A candid assessment from Ricky Holmes about what went wrong at the Oldham match, and an interesting insight into the way the dressing room works at Charlton... https://www.londonnewsonline.co.uk/...g-room-knew-got-carried-away-oldham-athletic/ Ricky Holmes says that Charlton only have themselves to blame for allowing Oldham back into the game during Saturday’s 4-3 win at Boundary Park. The South Londoners seemed to be coasting to victory after strikes from Holmes and Tariqe Fosu saw them two goals to the good within 22 minutes. However the Latics brought the game back to 2-2 early in the second half, and even added another to make the game 4-3 late on, despite being down to 10 men. The Addicks winger said that complacency set in after their lightning start – and it’s something that can’t become the norm if Charlton want to be successful this term. “We got carried away,” admitted last season’s top Charlton scorer. “We thought we were better than what we are. We’re only a few games in – we can’t do that. We can’t go into the season like that because we’ll get picked off – and we were getting picked off. It was hard. We all thought we could get six. Us forward players got excited, thought we could fill our boots. We forgot to help out the back line. The gap was getting bigger between the midfield and defence. “We’re a group of lads who know and we say it ourselves. We run our own changing room and that’s what he (Karl Robinson) wants. Today we could have got beaten. Even when they had 10 men they still had chances – it was a basketball match. We know we’ve got to be better but we’re not too fazed. We’ve come away to a hard place. Teams will get beat here but we managed to get the win.” Holmes opened the scoring with an absolute stunner – picking out the top corner from what seemed like 35-yards out. The former Northampton man is no stranger to spectacular strikes and said this one was right up there with the best of them. “I didn’t realise how far out I was – I probably shouldn’t even be shooting from there,” he joked. “It’s definitely up there. The one last season at Shrewsbury – I got a few for Northampton as well but it definitely ranks highly up there.” Karl Robinson allowing the players to 'run' the dressing room is something I was not aware of before. I assume what Holmes means by this is that the manager is content for a group of senior players and /or natural leaders to do their own man-managing of the rest of the squad. Hopefully the team spirit created by this will be based on respect between the players and a willingness to play for each other rather than compete with each other. Potential mavericks or inflating egos can be nudged back into line by team-mates, rather than everything being left to the gaffer. Also, if it means that players who are not getting selected for the starting XI are kept onboard with the long term objective of promotion and the rewards it will bring for everybody, that can only be a good thing. Like any system of management, it will appear to work smoothly enough when things are going well. However, when things go wrong as they inevitably will, I hope Karl Robinson will know when it is necessary to remind his players that he is in charge. Players running the dressing room when things get difficult could lead to cliques and division. It seems as though that was the situation during the first few months of Robinson's tenure as manager, when Charlton failed to recover from the decline under Russell Slade and we flirted with relegation danger for a long time. The summer transfer window has come and gone. Disruptive players should have been shipped out now, this squad is much more KR's own than the one he was wrestling with in the Spring. Robinson has demonstrated by his group huddles after matches that he very much wants to be 'one of the lads' and be as close to his players as possible. I hope that this approach, combined with an apparently easy going manner in the dressing room (allowing senior players to run it) does not erode the respect that our players should have for their manager.
