Charlton beat Plymouth Argyle 2-0 at The Valley today to provide a winning start to Chris Powell's managerial career. It was a great result, but by all accounts not a great performance. With the teams just ahead of us winning, Charlton stay just outside the play off places.
Plymouth just edged the possession, but Charlton had more shots on target, nine to five. A volley by Kari Arnason for the visitors went just over the bar and it was 0-0 at half time.
Wagstaff opened the scoring for the Addicks on 55 minutes when he pounced on a poor back pass by so-called secret weapon Marcel Seip and put the ball past Button in the Plymouth goal. Eccleston made it 2-0 on 90 minutes when he cut inside the defence and scored with a left-footed effort.
Questions have been raised about the official attendance which was surprisingly low at 16,607. My wife and I would have been counted, but we were not there. We went down the M40 to High Wycombe to pick up a train, only to find that none were running. I should have checked, of course. Even if we had reached The Valley before kick off, parking would have been a problem.
Mick Collins has written an interesting essay around today for When Saturday Comes: Charlton
3 comments:
Wyn, it was not a great performance, but there were some significant improvements, the defense looked solid restricting Plymouth to long range speculative efforts. There was very little of the long ball stuff, in fact Dailey regularly brought the ball out of defense into Plymouth's half. The problem as I see it is the "right side", the combination of Francis, Docherty and McCormack is not up to scratch, the other issue is playing with one up front, Anyinsah would be considerably more dangerous with a partner, playing Wagstaff in the hole behind didn't work in my view. Early days but as a lapsed ST holder I thought there were more postives than negatives in yesterday's game, especially when compared to the other games I have seen at the Valley this year.
Agreed. Nice to see the ball on the floor for long periods, but we still had our ditzy periods either side of half-time - what DO they put in the tea? Ecclestone looks useful coming off the bench, but also looks as though he needs some Shredded Wheat, thick steaks and Creatin if he's not going to be minced by some of the defender thugs.
Yes Wyn we were doing the Aylesbury/Princes Risborough shuffle on the way there and back. There were signs if change - more playing to feet, except when the old habits crept back at the end of the first half. Encouragement from Chrissy to celebrate Waggy's goal and, probably most importantly, a more positive crowd. The players are still the same though. Nathan Eccleston hasn't yet got the goal anxiety that Charlton players seem to suffer from. As you say, good result shall we say despite the performance.
Post a Comment