Charlton Athletic boss confirms defender is on “horrific” injury list and discusses Jamaican attacker’s first-team credentials

Charlton Athletic manager Nathan Jones has described the club’s injury list as “horrific” after confirming that Zach Mitchell is sidelined due to injury.

The Addicks are gearing up for Saturday’s FA Cup second round tie at Walsall.

Charlton won 1-0 at Burton Albion on Tuesday night to ended a winless run of five matches in League One.

But a number of senior players are unavailable to Jones – including Lloyd Jones, Kayne Ramsay, Daniel Kanu, Chuks Aneke and young centre-back Mitchell, who recently signed a new contract.

“Zach has been on the injury list,” Jones told the South London Press. “He has had a big spike in terms of intensity and everything, so we’ve had to manage him. It was a really innocuous thing where he had a muscle injury and was doing very little.

“We have an excellent medical and sports science department. We are all aligned and there is a collaboration every day on volume, load, resting periods, how much we can give them and looking at the data. It is a massive, massive thing – totally different to when I was a player.

“What some people don’t realise is we have got a really young squad. We brought in a few elder statesmen which kind of distort our average age. We are trying to do something really, really good at this football club – one is trying to win football games to get to the next level but we integrate young players and embrace the academy. There is a pathway here.

“We have six or seven, at least, young players who have come through the academy and people like Thierry Small, who is 19-20 years of age, all in our first-team squad. It’s a real fine balance with that but we’re trying to do what not everyone at our level is doing.”

While Charlton’s league form had stuttered prior to the Burton match they have managed to get positive results in other competitions.

The Addicks have won all three of their EFL Trophy fixtures and also saw off non-league Southend United in the FA Cup to set up this weekend’s trip to the Bescot Stadium.

“We prepare the same way (for league and cup matches),” said Jones. “We have been stretched, especially in defensive areas. Both our right-backs have got injured, our vice-captain but captain at time Lloyd (Jones) has been injured. We’ve missed that. Then people like Chuks, Gassan, Miles, DK and TC – Karoy was away – we’ve had big, big players out for us in terms of the squad athleticism and size.

“With the amount of cup games we haven’t had a lot of continuity, you have to change things. When you get fixture congestion – you’re looking at it with the best team (Manchester City) in the land going through it and their form suffers. That is what happens.

“There are a lot of factors that go into a win, draw or defeat. Even though we haven’t won as many games as we want, we are still in and around it and that is with a horrific injury list. So when all those come back, then we feel we will be in a much, much better position to go forward, to be team we want to be and getting the consistent run of results that this side is capable of.”

Jones never tends to disclose much information on team selection ahead of matches and his pre-Walsall press conference was no exception.

He said: “We are in a better place than we were the other day. We’ve got Greg Docherty suspended but, apart from that, we’ve had two or three come back in a better place due to the time.

“We will be in a stronger position God-willing on Saturday than we were on Tuesday.”

Jamaican winger Kaheim Dixon scored four goals for Charlton U21s in midweek as they defeated Wingate & Finchley.

Asked if he was close to being in the first-team picture, Jones said: “He’s always close but the trouble is when he going to start a game he goes away with Jamaica and misses cup games that really give us an opportunity to really look at him in real competitive fixtures.

“He is always close because he is something different – energetic, clever, a little bit off the cuff and he is a fantastic trainer. It’s great to see him doing really well.”

MAIN PICTURE: KYLE ANDREWS