by Snowball »
01 Sep 2019 10:16
Zip Snowball Zip
What concerned me was as soon as Charlton scored there was an immediate collective loss of confidence throughout the entire team. It was only one nil but it really felt like game over. That’s the impression I felt from the players. There was a real fragility evident. In contrast the Charlton players confidence grew enormously. Going forward that is something Gomes needs to improve. Our record in recent years is awful when we fall behind. The mentality needs to be tougher.
I want to agree, and we did look "shot" when we went behind
I thought we looked unfit
BUT
We went 2-0 down at Hull, pulled one back and dominated the second half
We went 1-0 down at Wycombe, came back to draw, then win on pens
We went 1-0 at Plymouth, playing kids, got back to 1-1.
We then went 2-1 down, equalised again and ran out 2-4 winners.
We were out-midfielder at Huddersfield but grew into the game and won 0-2
We were totally dominated at WBA but weathered the storm, went 0-1 up and could easily have won
When Charlton scored you could see shoulders droop, players looking to the floor. No one really geeing the others up. It was early in the second half but I instinctively felt we have had it here. Yes we came back in Cup games but I want to see us do that in the League. You will probably know more than anybody else what our League record is like in the past two and a bit seasons when we fall behind. It ain’t pretty.
I was totally happy at HT. Had Puscas got the last-gasp goal I'd've been ecstatic.
But second half, even as the team came out, it felt different.
We may have skills but we are soft. We don't have an ANIMAL, a kick@ss leader, a Robbie Keane.
I also think the way this list had 4-0/4-0/4-1 and a hat-full of 3-0 predictions,
we all (and the players?) convinced ourselves Charlton were poor, especially
based on the Brentford game.
The manager was saying we need to do more than turn up etc.
That suggests that the dressing-room talk was about it being a walk in the park.
So the disappointment for players and fans is a lot to do with expectations
being raised way too high. I was saying regularly in the predictions thread
that we were being way too optimistic and a defeat would hurt a lot.
Had we been one third a win, one third for a draw, one third for a defeat
I suspect we'd've shrugged it off much easier