Lee Bowyer calls for Charlton players to take a look at themselves after home defeat against Coventry

Charlton boss Lee Bowyer has called for his players to take a look at themselves after they fell to second defeat in five days.

Amadou Bakayoko’s late double earned Coventry a 2-1 win at The Valley, after Lyle Taylor’s first-half penalty had seemed to sending the South Londoners on their way to all three points.

The home loss comes days after Bowyer’s side had slipped to a 5-3 reverse at Scunthorpe during the week, ending their run of six league games without defeat.

The Addicks now have two weeks off due to the international break, a respite that has come at the right time for the Charlton manager.

“We’ve got a break now, maybe this is a good time to have this break,” admitted Bowyer.

“They can come back and have a look at some of themselves as they’ve let themselves down over the last week.

“Poor defending, from experienced players. It ain’t good enough. People that have made mistakes are experienced players and they shouldn’t be making mistakes as much as they are. But they have and we’ve lost.

“You can’t just look at the back-four. They’re a team. We’re all in this together. If you look at the last two games – for me that’s six points dropped. If you add those six points onto where we are now, we’ll be second. I’ve just told them that. You can’t take your foot off the pedal. Score three goals away at Scunny and play them off the park. Today, we were the better team.

“They came, they had a game plan. That’s the way they play. They’re difficult to beat. They’ve got their two banks of four. It’s hard to play through them. You have to be patient and I thought we were. It’s can be frustrating to watch at times but unfortunately not everyone is going to come and play open football. Because we are a good side and teams are seeing that we are getting better and they’re showing us respect. Coventry have done that today.

“We lost the game so I it doesn’t matter what I think. The fact is they scored two late goals and got three points and we’ve got none. It’s harsh but that’s football. It’s not just an eighty-minute game. It’s a ninety plus minute game and we seemed to switch off and go into this relaxed mode because we were comfortable. We dominated the second-half. Again, we don’t take our chances. We were in good areas, in the final third time after time.”