AFC Wimbeldon the visitors to The Valley today, on the occasion of the first match since
brave Ben Jay’s passing. Ben’s life was marked before kick-off with a beautiful photo tribute and entirely fitting minute of applause. Emotions were high all around.
Unfortunately, our habit of loose defending across the back line let Wimbledon in. They took the lead from a set piece where Mac failed to hold a catch under pressure (too much?) and their forward stabbed the ball home. It took fifteen minutes before we grew into the game. Our chance also came from a set piece, where Albie Morgan continues to provide (mostly) quality deliveries. Morgan found Innis at the near post. Innis glanced a header past the keeper and into the back of the net. The big man immediately ran to the halfway line and paid tribute to young Ben by holding up the young man’s tribute shirt.
This was a game of set piece defending. It was open and, it’s becoming a habit, we let them behind out back line far too often. The second goal came with a beautiful, outside of the right boot long ball from DJ that put Washington bearing down on the keeper. He slotted home with aplomb to put us ahead and in the ascendancy.
But again, we let ourselves down with poor defending. Wimbledon equalised with another quality set piece. It was deflating to concede before halftime.
The second half saw a brief showing from Wimbledon before we grew back into ascendancy through decent spells of possession. The breakthrough came with another set piece, with Morgan dropping the ball onto Famewo’s head at the far post.
There were more half-opportunities for both sides and Wimbledon applied a worrying bit of pressure in the final ten minutes, but on balance we played the better football and deserved to take all three points.
Charlton 3 AFC Wimbledon 2
Over to you.
Comments
Thought Albie had a great game and a bit harsh to sub him off, but Fraser was good when he came on and you can see he's got excellent quality about him. Maybe it needed to be Morgan for the balance, I dunno.
Dobson was fantastic again, he's really done well to keep his good form up.
PS Knowing us we'll go on to beat Bolton, Wigan and Oxford only to lose to MK dons.
Already Charltonised?
win is a win though and three on the bounce
3 points has cheered me up no end
Form the dog end of the match thread.
Win the next 4 and even I will believe the play offs are possible.
Regardless of the Hartlepools result these 2 league games were a lot bigger than a lot of people gave credit to. 6 points we are looking up, 1 or 2 would have been a completely different story.
I can't remember the last time we knew what divison we would be in next season when the clocks changed.
Just because golfie complains about it not happening enough, it doesn’t mean we should name it after him.
If it did, we’d all be calling blowjobs a “lordy”.
😳
#hmspisstheleague
But something seems to have changed since the Hartlepool game and we are again looking like a decent team.
Also credit again to the boys, who I think often come under lots of unfair criticism on here.
Conceding twice in 90 mins at home under Jacko is uncharacteristic (see stat below) and against better opposition we would’ve paid for it. Thankfully Wimbledon are equally poor at set piece defending so it evened out this afternoon.
(Stat: prior to today, we had only conceded twice in eight league matches at the Valley. Once against Rotherham and once against Wycombe.)
Nowt to do with the football just the comms kept dropping out.
Great win for Ben & his lovely family ♥️
If we beat Bolton then it's two points a game to reach 75 points.
If I was MacGillivray's missus I'd be having kittens every time he picked up their new baby.
Little Morecambe are going to be in big trouble then?