Charlton Athletic boss relishing fact his side are expected to be League One promotion challengers

BY RICHARD CAWLEY
richard@slpmedia.co.uk

Charlton Athletic are being viewed as solid promotion contenders and Dean Holden couldn’t be happier that there is a level of expectation on his squad.

It has been a summer of change in SE7. Global Football Partners have recently acquired the Addicks off Thomas Sandgaard and the playing personnel has also had an overhaul.

Of the team which started the 2022-23 opener at Accrington only three remain on the payroll – Scott Fraser, George Dobson and Corey Blackett-Taylor.

The addition of Cheltenham’s ultra-prolific Alfie May and Exeter’s Terry Taylor – along with the loan addition of Panutche Camara – has brought the Addicks back into the conversation when pundits discuss which clubs will challenge for the top six.

The trio relegated from the Championship – Reading, Barnsley and Wigan – are set to have points deductions or off-the-field issues. Ipswich Town and Sheffield Wednesday, whose budgets dwarfed some of their rivals, have moved up.

“You can’t deny that on paper there is no doubt that the league appears to be more open,” Holden told the South London Press. “But because of that the other clubs are seeing it as a massive opportunity to get out of the division. Next summer you are potentially going to have Wrexham up, Stockport and maybe other big clubs who are coming back from the ashes, so to speak, and they are spending.

“Portsmouth, Oxford and Wycombe – clubs like that – will think they have a real chance.

“So while the league looks weaker on the face of it, more will probably push harder than previously to get out of it. They might be a bit more aggressive in their recruitment.”

Not The Top 20 Pod have predicted Charlton to finish fifth.

The Addicks were 10th last season but Holden, appointed in December, has a summer transfer window to mould the playing personnel more to his liking as well as the bonding that comes from a training camp in Spain.

“It feels really good,” said Holden, when asked about Charlton being backed to go well. “A lot of the supporters have said that this is the first time in a long time they’ve felt real optimism going into a new season.

“We’ve got the ownership sorted now and the key thing is recruitment. When we came back to pre-season more than six weeks ago we’d not made a signing. We had the same group, other than the players who had left – including the loans – and we’ve not brought as many in.

“I want a tight-knit squad. As soon as we’ve made the signings we’ve made, that is the key reason people are giving us a bit of a shout of maybe being in the mix. We have to accept that – Charlton are a massive club and one of the biggest in this division. You have to accept that pressure – the pressure that we place on ourselves internally will supersede that.

“It doesn’t matter that the bookies are taking certain odds. I respect the two guys on the Not The Top 20 Pod, but it doesn’t change what we do.

“On day one of pre-season – and we’ve repeated it weekly – we have talked to the group about our targets. I can tell them that we have to finish top two, top six or get promoted this year but if you don’t work on it and believe in it in training then it doesn’t matter what you think. It is what you do on a daily basis.

“It’s about consistency of approach. I’m not interested in someone rocking up on Monday and Tuesday for training – being a great team-mate – and then they aren’t in the team and Friday morning they are moping around the place. I want consistency every day.

“Part of the beauty of the way I like to work – with the psychology -is getting to understand the players and where they come from.

“With the younger ones they’ve had such a different background from me. So it is about connecting with them. They will be the ones that have more of the inconsistencies in behaviour because they are going through this part of their life – teenage years – where they’re thrust into the first-team environment and the pressures that come with that.

“It’s where I come alive. I love the idea of guiding them. The senior players are what I call the ‘cultural architects’ who help me with their journey to overcome things and become consistent.”

Charlton may need time. Taylor is working his way back from an ankle problem. Tayo Edun had been training with a smaller group of players out of the first-team picture at Blackburn. Camara had two hernia injuries and a groin operation which pretty much wiped out last season at Ipswich.

“It’s like going to watch a movie that is only half-made when you go to pre-season games,” said Holden. “Some people don’t know the script properly yet and they’re ad-libbing a bit, finding their way.

“We’re nowhere near where we need to get to, based on that. It is a brand new team with a different approach. We want to get on the front foot and be a team that gets through the pitch quickly.

“That needs training every day. New players will pick it up. There is a lot of one-to-one stuff with new players – Tayo has missed four-and-a-half weeks of intense work, not just physical but a lot of team meetings about set-pieces and how we want to play. You can’t condense that into a couple of days and say: ‘Here are 15 different team meetings’. We’ve got to build him up. A lot of teams will be going through the same thing.”

Photos: Paul Edwards and Keith Gillard