Charlton Athletic boss Bowyer keen on return to home dressing room at The Valley

Lee Bowyer is trying to get his Charlton Athletic side back into the home dressing room at The Valley – but reckons there are no major fixes needed to switch their SE7 form around.

The South London club have won just four of their 15 League One matches on home turf.

Charlton are winless in eight matches there, losing five of them.

It begs the question whether there is a different approach that could switch the mindset of Bowyer’s squad – such as piping crowd noise through the public address system?

Charlton have also been using one of the lounges in the West Stand as a makeshift changing room.

Bowyer said: “The home dressing room situation, we’re trying to fix that. Because we are going in dressing rooms when we play away that are miles smaller than ours. We’re trying to fix that problem from tomorrow.

“We’ve thought about crowd noise because we have missed the fans, plain and simple. But if we play crowd noise then the players can’t really hear us when you are trying to give instructions. The pro of no-one being there is that the players can actually hear us from the side. That’s probably the only positive to come out of that.

“But you go back to the last two performances and it doesn’t matter if you’re home or away if you do the basics right then we’re in every game and we’ll probably win more than we don’t. And decisions from officials have affected us massively and so has some of our basic stuff in both boxes.

“If we go tomorrow and play the way we have done in the last two games and cut out silly mistakes then we’ve got a very good chance of winning. I believe that is the case in every game. You don’t go away to Portsmouth and win, Ipswich away and win and then can’t do it at home. We beat Fleetwood at home and Oxford at home – so it shouldn’t matter if we do the right things.”

Former Charlton manager Alan Curbishley, on punditry duty for Valley Pass at the weekend, talked about treating the home matches like they are away. Only Lincoln City have accrued more points on their travels in the division.

Bowyer responded: “We don’t set them up no different – the preparation is the same. We always try to set up on the front foot, set traps and win. But I come back to the fact we’ve made more individual errors at home – they are things you can’t control. Officials’ decisions – you can’t control that.

“If we do the right things then there are no issues, because we create chances in every game.

“It would have been about one goal on Saturday – whoever got it would’ve won. There wasn’t much in it. We got in some great positions. It doesn’t matter if you’re home or away, if you don’t capitalise on those situations then that’s the reason you don’t win so many games.”