CHARLTON 1 (Taylor 24p) OXFORD 1 (Whyte 70)
Attendance: 9,984 (538 Oxford) Charlton Steer; Dijksteel, Pratley, Pearce (C), Solly; Cullen, Reeves (Ward, 75), Aribo, Fosu (Bielik 88); Grant, Taylor.Oxford DEastwood, Dickie (Hanson, 60), Nelson, Brannagan, Browne (Whyte, 66), Holmes (Carruthers, 90), Ruffels, Mousinho, Henry, Mackie, McMahon.
Summary
Much disappointment at The Valley as Charlton followed up an impressive victory versus Barnsley with a frustrating flat performance against ex-manager Karl Robinson's Oxford. Charlton led through a Lyle Taylor's penalty but was cancelled out with twenty to go. Oxford's equaliser was controversial as they counter-attacked whilst Josh Cullen was stricken on the floor with a head injury.
Post Match comments
Bowyer:
“It was a very frustrating evening for a number of reasons. We didn’t really play today. I thought we started off alright, but then they stopped us well. Their game plan seemed to be working and they just came to disrupt things with the way they set up. They kept buying fouls, slowing everything down and, even when they were losing, they weren’t even trying to hurry things up – maybe they thought they would score at some time, but fair play to them. “They got a point, but we didn’t do the right things.”
“The final ball in the final third wasn’t good, we gave the ball away and made the wrong decisions, but we’re going to have to get used to that because that’s what teams are going to do. They’re going to come and try and make things difficult for us, but you have to keep going.
“It’s two points dropped, for me. You can’t dropping points like that at home. But it’s football and we’ve got another game on Saturday, so we have to make sure we’re ready for that and go again.”
“To be fair, I don’t think their goal should have stood. There was a head injury to Josh Cullen on the floor and the fourth official was shouting and telling the ref that it was a head injury, but they’ve gone and put one on the top corner. On Saturday, we had the same situation against one of their players when we were in a similar situation and the referee stopped play. I told that to the ref after the game. He heard the shout that it was a head injury and they’ve gone and scored. We’ve had it done to us loads of times where our attack has been stopped, but for some reason, he didn’t want to stop it and they scored from it. We can’t control that.”
STATBANK Player Marks
Reeves = 6.82
Taylor = 6.60
Solly = 6.55
Pearce = 6.55
Dijksteel = 6.54
Cullen = 6.46
Pratley = 6.25
Steer = 6.18
Aribo = 6.00
Grant = 5.71
Fosu = 5.08
Team Average = 6.23
At the game...
@Blucher :
What a very poor game of football. We always seem to struggle on these Tuesday night games with a very small crowd and tonight, ultimately, proved no exception.
A decent first half in which we were far better than a very poor Oxford team but were unable to press home our all round superiority. A 1-0 half time lead looked a good foundation against an apparently impotent opponent but we repeatedly floundered and, as the game wore on, the possibility of a sucker punch loomed into view. A set play looked the most likely source but a thumping strike from just inside the box provided the equaliser and understandably lifted a very limited Oxford side for the last 20 minutes or so.
We created next to nothing in the second half and I thought a draw was probably a fair result at the end of a fairly dismal affair.
A very disappointing performance from Charlton side and one which casts real doubt about our promotion credentials.
This is a better side, man for man than last season’s play-off team (especially offensively), but they really now need to start proving it with a run of results.
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HERE(Photo credit: Kyle Andrews on twitter)
