second half of the season to book their place in the play-offs, and they secured promotion with a 1-0 win over Leyton Orient in the final at Wembley.

After a busy summer of transfer activity, the Addicks will be hopeful they can establish themselves back in the Championship, and perhaps the most crucial piece of business the club have done since promotion is tying manager Nathan Jones down to a new five-year contract.

Of course, for any newly-promoted team to survive in the second tier, they must carry an attacking threat, but that is unlikely to be too much of a worry for Charlton, with new signings Isaac Olaofe and Charlie Kelman adding to Jones' existing options, including the likes of Matty Godden, Miles Leaburn and Tyreece Campbell.

However, while the Addicks look to have the necessary firepower this time around, a lack of goals was a huge issue during their previous spell in the Championship, and the signing of Tomer Hemed did little to solve the problem, despite his prolific spell at Brighton & Hove Albion.

Charlton Athletic would have expected more from Tomer Hemed after Brighton & Hove Albion exploits

Few had heard of Hemed when he made the move to Brighton from Spanish side Almeria in the summer of 2015, but he quickly made a name for himself in English football.

The Seagulls had finished 20th in the Championship in the season before Hemed's arrival, but with experienced manager Chris Hughton at the helm and the former Israel international leading the line, they quickly emerged as serious promotion contenders in the 2015-16 campaign.

Hemed scored his first goal for Brighton on just his third appearance with a 94th-minute penalty that secured a 2-1 victory at Fulham, and that would be the start of an outstanding debut campaign at the Amex Stadium that saw him score 17 goals and provide five assists in 48 appearances.

Among Hemed's many highlights from his first season with the Seagulls, he scored three braces against Ipswich Town, Leeds United and MK Dons and hit a hat-trick in the reverse fixture against Fulham, but it was not enough to secure promotion for his side as they missed out on the top two on goal difference before losing to Sheffield Wednesday in their play-off semi-final.

Hemed's output decreased slightly the following season as he shared the goalscoring burden with new signing Glenn Murray, but he still managed to score 14 goals and register five assists in 41 games as Brighton achieved promotion to the Premier League for the first time in their history.

After scoring just twice in 19 appearances during the Seagulls' first season in the top flight, Hemed joined Queens Park Rangers on loan in the summer of 2018, and he netted seven times in 29 games for the R's before being released by the East Sussex outfit after his return from Loftus Road.

Tomer Hemed's Charlton Athletic move turned into a nightmare

After winning promotion from League One following a dramatic last-gasp victory over Sunderland in the play-off final, Hemed was one of three strikers signed by Charlton in the summer of 2019, along with Chuks Aneke and Macauley Bonne.

While Aneke and Bonne were both unproven at Championship level, Hemed arrived at The Valley with a proven track record in the second tier from his time at Brighton and - to a lesser extent - QPR, and manager Lee Bowyer would have been hopeful that the striker's experience could help his side in their survival bid.

Charlton made an outstanding start to life back in the Championship, and they sat second in the table at the end of August after picking up 14 points from their opening six games of the season, but they were unable to maintain that strong form, and it was not long until they were dragged into a relegation battle as they plummeted down the table.

Hemed was thrown straight into the team by Bowyer after joining the Addicks, but just as he was beginning to get up to speed, he was sidelined for almost three months between October and January due to injury, and he was unable to nail down a regular place in the starting line-up after his return.

The 38-year-old failed to score a single goal in 19 appearances for Charlton, with only nine of those coming from the start, and it was little surprise when he was released by the club at the end of his contract in the summer following their relegation to League One.

The Addicks were the third-lowest scorers in the division in the 2019-20 season, and they fired blanks in 15 of their 46 league games, which underlines just how costly Hemed's underperformance was for Bowyer's men as they dropped back into the third tier.

Having established legendary status during his spell at the club as a player, Hemed returned to Brighton as an academy mentor last summer, and it is fair to say that he is more fondly remembered at the Amex Stadium than he is at The Valley, where the hope will be that their current recruits give them the best possible chance of a sustained Championship stay.