Home And Away

Tomorrow sees the The Addicks make the long trip up North to face Accrington Stanley at the Wham Stadium.

It’s chalk and cheese in terms of Stanley’s results of late. At home they haven’t lost in the league since 7^th December whilst away they can’t buy a win (they lost 4-0 to Pompey last time out after Pompey had gone down to 10 men after just 21 minutes) !

You may recall though that they beat us 3-2 at The Valley helped in no small measure by a brace for former Addick Harry Pell.

Accrington have come a long way since returning to the football league. Current owner Andy Holt has done a magnificent job in progressing the club and its facilities.

He is rightly recognised as one of the best owners in league football. I’d very much like to make a trip to Stanley where the aforementioned owner ensures a warm welcome for away fans.

Whilst the welcome may be warm off the pitch it’s a very different story on it. Stanley will make life very difficult for us and they approach won’t be pretty. It is effective though as the sit comfortably mid-table.

I recall the away fixture last year. It was dreadful game and only a late goal from Chuks got a point for us. It was an awful watch.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better performance and result. Those fans that are travelling all that way deserve that.

It was good to see the return of Stockley and Fraser to the starting eleven last week. Hopefully we can add Washington to that tomorrow. He is another who has been sorely missed.

Sean Clare is available again following his 3 match ban. One assumes he may return to the back three but there’s be some much chopping and changing to the defence that it’s incredibly hard to predict.

Amongst all our defensive woes, the lack of a settled defence has been one of the biggest contributing factors. It really must have played a part. The reasons behind that are not just down to injury and suspension as the recent match where we had 3 recognised centre halves on the bench will testify!

When we had a settled side was when we achieved our best results and Jackson. He needs to get back to that and to make his preferred formation work.

I’m struggling to see a better result than a draw for us tomorrow. A loss would be awful given our position and even taking a point probably won’t help much.

The simple fact remains that we need to start winning. We may now start facing teams lower down the league but like us they have something to fight for. It won’t be easy!

Hopefully the winning ways will start tomorrow.

Come On You Reds!