Charlton 2-0 Swansea City

The opening day of the season is usually associated with glorious weather, so I was hoping the wind and rain weren't a bad omen for our chances against Swansea yesterday. Luckily, these fears were unfounded as the Addicks notched up a win and three points.

To be honest, we are going to face much stronger opponents than the Swans but they still had to be beaten. So it was to everybody's relief when Mark Hudson made a dream start to his Charlton career with a powering header within the first few minutes. Set pieces have never seemed to be our strong point and I hardly remember us scoring from a corner last season. Shelvey's corner was well taken though and Hudson made no mistake.

As only Charlton can do, they made us sweat for the next 80 minutes before putting the game to bed with another header, this time courtesy of Andy Gray. Our cause was certainly helped when the Jacks were reduced to ten men after two yellow cards picked up in quick succession by Garry Monk, but even then we didn't look entirely comfortable.

At the back, Weaver made a couple of decent saves although was also guilty of fumbling a couple (although to be fair the slippery ball and surface hardly helped). Fortune and Hudson looked fairly solid at the heart of the defence and Youga looked decent at left back, showing some pretty good defensive qualities as well as an ability to get forward. For me, Semedo looked out of position at right back and when Yassin is back from suspension I would recall him and revert to playing Semedo where he plays best, as a ball winning midfielder.

This was something that we lacked yesterday. Shelvey and Racon worked hard but are both inexperienced and probably too similar to play together in the middle of the park. In an ideal world I would have Semedo in the holding role in midfield with Zheng accompanying him as a more attacking option. Whether he returns to The Valley after the Olympics remains to be seen though. Shelvey or Racon would certainly be an adequate replacement in the attacking role with some match experience under their belts however.

On the flanks, Thomas was his usual frustrating self and leaves me tearing my hair out whenever he gets the ball. Sam did OK and I think the arrival of Bouazza (which half the crowd did not seem to know about until his name was read out as a substitute!) will certainly provide him with some competition for his place. Up front, Varney and Gray never really got going and didn't show as much of an understanding as I would have liked. Gray took his goal well though and Varney should have added a third late on.

Overall then, not a performance to write home about but we came away with three points against a frustrating team to play against ... something we all too often failed to do last season. Reading some of Pardew's comments, it would seem that there could be one or two new arrivals in the offing to provide some much needed strengthening in certain areas. Hopefully the players we have by the end of August can very quickly gel into a team to compete in this division because it's going to be a long and difficult season. Still, second in the table after day one (if only thanks to alphabetical order) ... let's hope we'll still be there come May.