A Soggy Affair at the Valley

Saturday was not a day to remember.  After Charlton lost 2-0 at home to Millwall, England then also suffered at the hands of Wales later on in the rugby.  As ever there are far better accounts of both games on other blogs and sites but I offer my thoughts on the football game.

Rain sodden pitch

A short downpour just before the match did nothing to help the state of the pitch and I expected a couple of miss-kicks or wild sliding tackles leading to the inevitable yellow cards being shown but it was a concentrated and considered approach taken by both teams.  The BBC radio sport summariser was not impressed at a rather dull 0-0 at half time with Charlton, in my opinion, having the edge.

I was somewhat disappointed at the attendance and was expecting more than the crowd of about 18,300.  It may be down to the stricter policy of only allowing members with a purchasing history or that people just didn't want to risk getting caught up in any trouble that might have occurred.

Chris Solly was masterful at keeping danger man Dany N'Guessan (who is much admired at Charlton) quiet down the left wing,   Millwall manager Kenny Jackett grew wise to this and made the substitution that broke the deadlock, bringing on Jermaine Easter shortly after half time to score with his first touch. 

Unfortunately Millwall's defender Danny Shittu was having the same joy in keeping Danny Haynes in his pocket (There are lot of Dannys in this article !  I wonder what the collective noun is?) .  If I had to pick the man of the match it has to go to him for a very calm performance.  Haynes created plenty of goal scoring opportunities but each time he broke away his charge was snuffed out by Shittu.  There were no wild or lunging tackles from him, just an unruffled shielding of the ball until it could be safely cleared.

Good to see Yann back in action

From my angle I felt that David Button will be a tad disappointed that he didn't do better with the second goal from Shane Lowry's free kick but maybe others had a better angle than me and can tell me otherwise.  Whatever one might think this effectively ended the game for Charlton as despite a number of promising spells we could just not break through.

It is not often that I leave before the final whistle is blown but I could not bear four more minutes of extra time and was mindful of the longer walk owing to the restrictions to keep the fans separated.  However, it seems that the police had changed their mind and decided to cordon off Charlton Lane after a short while.  I just manged to squeeze through before the they blocked it.  It seemed rather strange at the time but I can now see why, owing to the bottleneck crossing the narrow footbridge to get over the railway line.  However, the alternative route just put fans into the back streets of SE7 with no sensible exit route.  I don't think any of us had anticipated that and it left some angry fans venting their frustrations.  While I now understand the reasons, can I make a big plea to the club to give out more information to fans and do explaining.  There are always going to be fans that moan but at least the rest of us should be given the chance to be able to plan.  The fixtures were announced back in August so fans deserve a bit more than a hastily cobbled plan a few days before the game.

Three points on Saturday would have left us with 50 points which by most accounts would have secured Championship football for next season.  Despite the loss on Saturday I thought we played reasonably well and chances were created.  We are still sitting mid table but its very tight between places and we can't be complacent but a few more points will leave me feeling considerably more comfortable.  At least we now have two weeks to calm down during the international break.