Charlton 1 (Adjarevic 90) Barnsley 2 (M’Voto 32, Kennedy 63).
Kevin Nolan reports from The Valley.
This result, sickening though it was for Charlton, settles nothing. Its immediate effect can’t be accurately gauged until they square off with Bolton on Friday. It makes the unseemly scramble at the bottom of the Championship table even more messy but when the music stops on May 3rd, it still remains to be seen whether the Addicks are one of the three miserable victims left groping for a chair. As the plot unfolds, they must hold their nerve.
Grappling with the conumdrum of picking the right team for the right occasion, manager Jose Riga continues to shuffle his pack from game to game as the punishing schedule bites into his squad. On Tuesday, he paired Marvin Sordell and Jonathan Obika up front, rather more mysteriously named Callum Harriott as a right winger, then trusted to luck. But his luck was stone out.
Neither of them blessed with an adhesive touch, Sordell and Obika were handed a masterclass in centre forward play by streetwise Chris O’Grady. Asked to occupy Charlton’s defence on his own, the combative striker used all the nous accumulated during a peripatetic career. Expertly shielding the ball, intelligently bringing teammates into play and, most importantly, fighting tenaciously for his rights, O’Grady stood up to the usual borderline buffeting while giving as good as he got. Without mustering a single effort on target, he did his bit and then some. And, with 12 goals this season ( a total which matches Charlton’s entire strike force), he has already made a significant contribution in the scoring column. In this game, his unselfish work won’t have gone unnoticed by his grateful manager Danny Wilson.
Showing little mutual understanding, meanwhile, neither Sordell nor Obika made much impression. Not for the want of trying, it needs to be said, because they beavered away fruitlessly, as did every member of a team which hasn’t given up but suffers from a glaring lack of inspiration.
Trying as hard as any of them was Harriott, who endured a personal Gethsemane. Everything went wrong for the poor kid; passes were almost wilfully misplaced, possession was regularly conceded, decisions were invariably misjudged. Just shy of the half hour mark and shortly before Barnsley scored their first goal, Charlton’s best chance was put on the proverbial plate for him by Sordell’s delicately flighted cross from the left. Unmarked at the far post, Harriott sent his header not just wide but horribly, inexplicably wide.
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What remained of his confidence promptly disappeared but his torture wasn’t over. With no reason to humiliate him, Riga was unquestionably right in resisting insensitive calls to replace Harriott before the interval but just as wrong, it seemed, in unnecessarily exposing him to ten more minutes of agony after the break. At which point, by the way, the long suffering home crowd distinguished itself by sending him on his way with admirable restraint rather than the dog’s abuse he would have faced at certain venues. Fair play to them.
Before Harriott’s miss, Charlton had looked more likely to score. In the early going, Jordan Cousins, again an example of heart and energy, shot narrowly wide before Johnnie Jackson’s expertly curled effort brought the crowd temporarily to its feet. Then the wind was taken out of The Valley’s sails by Barnsley’s shock opener against the run of play.
The Tykes’ first corner, forced by Tomasz Cwyka off Chris Solly, was swung in from the left by Dale Jennings and emphatically buried into the roof of the net by Jean-Yves M’Voto’s powerful header. It was a body blow from which the Addicks never fully recovered.
There was still hope, of course, and Diego Poyet opened the second period by shooting inches wide. Gifted a chance by Jack Hunt’s errant pass, Sordell chipped tamely off target but exactly as they had done in the first half, the visitors turned the tide by scoring again at the right time
Only Tom Kennedy will know whether the ball he drifted in from the left flank was intended as a shot or a cross; the critical certainty was that it beat Ben Hamer in flight on its way into the opposite corner. Charlton’s uphill fight was now a mountain they were unlikely to climb.
Down but not quite out, Riga played his last card ten minutes from the end, with Astrit Adjarevic replacing a weary Poyet. The big midfielder’s influence was immediate, not least because his feather touch gives him time to sort out his options. There’s almost mantra-like acceptance that he isn’t fully fit, which invites obvious questions which are a) why the hell ISN’T he fully fit? and b) how bloody long does it take a professional footballer to GET fully fit? Both queries might be answered in the close season after Ajdarevic has departed and Charlton are in League One. In the shorter and more urgent term, they need sorting out! Especially now that desperately unlucky Rhoys Wiggins is clearly through for the season.
The overdue substitute duly reduced the arrears in added time, too late in this game to make a difference but surely sufficient to secure him a start on Friday at Harriott’s expense. If there’s a plate, Ajdarevic (and, to be fair, one or two others) needs to step up to it and do his share after being reminded that football games last 90 minutes. Delightful little cameos are not enough. This is a relegation dog-fight, not a lunchtime five-a-side kickaround. So get out the way if you can’t lend a hand ‘cos the times they are a’changin And unless everyone gets stuck in, so is Charlton’s future in the Championship.
Charlton: Hamer, Solly (Wilson 71), Dervite, Wood, Wiggins, Harriott (Ghoochannejhad 55), Cousins, Poyet ( Adjarevic 80), Jackson, Sordell, Obika. Not used: Thuram-Ulien, Hughes, Morrison, Fox. Booked: Cousins, Adjarevic.
Barnsley, Steele, Etuhu (Hunt 46, Mellis 63), M’Voto, McLaughlin, Cranie, Jennings, Cwyka, Lawrence, Kennedy, Dawson, O’Grady. Not used: Turner, Hassell, Proschwitz, Woods, McCourt. Booked: Cranie, Dawson.
Referee: Iain Williamson Att: 16,230 (965 visiting).