Charlton 1 (Vetokele 65) Sheffield Wednesday 1 (Drenthe 27).
Kevin Nolan reports from The Valley.
With 25 minutes to go and with Charlton fighting back spiritedly from a 1-0 deficit, the replacement of Franck Moussa by Igor Vetokele hardly qualified as a last throw of Bob Peeters’ dice. His side had put a dismal first half performance behind them and had previously dominant Sheffield Wednesday on an uncomfortable rack. But that single goal and a dwindling clock were beginning to press down on the restless manager.
Top scorer Vetokele was being eased back from a brief injury absence, his match fitness still a matter for concern. Needs must as the devil drives, of course, and the Angolan international was sent off the bench to do a specific job. Namely to haul the Addicks level and salvage at least a point from unpromising circumstances. Three minutes after his introduction, he duly delivered in style.
Charlton’s important equaliser actually owed rather more to left back Rhoys Wiggins’ aggressive enterprise than Vetokele’s simple sidefooted finish from six yards. It was the latter’s name, though, which made the Sunday papers, with no corresponding record of Wiggins’s outstanding contribution. That’s because scoring still remains the hardest task in football, a fact that explains the fervour with which his disciples had welcomed their messiah on to the field.
But back briefly to Wiggins and the disorganised mess he made of Wednesday’s rearguard. The bewildered pair of Liam Palmer and Jose Semedo were statuesque onlookers as he accelerated smoothly between them before hammering over a hard-driven low cross. Knowing when to stand still, as born goalscorers invariably do, Vetokele was poised to stab home from what Wednesday manager Stuart Gray, without a shred of evidence to support him, described as an offside position. Yeah, right…
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Gray seemed on more solid ground shortly afterwards when Andre Bikey, caught for once on the wrong side of Atdhe Nuhiu, compensated by nudging the big forward to the ground. Gray’s understandable conviction that his side was denied a clear penalty was promptly undermined by his irrelevant assertion that “2,000 Wednesday fans behind the goal” were reliable witnesses of Bikey’s supposed villainy. Leads you to believe that some managers wouldn’t recognise objectivity if they tripped over it in a dictionary.
Totally outplayed during a first half of misplaced passes, defensive dithering and feeble attacking, Charlton struggled through almost half an hour before ex-Everton hotshot winger Royston Drenthe, accurately described by Gray as “unplayable” punished their ineptitude.
A series of purposeful runs had already persecuted Wiggins by the time Drenthe cut inside from the right, eluded a posse of panicky pursuers and shot precisely beyond a full length Stephen Henderson into the bottom right corner from outside the penalty area. It was no more than the Yorkshiremen deserved and they might have doubled the lead seconds before the break only for Chris Maguire, with the whole goal to aim at after being set up by Nuhiu, to shoot tamely wide. It was a bad miss that Wednesday would rue – though that looked unlikely at the time.
With the first half a painful experience, the Addicks showed admirable resolve in turning this one-sided game on its head. They closed down space, plugged escape routes and pinned their erstwhile tormentors back in their own half. There was probably no managerial genius involved, more a simple willingness to run faster, work and try harder, reach down for an extra inch or ounce. Football still boils down to such basics once all the systems, formations and sophisticated tactics have had their say. If Charlton had shown their positive second half attitude from the outset, Wednesday might have been blown away. As it was, they found themselves hanging on and grateful for a point they would have regarded as poor reward a bit earlier.
So rampant in the first half, Drenthe’s gradual disappearance from the action, which led to his withdrawal with a quarter hour left, was symptomatic of his team’s disintegration. Wiggins particularly enjoyed the switch in mastery, making his point perfectly with the buccaneering burst which laid on Vetokele’s equaliser. And Vetokele himself might have crowned the rally with a late winner. Running intelligently on to Jordan Cousins’ gloriously flighted through pass, he outpaced Glen Loovens but shot narrowly wide on the run. But this can be considered a point earned, rather than two lost. Now if Peeters can get them to start as they mean to go on, they might really be on to something.
Charlton: Henderson, Solly, Ben Haim, Bikey, Wiggins, Moussa (Vetokele 65), Buyens, Jackson (Wilson 81), Cousins, Tucudean, Ahearne-Grant (Gudmundsson 46). Not used: Pope, Harriott, Onyewu, Fox.
Wednesday: Westwood, Palmer, Loovens, Lees, Mattock (Dielna 34), Maguire, Semedo, Helan, Drenthe (Taylor-Fletcher 73), Maghoma (Coke 62), Nuhiu. Not used: Kirkland, May, McCabe, Lee.
Referee: Andy D’Urso.
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