Charlton boss Lee Bowyer hopes to enter the final run-in with a chance of still finishing in League One’s top two

Lee Bowyer hopes that his Charlton side can get within touching distance of the automatic promotion places for the final run-in.

Saturday’s narrow win over Bradford City leaves the South Londoners nine points adrift of second-placed Barnsley although they do have a game in hand on the Yorkshire outfit. Bowyer’s side sit just three points behind Sunderland but the Northerners have played two fewer.

The Addicks still have seven league games left to play and Bowyer hopes that they can give themselves an outside chance of nicking a top-two finish at the death.

“Barnsley dropped points but the interesting thing is how Sunderland are going to go,” explained Bowyer.

“They’ve got a few games in hand. They’ve got to play them in a short pace of time. The likelihood of the pair of them messing up is slim. We need two teams to mess up. But if Barnsley keep dropping the odd point here and there and Sunderland have got to play a lot of games and win them all, then you never know. They might drop some as well.

“We’ve got to be there in case it happens. We will concentrate now on Plymouth. That will be tough. If we can go there and get the three points, I’d like to be within touching distance with two games to go. I’d love to be in that situation but we’re asking a lot and it’s out of our hands.”

Lyle Taylor’s 19th goal of the campaign was enough to earn the Addicks all three points against rock-bottom Bradford despite a less than immaculate display.

“At this stage of the season, it doesn’t matter how you win or what the score is,” said the Charlton chief.

“You just tick it off, get the three points and move on. They did what most teams try to do us now and that’s try and make it difficult, sit behind the ball and hit you on the break. I thought we dominated the game. It wasn’t good for us, we were a bit sloppy at times in possession and invited them to hit us on the break which was stupid. But apart from that, our attitude was spot on. We could have had five or six ourselves. Lyle could have had four. We move on, take the pros. We got three points and again it was a good atmosphere.

In the final third, we weren’t too bad. Our play to get there was decent. We had to be patient because of the way they set up. Lyle got another goal and we got a clean sheet, which is good. Two clean sheets on the spin. Always look at the positives. Let’s move on.”