A bad night at the office

I'm afraid its a very short report tonight as I'm off to Scotland for 3 days and after that tonight the further from Bristol I am the better. To be honest I can't really criticise the team selection even though it was another five changes and a complete change of formation but at least it looked balanced and attacking. What was to follow can only be described as a complete and utter nightmare both in terms of the team performance and in individual performances where I have not even given a Man of the Match because nobody bar nobody deserved the title. The way an average Charlton side were able to look world beaters had to be seen to be believed. Despite the fact that we should have scored a couple in the first half we found ourselves two goals down and really three changes at the start of the second half whilst maybe warranted left us; as it has a few times this season, at risk of an injury leaving us a player short and tonight DC's policy finally came to bite him on the backside with what looked a serious injury to Clarke- Salter leaving us three goals down and 1 man short and what was an uphill task at half time had become an impossible task that was only going to get worse. In truth I struggle to remember a match where so many were off form and even straightforward passes were going astray on a regular basis with each player seemingly trying to outdo the other for worse pass or shot of the night.



Roos 4. Little to do first half other than pick the ball out of the net twice but was questionable on two of the second half goals without being totally to blame for dreadful defending in front of him and I would have to see the goals again to really judge if he was in any way to blame as two goals took a deflection .



Leadbitter 5. Missing on the second goal and overall was disappointing other than a few decent crosses.



Lockyer 4 Terrible game other than a brilliant clearance off the line in the first half.



JCS 4 Struggled against a clever opponent and lacked a physical presence on a bad night which got much worse when he suffered what looked like a broken arm and was stretchered off.



Brown 4 Never got going at all either defensively or as an attacking outlet.



Moore 5. Tried his best and I thought he was a bit unlucky to be subbed as he was no worse than most and better than some.



Sinclair 5 Tried hard but even he was a mere shadow for long parts of the time he was on the pitch as Charlton tore through us far too often and he rarely gave a forward pass and in a way he tried to hard to cover every inch and left us all over the place

.

Lines 5. Too many showboat passes that missed their target and although he improved as the game went on with a brilliant run which saw him brought down just outside the area it was not one of his better games and really with Sincs just running around rather than being organised we were outnumbered in midfield.



Montano 4 A very mixed bag of good crosses and damnright embarrassing ones. He struggled to see much of the ball as Brown frustrated with long passes when the simple pass was on and as such he seemed to try too hard when the ball did come his way and a good piece of work was quickly followed by a poor piece of work if you can describe football that way.



Gaffney 6 Only one to come out of the game with any credit whatsoever but does struggle in the air especially against big dominant defenders but he made up for this with his ground work and sheer effort. Would surely have scored had he not been bundled over for the penalty following good dribbling skills.. Put himself about really well and was unlucky not to score when the keeper deliberately took him down for the penalty.



Taylor 4. Well he scored a penalty which is really about all he did. Three half chances were his sum total and he failed on each occasion.



Subs



Hartley 4.5. Struggled for pace and obviously was not helped when we went one short soon after he came on.



Colkett 4. No impact whatsoever. Tried far too many long passes which generally found an opponent and looks very much like a player who is good when things are going our way but struggles when we are up against it and tonight we certainly were!



Harrison 4 Did very little but no worse than anyone else.



Crowd 7 Showed great character when it would have been easy to get on the players backs and cheered to the end ironic as it was.



Ref 7 Good but was a game where we were so poor that it may have been good to have a referee to blame.



Charlton 7 Very good. much better than I thought they would be. Strong at the back and quick and skilful up front and in midfield but how much was down to their quality and how much was down to our teams performance we shall never know.They looked world beaters but unfortunately they were playing against opponents who made far too many schoolboy errors.



DC Team totally let him down tonight but I felt that he made the change to three at the back far too early and should have given the first half team a bit longer. Using three substitutes so early was sure to one day be too great a risk and tonight was that occasion. To his credit he came out after the game and accepted he must look at his own performance and apologised for what was an embarrassing night.





So after three League games that has only seen us gain one point with 1 goal scored and 9 conceded we go to a Chesterfield side who themselves ended an eight match winless run tonight with a 3-2 win at MK Dons and must be looking forward to our visit on Saturday. They will write us off at their peril or I hope they will! UTG