Madrid: Charlton beat Sheffield Wednesday 1-0 at The Valley today through a 23rd minute goal from Scott Wagstaff. The initial shot from the top scorer was blocked, but he put the rebound into the bottom corner.
At last the Addicks had a clean sheet and the victory put them back in the play off places. Six points out of nine against Brighton, Carlisle and the Owls is good enough. Brighton beat Peterborough 3-0 at their place today, so presumably there will now be demands for the Posh manager to go.
Nicky Weaver was kept busy early on, blocking efforts from Fry and Jackson.
The stats show that Charlton edged the possession. Both sides had just four shots on target, although the Addicks had more off target. They had more corners (eleven to six) but they presumably were not very productive.
Rumours circulating at The Valley today suggest a revived interest from the Dennis Wise consortium in buying Charlton, but I have no confirmation of that. Certainly they weren't talking about it at the bar round the corner.
I notice that Crystal Palace are bottom of the Championship aftera 0-3 home defeat.
6 comments:
That was a very good first half, with plenty of dangerous crosses that needed to be attacked. Benson won the majority of the headers and looked sharp (but seemed to disappear in the second half) Weaver made at least three outstanding saves in the first 30 mins. Shame we couldn't get the much sought after second goal. The Owls performance was summed up by their left back smacking a late free kick from twenty two yards miles over the crossbar. Don't think Joe should of been substituted but Semedo was walking a tight line (having been previously booked) What would be nice is for someone to take responsibility and take a shot at goal (things can happen)
Wyn, where are you staying? Maybe I can pop over this afternoon (we have to leave this evening) although I don't have internet in the house here.
Sorry, I went out this afternoon with my business partner from www.footballeconomy.com Somehow I always thought you were some way from Madrid. I will be back.
We normally live an hour away towards Portugal but my mother-in-law has Alzheimers so we usually spent half the week here and most weekends these days.
Let me know when you return and we can arrange a beer.
Parkinson's very happy with this result, clearly, but to describe it as "the perfect result" is a bit much. Maybe not you PP, but some of us saw 5-0 win against Southampton, wins against Chelsea and Arsenal (at highbury no less), wins over Liverpool and Villa.
The poverty of ambition here, when winning 1-0 with, in honesty few clear chances for the second (barring Benson's awful miss, or the referee actually giving us a decision) is shocking. Clearly the message to the players is that that is good enough. Well, IT ISN'T - we are now 6th, not entirely sure how, but that's where we are. That's where we finished last season, and it wasn't good enough then. We need to be in an automatic place (indeed, we probably need to be about 10-15 pts clear given our ability to crumble under pressure late season). Lets not forget where we were before Youga got injured last year.
It is vital to finish teams off, which we didn't do on saturday. It happened they weren't good enough to get back into it.
Yes, a very good first half indeed - they really controlled the game then. I'm not so sure, however, that a second goal would have helped (think 3-0, then 3-3), since Charlton has hardly ever in its history had the ability to finish off weak opposition properly. I presume it is simply not taught at the Valley - the club is far too nice.
Indeed, Charlton's own rather surreal law of inverted returns in my 62 years' watching them tends to run thus: the more you go ahead, the more likely it is that you will lose the lead, or at least manage to give your supporters a whole portfolio of stress-related conditions (especially if watching Ceefax). In this case, I think we had to give considerable thanks for a very poor Wednesday performance (save from Nicky Weaver).
But it was so very welcome - when did Charlton last hold out at 1-0 for 70 minutes or so? It is just not Charlton to do that sort of thing.
The midfield triangulation was good and often pretty, Dailly was a class act and Benson imdeed looked good for the first half - but I cannot see him reaching the 40% strike rate he had with D&R (goals divided by appearances) - which might at last have give us a name to put alongside Mendonca, Hunt and Bent. So often (eg recently Bailey) it has been the club's midfielders who have have kept the goals-for respectable, and in that tradition Scott Wagstaff is now sitting proud.
But I shouldn't carp...... the usual misery of a Saturday evening being replaced two weeks running by a silly grin is brilliant...... indeed, it is more than my wife can comprehend......and the grin is still there even two days later! But there is always Tuesday evening (Swindon, away)to get back to normality.
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