The largest crowd at the Valley in 2025 for Northampton was treated to a great start when Luke Berry opened the scoring on about nine minutes. The ball was whipped on by Matty Godden on the right and muscles area by the Northampton defender who was facing towards his own goal and could only do enough to direct the ball into Luke Berry’s path. Berry stopped in his tracks and caught the ball on the bounce to fire past the visiting keeper.
Unfortunately, the lead was short lived. Northampton made things sticky for the Addicks who found it hard to beat the visitors’ press, let alone string together any passing play. The equaliser came from the penalty spot on about fifteen minutes, after Tom McIntyre inexplicably turned volleyball ace in his own box. Having lost his defender at the far post he rose his hand up out of no where to blatantly scoop the ball away from the incoming defender. Will Mannion was well positioned to defend his goal but wasn’t given the chance and had to then try to save the resulting penalty. Diving the wrong way meant Northampton had equalised. The two sides went into the break even.
Changes were made to Nathan Jones’ side early in the second half, with Chuks Aneke coming on to provide a little more strength up top. McIntyre was taken off and things were shuffled around a bit. Play got better as Northampton’s press correspondingly weakened under tiring legs. But it was still a scrappy, ugly affair, though there were moments. Godden hit the crossbar with a header that then came off the keeper and was cleared. But Godden wasn’t done. The winner came after seventy minutes. Chuks Aneke glanced a header forward from a Mannion goal kick for Godden to chase and then prod past the on-rushing keeper to put the Addicks ahead. Charlton were able to see out the match and take all three, hard-fought points.
Up to fourth in the table and playoffs confirmed. With us still to play the two above us, is second place still on the table?
Charlton 2 Northampton 1
Over to you.
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Comments
except when they’re not gash and do something good. Then they’re good.
If we beat Wycombe on Monday we'll get top 2.
Northampton you've been SUNK!!
Fuck knows what planet the referee was on.
Berry MOM.
Hopefully we won’t be seeing MacIntyre at Wycombe.
Love Matty Godden. A thinking man’s footballer.
Massive win for us though, especially with Wrexham and the hatters dropping points. Two big games coming up - we win those and we can genuinely get 2nd.
Sounds like the result/points eclipsies the performance, which let's face it, with NJ that's more the norm rather than the exception. Grind it out boys...
Well done the Addicks!
Yes, call me a negative Nancy (I'm really not - just a realist) but it would be nice to win by more than a single goal & look comfortable with 10 mins to go.
Looking at other teams recent results I think we'll lose on Monday & Wycombe are now in the box seats for 2nd. Wrexham are now starting to bottle it & can see us winning up there.
Cant see is getting 2nd, especially as our GD is much worse than the other 3 teams around us who can grab it. Only way that will change is if we beat Wycombe & Wrexham by 3 or 4 clear goals, which ain't going to happen.
How on earth does that ref earn a living from refereeing? I hear that our beloved government want want to prevent football fans from asking referees if they're blind! I think they need to watch the decisions made by this ref.
Brilliant atmosphere from all those there, came across very loud and clear.
The dream is still just about there.
Godden did well after his miss to show composure to score and aside from some hopeful balls onto the box we looked fairly comfortable.
One win in nine will ultimately cost us the autos but we will go into the playoffs confident and believing we can beat any of those with us.
not as confident as I was in 2019.
Felt Anderson was unlucky not to get more minutes. He was calm and effective last week at Cambridge in a similar sea of dross but didn't get the chance to follow that up today.