Football is a 90 minute game. It requires 90 minutes of concentration and at the top level (which includes the Championship), lapses in concentration are generally exposed and momentum can be gained and/or lost in a matter of seconds (or goals).
With Richard away sampling the delights of Las Vegas this week (oh how the other half live hey!! :) – I thought I’d provide the match review for our match against Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday.
A work colleague is a Wednesday fan and his face on Monday morning said it all. He’d expected nothing and came away with an early Christmas present. If I’m honest, I thought this match was a given. I thought that we’d enjoy a victory and thought it would be comprehensive as well. Sadly, I was wrong.
Charlton started the match well and were dominant in significant chunks of the first 45 minutes of play, but as we’ve experienced all too often this season, dominance does not win games. Goals do.
Charlton welcomed back the dred-locked veteran Linvoy Primus who rejoined Charlton from Portsmouth and was making his first appearance for the Addicks in over 15 years and within the first ten minutes, he’d nearly put the Addicks in front with a lovely header. Instead, it was striker Luke Varney who put Charlton in front on 20 minutes. Varney was again in the mixer when he hit the post on 25 minutes, but strike partner Andy Gray was unable to turn the ball into the net from the rebound.
It seemed as though Charlton were cruising to many but as the end of the first half approached in two minutes of madness, Sheffield Wednesday not only equalized, but also took the lead. Wednesday’s first goal came from Wade Small who must have called on divine intervention as the red shirts parted and after seeing off a tackle from Mark Hudson fired home thanks in part to the post that helped guide the ball into the net. Wednesday’s second came two minutes later courtesy of Marcus Tudgay as he danced into the Charlton half and was given FAR FAR too much time before he fired home to put the visitors 2 up on the stroke of half time.
Conceding before half time is a huge blow at the best of times, conceding two goals within the last 5 minutes of the half is just self destruction and if I’m brutally honest, its happened far too much this season. I’m finding it hard to pinpoint the cause, but I do think that something needs to be done at the back, in the middle and up front, because it is just not working. Is rotating the team the right thing to do? I’m not so sure. I think the important thing is getting a team settled to allow them to bed in… the problem however, is that I don’t think Pard’s knows what his best team is. I think he left it too late to get this decided. In my opinion, the first few preseason games are about giving everyone a run around and giving the young lads some experience, but for the last few games, it’s about getting the team to settle down and build a mutual confidence in each other, something which I don’t think our players currently have.
Palace (a), Ipswich (h), Cardiff (a) and Bristol City (h) await in our next 4 matches and unless the team find this mutual confidence, we are going to struggle to get what we deserve from these matches. I’m confident that the team will come good, just hope that the players have this confidence and that they understand that they are a top side in this division and that they should be fighting for promotion.
So a bit of a rallying call…. COME ON BOYS…. YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH TO WIN THESE GAMES, YOU JUST NEED TO BELIEVE IT AND HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR ABILITY!
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