Middlesbrough 1 Charlton Athletic 0
That was about as far removed from a Lee Bowyer’s team performance as possible. It was awful, and my heart goes out to the brave 500 or so Addicks who wasted a day if not longer going up there to watch it. Including Matt Southall. Legends all.
I’m ignoring injuries, because we have to stop banging on about it but we have gone from a team that was scaring everybody to being scared of our own shadow. No confidence, nothing going forward, indecisive in possession, a muddled formation shape and poor defensively – it was another crap goal to concede yesterday.
The first half was abysmal, the second only slightly better and 70 minutes before we had a shot and 85 when Morgan nearly grabbed us a much underserved point.
The only positive was Taylor getting 45 minutes into his legs and Albie’s 2nd half performance. Also, the fact that Boro themselves weren’t great, they should’ve been out of sight before Morgan’s late effort. Others below us and around us are certainly beatable. We just need to work out how to win again.
A big 7 days ahead.
Addicks at the Riverside:
Bow: “It wasn’t good enough. From start to finish they were better than us. Defensively I thought we weren’t physical enough. I thought their two strikers run us ragged at times. Too many crosses came into the box and we just didn’t have that fight. It wasn’t just one or two, it was the whole lot.”
Elsewhere: I’m looking below us and Barnsley were leading 2-1 but lost 3-2 at Cardiff, likewise Wigan threw away a lead at Luton who scored twice in the final minutes to claim a vital 3 points. Stoke were also ahead at Hull yet lost 2-1, Reading lost 3-2 at home to Birmingham, Joao with a late winner and Leeds comfortably saw off Huddersfield in the early game 2-0.
Photo: @K_AndrewsPhotos
Chicago Addick 
A poor performance starting with a poor header by Purrington in the first minute leading to the goal. I didn’t expect Ledley to start considering the long interval since his last game and of course Morgan was dropped, it smacked of desperation to me. Morgan and Taylor made some improvement when they came on, but confidence is now rock bottom. Something must be done to improve the full back and wing back options as game in game out they do not impress. It was a weakness that Middlesborough exploited and other teams will have noticed.
I think early in the season as a whole we were able to surprise teams and collectively hide weaknesses. Now teams are exploiting individual players and areas which obviously we have as the team with the lowest budget, and not helped in anyway by having so many players out.
We need a morale booster for sure.
I have just seen the highlights of the game on SKY the poor header was by Pearce not Purrington but that does not change my opinion on the weakness at fullback. Hgpe we are able to invest in this area in January
Where else would you strengthen us rierti?
Bowyer has stated that he wants two players for each position most positions are covered but because of the injury crisis the number two players are having to fill in several places across the team. I contend that the full back situation is different in that there are no number one choices they are all squad players. We also lack a tall central defender to cover for Pearce as Sarr is unreliable at this level. We also need cover for defensive midfield and a play maker. By releasing Kayal and Field back to their clubs and releasing Hemed places could be freed up for two or three more loanees which combined with well judged purchases could do the job.
Over the last few seasons we have needed to recruit players on deadline days and free agents afterwards with limited success, hopefully the new regime will enable us to recruit earlier in the transfer windows because we can offer better terms.