Charlton 0 Southampton U-23 0. Charlton win 5-4 on penalties.
Kevin Nolan reports belatedly from The Valley.
Having slept on it three times, I’m now ready to tackle the first round of the EFL Checkatrade Trophy and report my findings to you. And the first thing I have to say is that WC Fields was only barely right when he claimed that the best cure for insomnia was to get plenty of sleep. Getting stuck in front of a chill pill like this runs it close. It’s taken me three days and, as WC recommended, plenty of sleep to get over it. Nah, I’m only kidding… it wasn’t that bad.
Let’s kick off with a word about the competition’s format, which isn’t nearly as complicated as some of its detractors have made out. It pits lowly teams like Charlton in mini-leagues against other teams like lowly Crawley and just as lowly Colchester. Then it tarts things up by including Premier sides like Southampton, except that they have to play their U-23s, unless they’re over 23. Like Saints’ goalkeeper Alex McCarthy. Or a 28 year-old French bloke who took a liberty with a hat-trick for Norwich against put-upon Peterborough.
So here’s how it worked out at an eerily deserted Valley. Charlton’s goalkeeper Dillon Phillips was actually five years younger than Southampton’s 26 year-old U-23 goalkeeper McCarthy, who screwed up the decisive spotkick in the penalty shoot-out which followed this dismal 0-0 snoozefest. Earlier on, 18 year-old mickey-takers Ezri Konsa and Karlan Ahearne-Grant coolly slotted their spotkicks past senior citizen McCarthy as did 19 year-old greybeard Brandon Hanlan, who showed no more respect to his elders than the other kids.
Penalty shoot-out? Right, almost forgot to explain. So listen up. Here’s how it works. If teams draw after 90 minutes, they take part in a penalty shoot-out, the winner of which gets an extra point. There’s a way of fiddling the system, it seems to me, but let’s not go into that right now. I get fed up being world weary.
With Charlton 5-4 in front, McCarthy carelessly smashed Southampton’s sixth penalty against Phillips’ crossbar and was promptly called up by Sam Allardyce into England’s senior squad to face Slovakia. Which, in a nutshell, is what the Checkatrade is all about. It provides England’s stars of tomorrow with useful experience against older but less accomplished opposition. Yet I sense your confusion. Three teenagers and another goalkeeper five years his junior make a mug of a veteran and he gets promoted to the World Cup.
Before 1300 rudely awakened onlookers thrilled to the shoot-out, the keepers had been the pick of the performers. McCarthy was largely untroubled apart from Morgan Fox’s early daisycutter, which he tipped alertly to safety but Phillips made a series of excellent saves in both halves. A sign of things to come was provided in the first half by Saints’ skipper Harrison Reed, who stepped up to take a penalty awarded for Andrew Crofts’ foul on Jack Stephens but fired it miserably wide. And that was basically that. Try to get hold of a tape… you’ll say goodnight to insomnia.
Charlton: Phillips, Konsa, Johnson, Lennon, Fox, Foley, Solly, Crofts, Ahearne-Grant, Ajose, Hanlan. Subs used: Chicksen, Charles-Cook, Umerah. Not used: Rudd, Bauer, Pearce, Muldoon.