Ashley Maynard-Brewer: Charlton can handle pressure of being tipped to challenge
Charlton have found themselves touted for promotion by media outlets and opposition managers already this season – but goalkeeper Ashley Maynard-Brewer says that the squad can take that pressure in their stride.
Leyton Orient boss Richie Wellens added his voice to the chorus predicting a good season in SE7 after his side were beaten 1-0 at The Valley on opening day.
The South Londoners finished 10th last year but look better placed to challenge this time around.
“We don’t read too much into it,” admitted Maynard-Brewer when asked about the outside noise.
“We’re all pretty optimistic. Going off how we finished last season, we know we’re a team that could push for promotion this season. It’s a long season. Where we went wrong last season was our inconsistency. It’s a very long season and we need to maintain the levels we showed today.
“[The start to the campaign] was pretty perfect. A bigger crowd. Performance was good. Leyton Orient, coming up from League Two, it was always going to be intense. The way we went about it, especially towards the end when we saw out the game, that was great. Shoutout to Nathan [Asiimwe] and Karoy [Anderson], they were excellent coming into their first league game. They really stood up.
“It’s so important [to start well] just to get us on our way and make sure we stay near the promotion spots. There’s nothing worse than having a slow start and having to have a reset. We can go into the next few games full of confidence and try to stay close to the top of the table.”
The Australian stopper was only called into serious action once by the O’s – a far cry from their last pre-season run out during which Aberdeen peppered the Charlton goal and scored three times in the first period.
“The back-five was spot on as a team,” added the 23-year-old.
“We were perfect defensively. We took on board what we needed to from last week against Aberdeen. We went about our game plan perfectly and got a clean sheet which we didn’t get enough of last season.”
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