Charlton Athletic Online

Monday night sees Charlton live on TV for an away game at Bristol Rovers; it is a chance for the Addicks to shine, which is something that may be a bit foreign to them. 2010 certainly cannot be called a vintage year so far, and even if it does end up promotion to the Championship, the last few weeks will be recalled only as a low point that the team bounced back from. The issue is just that the team need to bounce back, as they are in pretty poor form at present.

The point gained at Swindon in the last game may look good on paper, but those that saw it (of which I was not one) claim that Charlton were very much second best, inferior, and lucky to get anything from the match. That followed another 1-1 draw at Walsall, who are hardly setting the division alight, and a similar score at home versus relegation candidates Tranmere. Prior to that was the home defeat to Orient, so it is four games since Charlton last won – the club’s longest winless run of the season in the league. This sequence of results has seen the club drop back from the front runners at the top of the table to become also rans, vying with other clubs to maintain one of the play-off places come the end of the season. It is not beyond the club to push on and get back to challenging for automatic promotion, but it really would take a very good run-in over the last sixteen games to get in front of either Leeds or Norwich.

So what has gone wrong since the turn of the year? Certainly the enforced lay-off due to the snowy weather did not help, and since the thaw the pitches at everywhere except the Valley have been pretty awful – muddy and uneven. This has not helped Charlton’s play, or the teams confidence, as it is pretty hard for a skilful player to run along the pitch and try to kick the ball not knowing if it will be where he thinks it is when he started swinging the peg. The other thing that has hurt the team, is the constant switching of the formation and tactics; while I see no problem have a flexible squad that can be picked and played to suit certain conditions and opponents, the fact that manager Phil Parkinson is still searching for a best team in any game is worrying. We have good players, but they are either not performing, or not in the team. Hopefully the bad weather is now starting to recede (even if it is still very cold) and we should be OK in home games where we know the Valley will provide a decent enough surface. At away games, we may struggle, especially as Rovers are another of those teams (like Wycombe) who share their pitch with a rugby club.

Parky will need to counter this problem, but first, he will have to pick the right personnel to get Charlton back into a winning mode, and that to me means playing our best players. It does seem that through circumstance, we have yet to play our best eleven (even allowing for Kelly Youga’s injury), and now we seem to have sorted out the problematic left side of midfield through the loan of Kyel Reid, the onus must surely to get the right personnel playing in the other key areas of the pitch. Nicky Bailey is best at supplementing the forwards and bursting forward from midfield, not at playing the holding role. This should mean a return for the club’s best defensive midfielder Jose Semedo, who has been left out of the last couple of matches. Similarly, Lloyd Sam is a better winger than Scott Wagstaff, and he too should come back into the team, especially as Waggy has had a couple of poor away games now and was hauled off at half-time in Wiltshire last time out. With these two changes, the whole team is stronger, and you can vary your tactics around them, with Therry Racon, Jonjo Shelvey, Akpo Sodje, Dave Mooney, and Deon Burton all vying for the two remaining starting places.

Burton’s inclusion is an interesting point; since he was sent off on Boxing Day, his play has been fairly lacklustre, and this resulted in him being rightly dropped for the Swindon game. In that match, Parky ran a variation of a 4-5-1 formation, hoping to over-run the midfield and counter attack quickly; this tactic failed, even though in glimpses it showed that it could have worked. With Rovers being a lot weaker than Swindon are, it would surely be folly to retain a system that did not work if the club really want to win? I’m hoping that the positive spin put on that game and in reports since means that Parky is going to revert to two up front, thereby restoring Burton and appeasing those that said he shouldn’t have been dropped in the first place. With this tactic, and with Semedo coming back into the side, it does mean that either Shelvey or Racon or both are dropped, and this comes down again to hard choices - we cannot play all of our squad in every game. We could switch back to Burton leading the line on his own, but one of the reasons that the team was set up this way early in the season was because of a lack of alternative options; now we have options, and I do think that we must start with two from Burton, Akpo Sodje, and Mooney. If we get the forward line-up right, then the lack of a clean-sheet can by ignored for another week or two.

Labels: Bristol Rovers, Charlton, Nicky Bailey