Send On The Subs

The subs allowed Charlton to take a strangehold on the game

Charlton recorded back to back league wins for the first time this season. It was far from pretty but whilst we'd all like pretty football the result is all that matters at the moment.

In addition to the missing 3 players Bielik was missing I assumed through injury  ( Dr Kish has confirmed it was a calf strain ). Somewhat surprisingly Steer replaced Phillips in between the sticks.

Joe Aribo returned after missing out at Southend through injury. Mark Marshall returned to the bench after impressing the manager in the EFL trophy in midweek.

Bowyer decided to deploy 3 centre halves and the inclusion of Sarr was presumably to help deal with the huge presence of Akinfenwa. However, he didn't actually spend much time marking him.

I was pleased to see the big man play and he is quite effective in being a nuisance with his sheer strength alone. Overall our defence dealt with him well and I can't recall him having any real clear cut chances.

A rather drab first half was punctuated by only the goals and an audacious overhead kick from Taylor that nearly paid off.

Wycombe took the lead on 7 minutes when Willimas was allowed to curl a left footed effort into the far corner. His effort was not hit with any great pace from the edge of the area and I did wonder whether Steer was poorly positioned for it. However, having seen a replay he appears to be unsighted by one of his own defenders ( Page ? ).

The Addicks equalised as the result of a rare bit of good fortune as Page's cross was defelcted into the Wycombe net. Bizarrely for some time Page was credited with the goal.

The second started with in the same fashion as the first with little excitement. The arrival of Reeves and Lapslie changed things very much for the better as we carried more attacking intent and threat.

Taylor scored again as he has the happy knack of being in the right place at the right time. Never mind that it was a tap in not all strikers get themselves in those positions. Fortuntely he does.

Sarr notched a third in the 80th minute and the game was effectively over. Wycombe did pull one back after Taylor was fouled on the East Stand touch line in front of linesman Magoo. The referee also decided to ignore it and The Chairboys scored from the resulting corner.

The afroementioned ref was pretty awful coosing to ignore many synical Wycombe fouls. Possilby his most ridulous decision was to book Steer for timewasting. This was bizarre because the visitors were gulity of doing that several times and no warning was given to the Charlton keeper.

The most odd aspect of it is that we had been awarded a free kick about midway in our half and Steer was making his way from his area when the daft official was to be seen brandishing the yellow card!

Pratley made another rash tackle in the course of this game. He made a similar and possibly worse one the week before. He needs to be careful aside from the fact that we can ill afford to lose players to unnecessary suspensions we could drop points playing with only ten men especially for long periods.

Given the players we had missing this was a good and useful win. Those four players missing yesterday ought to all come into contention for next Saturday. The competition for places is now starting to intensify.

All welcome news and a rare treat for the new permanent boss to have a few headaches over selection for good reasons for a change.