Ben Reeves is eager to get his teeth into Charlton Athletic’s busy Christmas schedule
Four games in ten days sounds daunting, but Charlton Athletic’s Ben Reeves is eager to get his teeth into the busy Christmas schedule.
The South Londoners started off their busy festive fixture list with a 2-0 home win over near-neighbours Gillingham. They travel to Coventry City on Boxing Day and then Barnsley on 29thDecember, before Walsall visit The Valley on New Year’s Day.
Reeves bagged his first goal of the campaign to open the scoring against the Gills on Saturday, and reckons that he and his teammates will be able to handle the heavy workload over the next fortnight despite the injury problems within the squad.
“I think we’ve got a good enough squad to cope with it,” explained the midfielder.
“[Darren Pratley] is coming back, as we saw today. There’s still a strong bench as well. It’s only going to get stronger with the players coming back. Hopefully one or two of those will be soon.
“The boys that are fit at the moment are looking forward to it and the boys that aren’t fit are gutted they can’t play. That’s what I was like when I wasn’t fit. You’re just gutted that you can’t be involved in it.
“It makes you hungrier to come back and make sure you’re fitter. Makes you work harder when you’re not playing to make sure you’re fit enough to go straight into the fold.
“It’s always good to get a win going into a busy schedule. The most important thing is that we keep it going.”
Saturday’s win lifted the Addicks into fourth in the League One table, just four points shy of Luton Town in the second automatic promotion place. However, Reeves has his eye on the team sitting atop the division.
“Portsmouth are the team to catch at the moment,” he said.
“We just have to keep on winning. We know we’ve just got to concentrate on ourselves. The big one was (the win at) Portsmouth. We knew that closed the gap a little bit for us. We’ve just got to keep winning games and concentrate on ourselves. We’ve got to keep the run going and make it better.”