Charlton Athletic 0 Preston North End 2

A first defeat of the season but there will be very few tears shed amongst Addicks’ fans last night especially when League One results elsewhere conspired to take us to the top of the table.

From early reports it sounded as if our 2nd XI disappointed last night after the furore of the Reading game. Now this could be one of two things, the main one for me being the lack of match practice for our reserve players. The Reading game came on the back of a stimulating pre-season remember and a couple of behind the scene friendlies is not going to cut it and this concerned me.

Secondly by the looks of it, Preston put out a very strong team and without knowing I would hazard a guess that the Lancastrians were much more physical than a Reading team who came to pass the ball.

Anyway, unless Powell risked some senior players it would surprise me if the Southampton tie ended in either a win or would have been a windfall financially. Good luck to Phil Brown and Preston.

Two players who have been slated after last night’s performance were Simon Francis and sadly Paul Benson. Benno sounded uninterested but is almost certainly lacking match practice and Francis just sounded dreadful. Both were substituted at half-time, which knowing Powell’s often reluctance to make changes probably says it all.

For Francis it is surely now a long way back to the first team and he is best trying to get a loan move. For Benno he may have dropped further down the pecking order after Powell signed his 19th player of the summer.

Frenchman Yann Kermorgant (photo) signed a two-year deal, which surprised me, and is someone Powell would have known from his time at Leicester.

Kermorgant has hardly been prolific in a career that has mostly been spent in the French Ligue 2 and his signing has left me pretty underwhelmed if I’m honest and I hope that Powell sees more in him than the record books do.

I think we’ve all been getting ourselves a little worked up about how much we’re going to rely on BWP and a young striker from Darlington, a French journeyman and an uninterested Benson still leaves the jigsaw with plenty of missing pieces. I wonder what happened to the Billy Paynter loan that I had heard about on good authority?

Anyway forgetting all that, top today, with a game in hand.

Addick Bloggers at The Valley: Blackheath Addicted; Doctor Kish.
Powell-ometer: I support his repeat of picking the 2nd XI again but was interested to see him remove both Francis and Benson at half-time. Oh and where an earth is Mikel Alonso?
Elsewhere: There was a full league programme last night that saw us go top on goal difference as Huddersfield made a bold statement by hammering previously top Sheffield United away from home. Sheffield Wednesday met their match tonight losing to Stevenage 5-1. Boro themselves are not shy of playing it physical and long. A late equaliser from Colchester’s Anthony Wordsworth grabbed a point at Brentford for Colchester, which leaves the Bees. Chesterfield won again at home to Bury, who lost for the third consecutive time and Bournemouth won the basement clash in East London leaving Orient 3 points adrift.