Charlton Athletic 3 Chesterfield 1

Yesterday was a long day and I won’t bore you with the details but some of our obstacles included hangovers, a driver that was one late, and two incompetent, the TSA, our daughter who was naughtier yesterday than on any other day since she popped into our life and lost work permits.

The shining light was Charlton, who rose to the occasion yesterday afternoon at a packed Valley.

Before we boarded our JFK bound flight from Chicago we were already two-up and I could feel the dominance that we held over an in form Chesterfield side who we went at from the start. At half-time I was forced to turn my phone off as we taxied the runway.

Understandably John Sheridan’s team were going to be better and a different proposition 2nd half and we conceded a penalty but then, thankfully, managed to turn the tables back around and took the game back to the Derbyshire side and BWP deservedly put the game to bed with a goal that I am really looking forward to seeing later.

Paul Hayes also hit the bar, one of 14 efforts on target, as well as scoring for the first time at The Valley, and Matt Taylor had a stonewall penalty turned down and got booked for diving.

I was pleased about two things yesterday. It was another fantastic marketing effort by the club and I always feel really proud when I look down the league results and see The Valley crowd as the highest, so the first thing was that for once we managed to turn it on in front of a big and passionate crowd, that hasn’t happened often in recent times, and two that Chris Powell spent the a lot of the post match press conference demanding more from his team.

I loved that. We are top, 3 points clear and with a game in hand but Powell wants more, craves more. It’s a big week coming up.

Addick Bloggers at The Valley: Drinking During the Game; Blackheath Addicted; Addick’s Third Division Diary; And Nothing Else Matters; Charlton Casual; Hungry Ted.
Powell-ometer: He clearly had the players fired up for a quick start, and the second goal was straight from the training ground.
Elsewhere: Wycombe scored their first league goal since mid-August and beat Sheffield United into the bargain. Afterwards Danny Wilson said: “We completely dominated from start to finish, so we’re going to be disappointed of course. But we’ll take the frustrations out next week against Charlton.” Hartlepool remain unbeaten winning at Bournemouth, Notts County are 4th after beating Rochdale, 10-man Preston overcame Tranmere 2-1 and Brentford had on loan Miguel Llera sent off but won at Oldham. Myles Weston was on the scoresheet. Leyton Orient had the result of the day coming from two-down to take a point at Huddersfield with Kevin Lisbie, who recently signed a short contract getting the first and Ben Chorley equalising in injury time.