Charlton lack creativity as they go down to defeat

In a rather uninspiring match at Vicarage Road, Charlton managed not to concede by half time.  Watford had the edge, but were also unable to score.  One goal could settle it, but Charlton may be seeking to confirm their role as draw specialists.

But it was Watford that went ahead.   They then assumed a more defensive shape but were able to counter attack.  They scored their second goal in the five minutes added on after what Steve Brown described as 'criminal defending'.  

After their recent run of poor results, Watford were the more motivated side and Charlton lacked any creative spark.  Charlton are now 17th in the table.

Under-fire Watford boss Alessio Dionisi rang the changes for his side's crucial meeting with Charlton Athletic at Vicarage Road this lunch-time.   The Hornets have conceded nine goals in their previous two games, including five at Cardiff in the week and, as a result of that, introduced five new faces to his starting XI.

Marc Bola, Krepin Diatta, Iker Bravo, Soumaila Coulibaly and Luca Kjerrumgaard all start, while Othmane Maamma, Martin Payero, Stephy Mavididi and Jordan Zemura are among the substitutes.

Addicks supremo Nathan Jones made a single change to the side who grabbed a dramatic point at Burnley on Tuesday - late scorer Ivan Mesik is rewarded with a start in place of the benched Amari'i Bell.

Out-of-sorts Watford began quite brightly.   Iker Bravo was lively - he collected the ball in the middle and spread the ball to Marc Bola on the Watford left.  He twisted and turned his way into the penalty area but then pulled his shot into the side-netting at Arthur Okonkwo's near post.

Charlton had a good chance to take the lead - or at least have tested Watford goalkeeper Federico Ravaglia.  Billy Koumetio found Ivan Mesik on the left. His first-time cross was a good one and was met by Miles Leaburn, who should have done better but nods wide.   Nathan Jones, typically animated on the touch-line, is frustrated by that - he clearly thought Leaburn's header should have been on target.  This will only add to recent criticisms of Leaburn by many Addicks.

Danny McNamara was the first to go into the book for Charlton.   Karlan Grant gave Watford attacker Marc Bola a nudge and McNamara and Bola collided as a result - the ref gave a free kick to the hosts and booked McNamara, who was pretty bemused by the decision.   I forgot to check who the referee was, but it looks like he is a homer.   However, he did even things up a few minutes later by booking a Hornet for pulling Ramsay's shirt.

A good save from Arthur Okonkwo kept the score goalless.  Watford workedit well, onto the edge of the penalty area. The ball eventually found itself at the feet of Krepin Diatta on the right hand side - he cut inside and fired towards the near post, but Okonkwo was equal to it.   As Watford piled on the pressure, they had another chance to score, but the shot was pulled wide.

After 30 minutes, Watford were clearly on top.  Luca Kjerrumgaard found Myron Boadu, who had peeled away from the last line of the unsettled Charlton defence, but Billy Koumetio recovered and produced an excellent last-ditch challenge to deny the forward.  Watford recycled it but Kjerrumgaard fired over the bar. The beleaguered hosts have shown a bit of urgency and have moved the ball a fair bit better than Charlton thus far.

As the half drew to a close, Charlton, for perhaps the first time in this match, enjoyed a sustained spell of possession, albeit they have were not able to truly worry Watford.  The Addicks have tried to get the ball to Karlan Grant and Tyreece Campbell in the wide areas, but so far they have been successfully nullified by their hosts.  Billy Koumetio went as close as anybody for the Addicks when he directed Campbell's mis-hit towards goal but the ball curled wide of the angle of post and bar.

HT: 0-0

Luca Kjerrumgaard broke the deadlock after half-time when he converted a rebound from close range when Charlton goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo could not hold onto a shot by Edo Kayembe.

Hornets stopper Federico Ravaglia made a big save at 1-0 to keep his side ahead, before Jordan Zemura finished things off with a fine finish in stoppage time.

Watford's Edo Kayembe took the game by the scruff of the neck in the second half and it was his driving run from halfway which led to the opening goal.  His deflected shot from the edge of the penalty area was parried by Okonkwo, with Swedish striker Kjerrumgaard ideally placed to control his volleyed finish.

Kayembe forced another fine save from Okonkwo and then blazed a further golden chance high and wide, before Ravaglia somehow thwarted Charlie Kelman's shot from a couple of yards out at the other end.

Watford secured the points - and potentially Dionisi's job, for now at least - deep in added time as Rocco Vata picked a perfect pass for Zemura, who expertly lifted his shot over the goalkeeper.

It is now eight league matches without a win for Nathan Jones' Charlton.

Nathan Jones did not spare the players in his comments to BBC Radio London: We didn't pass the ball well, we didn't defend well, and had three clear-cut chances. It's always going to be important to take the first chance because of the predicament they [Watford] have been in.  We had the best chances of the game in the first half, and then had another and didn't take them.

"Then we were really poor on transitional play. [The first goal] was a catastrophic goal from our point of view. Teams are not having to do a hell of a lot to score against us.  We're not defending our box well enough, we're not doing the basics. We've broken the record at this club for clean sheets, and we're not looking like that now."

On the March

Richard Cawley reports that Charlton are set to offer a short-term contract to former Brighton winger Solly March. The 32-year-old has been without a club since leaving Brighton at the end of last season. March is a player that Nathan Jones knows very well, worked with him when he was part of the coaching staff at the South Coast club.

March has suffered from injury setbacks during his career: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solly_March

Skipp is not for the skip and Ouma is not hiding in one

Nathan Jones has come to the defence of Oliver Skipp who has been criticised by Charlton fans.  “We haven’t lost many games since he has come in,” Jones told South London Sport: Charlton Athletic Edition.   [That may have something to do with other players, a correlation is not causation, WG] “He is a really energetic defensive midfield player that progresses the ball."

“He hasn’t played a lot of football. He is doing fine for us. I’ve got no problem with Skippy.  There will be more to come from him when he gets rhythm but he was brought here for us to have more possession - and we are having that. So he is doing a big chunk of his work for us.  One, he wins the ball back for us. Two, we are keeping the ball better now than we have. That shows that people are doing their job and he has been a part of that.

Jones neither confirmed nor denied there was an issue with Timothy Ouma after his absence last weekend.  There had been suggestions the Kenyan midfielder had not returned on time from international duty.

“It would be wrong of me because it is quite a complex situation,” said Jones, asked today if there was any clarification on the 22-year-old, signed on loan from Slavia Prague in August. “Rather than me coming out and saying something direct - it’s a work in process.  There are a lot of things going on around that, that we have to be sure about, before we release any statement. We are not trying to hide anything.”

WG: The problem is that Ouma has previous for this type of unsatisfactory conduct.  Surely by now the club must know something? 

Hornets' nest in chaos

The rumour mill has been suggesting that tomorrow's opponents Watford are posed to sack their coach Alessio Dionisi but it looks as if he might be staying on to succumb to the curse of Charlton tomorrow, but can Charlton take advantage of the disarray at Vicarage Road?https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cmd7qv7l2530o 

Having beaten 0-4 at home last week by Burnley and succumbed to Cardiff 5-1 away, making four successive defeats, the Hornets are now in the relegation zone.   Against Cardiff the Hornets were definitely fragile at the back, but still looked sharp at the back.

One can imagine the chorus of moaning from the armchair managers if Charlton fail to win at Watford, but doubts persist about our ability to score.  Miles Leaburn seems to be replacing Tyreece Campbell as this season's scapegoat player, with some fans saying he is not good enough even for League Two,but as someone pointed out if Haaland jumped ship from City he would have difficulty in getting service from our midfield.

Watford fans think that their weak link is in midfield: https://www.castrust.org/2026/10/goodbye-yellow-brick-road/

New financing deal may not benefit Charlton

Although I do not have all the details, I am far from sure that the new deal between the Premier League and the EFL will be good for clubs like Charlton who are likely to be in the lower half of the Championship.  Apart from anything else, it seems that parachute payments for relegated clubs are likely to continue at near to the current distorting level.

The English Football League (EFL) and Premier League are now only £27 million apart from agreeing a comprehensive new financial solidarity package for the men’s game after years of stop-start talks.

While there are still some other details to decide, the EFL has told the Premier League it will accept the so-called New Deal for Football if the latter ups its latest offer of an extra £180m a year in solidarity payments to £207m annually, with the additional amount ring-fenced for Leagues One and Two.

Under the terms of the last solidarity deal the leagues agreed in 2019, the Premier League currently shares 13 per cent of its £4 billion-a-year media-rights income with the rest of the game, just over £430m a year. Of that sum, more than half goes to half a dozen or so clubs recently relegated from the top flight in the form of parachute payments, with just over £140m shared between the rest of the EFL’s 72 clubs in solidarity payments and a similar sum dished out to fund community projects, football-related charities and small grants to non-league and women’s football.

Last week the Premier League came back with a solidarity offer of 14.7 per cent, which would be worth an extra £180m a year, over a seven-year period. But this would still be distributed on an 80/12/8 basis, with a Championship merit rake of 1.75:1, which means the team that finishes stop of the table gets a central distribution worth 1.75 times the team that finishes bottom.

There are several Championship clubs who believe this will create a new cliff edge within the division but it seems that enough clubs are now happy with the “quantum” on offer to vote it through, providing the Premier League agrees to a five-year deal – which would in effect be a seven-year deal as the IFR has already pointed out that the backstop process would take about two years.

 

Last gasp equaliser

Ivan Mesik scored a 96th-minute equaliser for Charlton to deny Burnley what would have been their first home league win in 360 days.   1,100 Addicks were there.  Charlton remain 12^th pending tonight’s games.

There were just 14 seconds of added time remaining when Slovakian defender Mesik took full advantage of some poor defending by the Clarets to strike home his first goal for the Addicks.  Mesik's dramatic goal came after Largie Ramazani thought he had ended Burnley's long winless league home run when he scored the Clarets' second.

That came after Kayne Ramsay cancelled out Jacob Bruun Larsen's opener for Burnley and Charlton will not care that they are without a victory in seven games after that sensational ending.

Jamie Vardy made his first start for Burnley in place of Zeki Amdouni, who had an ankle injury, and the 39-year-old striker fired well over from his only real effort on goal.  The Clarets took the lead on 36 minutes when Bruun Larsen cut in from the left on to his right foot and his shot went through the Charlton defence and goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo's legs for his second goal in successive games.

The goal brought the Addicks to life and Kyle Walker cleared Billy Koumetio's effort off the line before goalkeeper Gregoire Coudert saved from Lloyd Jones' header and a Karlan Grant attempt.

Charlton kept up the pressure and after Miles Leaburn missed a header at the back post, the visitors equalised on 50 minutes.  Coudert failed to deal with a corner swung into the six-yard box and Ramsay smashed the ball into the roof of the net from close range.

Back came Burnley and Anel Ahmedhodzic fluffed a header before Ramazani produced a piece of magic to restore their lead on 57 minutes. Igor Julio fed Ramazani on the right and Charlton stood off the on-loan Leeds winger, inviting him to finish right-footed into the far corner.

Burnley were nervous and deep into stoppage time, substitute Hjalmar Ekdal failed to deal with a high ball and Coudert made a mess of Mesik's shot to condemn the Clarets to two more dropped points in stoppage time for the second successive game at Turf Moor.

Nathan Jones told BBC Radio London: "I thought we were excellent, I really did. I thought first off we had less control, but we had real clear-cut chances to take the lead and make the scoreline a lot more comfortable for us at half-time.

"At half-time we just reiterated the gameplan and they came out and we were excellent. We really were.

"The disappointing thing is after controlling the early stages of the second half, then we just conceded from a counter-attack. We allowed them to go through us and that's the disappointing thing.

"But I thought we controlled the game, I thought we outpaced them, we worked really hard and they're an ex-Premier League team. I'm really proud of the performance."

Okonkwo's younger brother Brian saved a penalty in the needle derby between Leamington and Redditch and the Brakes went on to score two goals in time added on to make it 2-2.   A strong presence from both Warwickshire and West Mercia police ensured a trouble free game.

 

It's tough 'oop North

Burnley are looking forward to back up their first Championship win of the season with three home points when they welcome the Addicks to Turf Moor tonight.

These midweek away matches in the north of England are always a tough challenge.  Away support will be depleted, although it does give a chance for the quite considerable number of Addicjks exiled in northern parts to support the team.

The only slight concern at Turf Moor is that some players are tired after Saturday's exertions, leaving the manager with something of a rotation dilemma.  However, the expectation is of a clean sheet with Burnley scoring two or three goals.

I have the option of watching the derby between Leamington and Redditch, but trouble is anticipated with both Warwickshire and West Mercia police brought in.

The Clarets picked up their first league victory of the campaign in style at Vicarage Road on Saturday, thrashing Watford 4-0, but they still remain in the relegation zone.

Since winning their opening three games of the season, the Addicks are now on a six-game winless streak (D4 L2) following a 1-1 draw with Bristol City at the weekend and have slipped from top to 12th on that run.

• Burnley have won each of their past five league meetings with Charlton without conceding, with this their first since winning home (4-0) and away (3-0) in 2015-16.

• Charlton have lost six of their previous seven league visits to Burnley, winning the other 1-0 in November 2012.

• Burnley could become only the second side in English Football League/Premier League history to go 20+ consecutive home league matches without a win (currently 19 – D9 L10), after Sunderland (20 from Jan-Dec 2017) and Sheffield Wednesday (23 from Apr 2025-Apr 2026).

• Since the start of last season, the only ever-present side to win fewer away games in the Championship than Charlton (5) are Watford (4).

• Since the start of last season, Charlton have won three of their four Championship away games at sides newly relegated from the Premier League (D1), already winning 2-1 at West Ham this term.