Charlton season stats 2017-18

21st January update;

A third straight win, and this one was deserved in the end.
The first half was very frustrating. After a bright first 15 minutes Charlton lost their way somewhat, and Aribo's goal was almost against the run of play. The timing was apparently great as it seemed to boost confidence, but another defensive lapse led to an equaliser for Walsall, headed home by the shortest player on the pitch.
However Charlton rallied in the second half, looking much more positive with Tarique Fosu back on the pitch (replacing Reeves after 50 minutes).
Sustained pressure brought the reward of a second goal, then the result was made safe by more aggressive play.
Mavididi has made a real difference, and it is very good newsto have our top scorer back as well.

Make no mistake though, this was far from a flawless display. Walsall looked decent in the first half, but I think they gave a bit too much and ran out of ideas after the break.
A better team might have punished Charlton's defensive lapses, which were still too numerous.

Positives:

• Three wins on the spin, albeit against moderate opposition. But hope of a play-off end to our season is still alive.
• Good comeback for Fosu.
• Another performance from Mavididi. The crowd sang his name, and rightly so.
• Dasilva played well again I thought. Young loanees like him and Srephy remind us of how far we still have to go in terms of quality.

Negatives:

• Ben Reeves, poor again. Got injured I think, so he might be out for a while?
• Harry Lennon - some gaffes and wayward punts.
• The attendance. An old chestnut now I know, but it was poor yet again. I guess many fans are just generally fed up with our situation.

 

Can we please close this thread. I do not want SeriouslyRidiculous finding this and joining up.

 

A question for @lardiman

Charlton are about to hit the maximum of 5 loans with the expected signings of the Polish lad from Wolves, and Kaikai.

It’s conceivable that 5 of our starting 11 will be loans if you add Amos, Da Silva and Mavidi.

Has this ever happened before in our 112 year history ?

 

Without checking the stats, I'm sure we were in a similar situation under pardew.

 

Will look into it Royston, but I think FHB is right.
I recall towards the end of the Pardew era (debacle) there were far too many loan players, most of them useless.
I'll see if I can find a few team sheets from those happy times...

 

We had about 7 players on at one time under pardew. I remember we had to leave a few out as you are only allowed 5 I the match day squad.

 

The halcyon days of Danny Butterfield at the Valley

 

27th January Update;

Match postponed at 2pm due to a waterlogged pitch.
A damned nuisance for our travelling fans who wasted a whole day of effort to get there and back, and a let-down I'm sure for the Blackpool fans who surely wanted to honour Jimmy Armfield by playing a football match in his memory on an emotionally charged day.

The whole thing sums up the state of Lower League Football in this country today.
One player in the Premier League is earning £500,000 a week, and some Clubs in the third tier (let alone the leagues lower than that) cannot afford the facilities to keep their pitch from waterlogging in heavy rain.

This is 2018 for pete's sake, not 1918.

 

Juan Mata's attempt to start charity in which Premier league players give 1% of their wages to alleviate poverty ,has hit stony ground with only a handful of our top superstars signing up. Poor things.

 

4th February update;

A day of contrasts at the Valley yesterday.
Some very exciting attacking play from Charlton that had home fans singing, and enjoying an instant restoration of our lead after Oxford equalised.
But a defence sometimes in disarray against determined but not unusually quick or skillful counter-attacks. Oxford just kept plugging away and doing what they do, and we could not cope with it. Three goals conceded and the U's hitting the woodwork twice as well was simply not good enough.

Despite some great attacking movement Charlton still struggled to get the ball into the net. On another day with a bit more sharpness and confidence in front of goal we could have out-scored Oxford. But even a 4-3 win would have left important questions needing to be answered.

Positives:

• We often looked quick and dangerous going forward, sometimes had Oxford off balance.
• A goal for Josh Magennis, a long overdue booster for his confidence.
• The crowd slightly up I think, perhaps some fans returning in anticipation of the takeover.

Negatives:

• Still we struggled with that final touch - putting the ball into the net. Missed chances ended up costing us all the points.
• Injury to Stephy Mavididi. I really hope it is only a week or two on the sidelines for him, not another season-ending blow.
• Inconsistent defending - we looked OK sometimes against average quality counter-attacks, but too often Oxford were given time and space to beat Amos.
• Kaikai's reception and performance. Understandable that he will get a bit of Palace-related stick, but I hope he is not just scapegoated by fans and not given a chance to find his feet in the team. Let's not dismiss him too quickly.

 

11th February update;

Not a disaster, but a very disappointing missed opportunity.
For the second successive match Charlton almost had maximum points in their grasp but could not see out the last few minutes to turn a winning position into victory. Fans who were at the game say we dominated the midfield and were comfortable - more so than the modest statistics suggest. Despite our apparent comfort and dominance the bare numbers say we created very few more shooting chances than Doncaster, and had only one more corner.
But still we could not get the ball into the net for a second time.

Other results in League One yesterday were not unkind - of all the top 10 teams only Rotherham and Portsmouth won. But we should have been winners as well and taken full advantage of the situation.

Positives:

• Reports of good performances from Tarique Fosu, Jay Dasilva and Patrick Bauer.
• No new injuries that I know of - although Robinson was cautious about Fosu's fitness.
• Good away attendance, nearly 800 travelling supporters getting behind the team. Our post-RD future is surely not far away now!

Negatives:

• The obvious one - leading for so long, but unable to turn 0-1 into 0-2 and we paid for it in stoppage time.
• No goals from those who are expected to score them. Bauer netting from a corner is great, but we need more than that.
• Good performances are not being converted into good results. Our form is still not stellar...

We have played 30 league games now this season. Breaking the season so far down into thirds, this is what we see;

Games 01 to 10 ... 17 points ... 5 wins ... 16 goals scored ... 14 goals conceded (+2)
Games 11 to 20 ... 18 points ... 5 wins ... 13 goals scored ... 10 goals conceded (+3)
Games 21 to 30 ... 12 points ... 3 wins ... 11 goals scored ... 13 goals conceded (-2)

During our next 10 games this downward trend must be corrected, or Charlton will miss out on even the last play-off spot.
These are our next 10 fixtures (the current league position of opponents is the number in brackets)

H ... Bradford City (6th)
A ... MK Dons (22nd)
H ... Shrewsbury Town (2nd)
A ... AFC Wimbledon (20th)
A ... Peterborough United (9th)
A ... Blackpool (19th)
H ... Fleetwood Town (17th)
H ... Plymouth Argyle (10th)
A ... Northampton Town (18th)
H ... Rotherham United (5th)

To stay in touch with 6th place we need to be taking a minimum of 16 points from these games;
Something like 4 wins and 4 draws, or 5 wins and 1 draw.

In theory, a team pushing for promotion should be regarding the MK Dons, AFC Wimbledon, Blackpool, Fleetwood and Northampton games as fixtures where anything less than a win is below expectations.

 

Getting our injured players back (except Pearce) has hardly helped, quite the reverse. Same with the much anticipated (by the optimists) transfer window.

 

14th February update;

Tables updated. Beyond that, not much to say really.

Charlton are 2 points behind 6th place, and 15 points behind the automatic promotion places. By points alone, we are closer to the bottom 4.
Being unable to score two goals in a game or hang on to a lead, even finishing the season in 6th place is not going to do us any good.

In my opinion Charlton Athletic has no future under Roland Duchatelet. Until he sells the Club there is no cause to celebrate any success this season, because we all know there will be no commitment to try to keep Charlton in the Championship. There will be no investement, no improvement, only more lies.

It's academic however, since we are not going to gain promotion by taking one goal leads and then throwing them away.
And Robinson asking opponents not to batter our players is simply pathetic.

 

I posted on your board after your match with us at the start of the season when we won 2 - 0 . We went backward from there and you went up and onwards at that time. I said in my post that your team, despite the loss were a very good footballing side and I would be shocked if you weren't up there at the end. I have to say that I am shocked that you haven't pushed on. Now that almost three quarters of the season is over I still maintain that Charlton are one of the best sides I've seen at Home Park this season and we have now played most of the teams at the top. You were better than Blackburn and Wigan where we had one win and one loss ourselves. Wigan are going to buy their way out of league one and allthough they won against us they were not the better side just more clinical in front of goal. So what the feck has gone wrong with your players? You should be comfortably in the play off positions by now and even in an auto spot in my opinion.

 

Our squad is not very deep, but we have enough quality players to be established in the top 6 in my view.
At this point in the season we should be on 52-56 points (4th or 5th) and still perhaps hoping for a late push towards an automatic spot.

Tactical mistakes with substitutions are the biggest issue in my view, though it is shocking that even basic fitness is now apparently in question. Many of our players seem to be out of steam around 75-80 minutes.
Early dominance (which we usually enjoy) is hardly ever converted into 2 or 3 goal leads. So most of the energy expended in the first half goes to waste.

 

17th February update;

3 points from the Stadium MK, two goals scored and no last minute melt-down.
Back into the top 6, four wins from our last seven games and all's looking rosy again.

Glad for the travelling Addicks fans, they deserve to see the team giving 100% and not throwing points away, so they were well served today.

 

25th February update;

Yesterday's match was arguably the second most important league game of Charlton's 2017-18 season.
Certainly it was marketed that way, with Karl Robinson working overtime on the local press to whip up anticipation of our first clash of the season with the mighty Shrewsbury Town.
This was the game he had been looking forward to. This was the game where his team (who were in the best form of the season according to him) would show the fans what they could do, and deliver a performance that the fans deserved.
This was the game the Club virtually gave tickets away for in order to boost home attendance above about 7,000.

In the end, just like the Portsmouth 25th Anniversary 'back at the Valley' match, the bumper home crowd witnessed the true character of Karl Robinson's team when confronted with a proper challenge.