Charlton Athletic 0 Wrexham 1

We did not deserve to lose that. At all.

Our best attacking display for many weeks, but it resulted in defeat and a blank in front of goal telling the serial story of us not being clinical enough. Seminally we were just unable to create enough clear cut chances from our midfield and wide players.

One shot on goal, did not tell the full story however. We moved the ball better than we have for a while, light years from the game on Tuesday, showed a good structure and looked after the ball with far greater quality than in recent games.

Jones made five changes with Ramsey at left wing back instead of Chambers, Berry came into midfield for Docherty, Coventry took the unavailable Coady’s place and Leaburn was benched for TC.

The two notable team selections were Will Mannion making his first league appearance of the season after Kaminski was injured in training and to a surprise to most of us, a swathed up Lloyd Jones started, and played the whole 90 minutes.

One of the early notable actions was Reece Burke going down injured and having to go off. Burke was visibly upset and now faces a fourth injury lay off since signing last summer.

Our BFK joined the fray though and I have to say made another very good impression. He defends well, gets his toe on loose balls, creates time for himself and is useful on the ground. He even had a surge down the wing late on and put in a great cross. That ended with him holding his hamstring. Here’s hoping that was nothing too serious.

Back to the game and when you have a player unmarked in the box, you hope it’s Luke Berry, but after deciding to take another fateful touch a great chance to take the lead was missed. We were playing well though, Clarke was flagged for offside after putting in TC but then the biggest chance of the day fell to Clarke, who has missed a few sitters since joining. I love that he gets into these forward positions, but this was a dreadful miss with the whole goal at the mercy of the Ipswich loanee.

Sods law was that we were going to pay for that, and sure enough two minutes later out of almost nothing Rathbone superbly executes a control, and a volley into the far corner of our net from outside the box for 0-1.

We took control back off the game but we were behind at the break.

Berry didn’t return for the second period and Rankin-Costello was given an opportunity to be our much missed midfielder who can run with the ball, and it was JRC who had our first chance of the half. The attacks kept coming with Dykes leading the line well. TC then headed over from a Dykes cross. If roles were reversed you’d have felt that would’ve gone in.

Wrexham were playing on the break now, but they keep the ball well, and it’s patently clear they have better players to go with their vastly bigger budget. Ramsey throws himself in a way of a shot, Mannion makes a simple save and then the tackle of the match was from Sichenje who makes up a load of ground to block a clear Wrexham 2nd goal.

Jones threw on Leaburn and Kelman to join TC, Dykes and Carey. You couldn’t say he wasn’t going for it, but plenty of possession and hundreds of crosses could not get us the goal we deserved.

Leaburn volleyed over at the near post, Sichenje shot into the upper tier, preventing him getting the freedom of Nairobi, Dykes headed wide and just when we thought Carey would be the man again, his powerful shot was superbly saved by Okonkwo, who has foiled us before.

On a day when the results went well for us, we couldn’t make it count, but it was a very good performance, one we simply need to replicate consistently through to the very last day of the season.

✍️ “I think we had real good structure, we got wide, we got balls in the box. They had to defend really well and we created enough chances to put the game to bed. I want to praise them [Wrexham] because they’ve won a game and they’ve shown once again why they are where they are but we’ve let them off the hook today because we’ve had chances.”

⭐️ Collins Sichenje

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