Charlton Athletic boss attaches no blame to Ronnie Schwartz after late penalty miss at Oxford

Lee Bowyer offered his sympathy and support to Ronnie Schwartz after the Charlton striker missed a late spot-kick in today’s 0-0 draw at Oxford United.

The Addicks had a glorious chance to take maximum points when Alex Gorrin was penalised after Jayden Stockley went down in the penalty area.

But Oxford keeper Jack Stevens dived to his left to keep out the Dane’s well-hit effort. Schwartz was on spot-kick duties because Conor Washington had been subbed off.

Referee Tom Nield blew for full-time straight after that with Schwartz clearly devastated at not converting.

Bowyer said: “He is very good at them. One thing I’ve seen Ronnie do is take a good penalty. We looked at a lot of clips before he came to the club and there were penalties in those clips. The one thing that surprised me was that he didn’t go a little higher, he normally puts them with pace in the top corner.

“But the keeper has made a great save, you can’t take that away from him. He’s paid to make saves and he’s gone and made them.

“I’ve told Ronnie to forget about it. It’s done. The keeper has made a good save – don’t worry about it. You can’t change it now. He won’t sleep tonight – 100 per cent. It will dwell on his mind for a little bit, but he has to get over it because there is another game Tuesday. He’ll struggle to sleep tonight because I’ve missed chances myself and you keep replaying in your head a million times.

“I guarantee in his head he’ll be thinking ‘oh, I should have gone this way or hit it a bit harder’.

“He’s a good finisher. He didn’t miss the penalty – the keeper saved it. It doesn’t just all of a sudden make someone bad.

“Would I trust Ronnie to take another penalty tomorrow? Yeah I would. That’s the game unfortunately, we’re just not getting those little breaks, are we? All we can is keep trying. The one criticism today is that we won the ball in great, our traps worked, but that next pass or final cross – we let them off the hook so many times.

“If we’d taken care a little bit better I think we’d have probably scored.

“It would have been harsh on Oxford if we had scored that. But there were a lot of positives to take – another clean sheet and the players gave everything. They looked a bit tired at times.Standing on the side I can’t ask for no more.”

PHOTOS: KYLE ANDREWS