Love was in the air this Valentine’s as Charlton looked to rebound from the poor performance at home to Fleetwood with a visit to bottom-of-the-table Forest Green Rovers. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to love about Charlton’s performance, though we looked bright at times. Charlton dominated possession and took an early lead with a goal from Corey Blackett-Taylor driving into the box and getting on the end of a Rak-Sakyi through ball, after a clever bit of skill to burst past his marker. Charlton continued to dominate possession, but failed to capitalise with any end product. There wasn’t much else to love as the game turned more and more scrappy.
The second half was much like the first. That is, until about 75 minutes on. Forest Green, who up to this point mostly looked out of their league, benefitted from a few set pieces to grow in confidence and put Charlton on the back foot. Set piece after set piece exposed Charlton’s defensive frailties. We conceded possession and dropped very deep, so Forest Green kept coming. Fortunately for the Addicks, Forest Green was devoid of an attacking edge and they failed to find their equaliser. Charlton struggled to hang on, but did manage to defend well enough to see the game out. Ashley Maynard-Brewer made a fantastic save down to his right to keep our lead and help ensure the three points.
If we play like that against Derby and/or Sheffield Wed in the next couple of weeks we’ll be played off the pitch. Fortunately, we tend to rise to the better teams in the league, so let’s keep our collective fingers crossed.
Forest Green 0 Charlton 1
Over to you.
15
Comments
My eyes! What a load of absolute boring shite.
How can we descend so completely from a first half hour of complete albeit mostly toothless control to resembling a bunch of Hackney Marsh level hoofers all the second half? All Forest Green did was to close us down and apply some pressure, and we just couldn’t handle it.
A clean sheet win, so that’ll cheer Sandgaard up, but a performance of embarrassing ineptitude.
We’re going to get fucking buried by Sheffield Wednesday - IF we play like that again. Up to Dean and the guys to get the standards up and quickly.
Managed to keep a clean sheet somehow and gained 3 points. That's all we can really take from that game.
The only positive apart from the clean sheet was Ness, giving another solid performance at the back, and our only creative player JRS...
but we won the game sometimes that the important thing
Again we got into so many good positions but our final ball was poor .. we got it right once guess what we scored .. another poor miss from Raki ..
after Saturday just important to win
Yet the fans still berate
”The performance was poor
But the CL Preview was great”
Totally outplayed in the second half. If FGR could score goals they would have won.
I was a big critic of bonne on Saturday but tonight you could see that playing a loan forward up front is not working for us as Aneke was just as ineffective tonight.
Will be amazed if we get anything out if the next 4 games if we play anything like tonight in those games.
Only positive was Hector, who looked like a professional footballer dropped in to a Sunday league match.
especially when it comes to Charlton.
All in all in my opinion I don’t think we’ve really looked that good since the first half of the Lincoln game (United game being a bit of a different beast). Our midfield seems to fade out of games and then we lose control from there.
But we are finding ways to win, and for as poor as we are defensively you can’t accuse the players of not putting their bodies on the line.
Thought Hector looked like he might have something about him when he came on - but I suppose the way we were playing at the time did give him that chance to shine.
What about the interesting stuff?
How was the food at the ground?
Did you piss in the toilets and water the pitch?
Did anyone do anything romantic?