After a very disappointing 1-1 draw with Oxford yesterday, we now have to look back on what went wrong on Tuesday night as Karl Robinson and Ricky Holmes returned to The Valley in a poor performance from Charlton as we drew 1-1 against our former manager.
So let’s start with Saturday’s win against Barnsley. We all know that this is a huge win for us to beat someone like Barnsley and it shows we can mean business this season. Unfortunately for us, the consistency in winning games is almost non-existent aside from the four-game win streak we had earlier in the season, but even that feels like a long time ago.
In the first half of Tuesday’s game against the Us, Charlton was more or less the better side however it was not until almost halfway through the first half Charlton started piling on the pressure and playing well which resulted in Ben Reeves being taken down from Oxford keeper Simon Eastwood. Lyle Taylor was the man to step up and he sent the keeper the wrong way to put the Addicks 1-0 up.
So we were winning at halftime, exactly what we wanted now can we hold on to get the win or kill the game off? No., of course, we can’t. That is the one thing we have always had a problem with, we get too comfortable with being 1-0 up and no team should be comfortable at that scoreline. Sometimes I don’t like winning 1-0 especially if we are playing someone like Oxford because it doesn’t show our dominance it just looks to everyone else like we only just got the win rather than being the better team. Okay, they are certain situations where a 1-0 win is great but honestly, we need to be beating teams like Oxford if we have any chance of a shot at promotion.
To be the team we have the potential to be we need to be quicker with the ball at our feet, make those quick sharp passes and also make them count at the same time because the defences in this league would not be able to handle us at our best and I think that’s what we need to adapt to become a real threat again rather than what we are doing now, being that team that can surprise you. It’s not good enough.
I also think it may be time to put some of our youth talents into the mix, Toby Stevenson is an obvious contender and from what he showed us at Stevenage he could probably play upfront too rather than defence. Some of those players who played in that game defiantly deserve to be on the bench and to get a bit of game time, it is great to see our young players joining the first-team however, with Roland looming around the club still who knows what will happen.
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