Charlton Athletic can’t afford to be wrong side of ‘fine margins’ – adding a striker to support Alfie May is key

Go back just under two years to October 2021 and you’ll find then Charlton boss Nigel Adkins cursing the ‘fine margins’ he claimed his side surfaced on the wrong side of after limping to an agonising late defeat at Lincoln City.

Charlton were fumbling through an appalling start to the campaign. The death rattle of Adkins’ rein in SE7 was starting to sound. He was grasping for any excuse he could find at Sincil Bank. The Addicks had been awful that afternoon and were lucky to have only lost the game by a slender scoreline. Adkins’ post-match comments that day invited derision. He was gone five days later.

But suffering the adverse effects of landing on the wrong side of finely balanced games can happen in football. It usually does. More than half of all of games that were won and lost in League One last season were by the odd goal. Only five of Charlton’s 14 wins in the 2022-23 campaign were by more than one goal.

The South Londoners were one of the division’s draw specialists last term. It only takes one second in a close game to turn a point into three. That is a tight margin.

Fast forward to Tuesday night and those slim details were at it again. Alfie May rasped an effort off the inside of the post, the ball painfully coming back out again, as the clock ticked past 90.

Moments later Luke McCormick’s shot squirmed past Ashley Maynard-Brewer’s weak right hand as the Gas took the three points back down the M4. That really was a fine margin. The problem is, being on the wrong end of a fine margin seems to happen quite often to Charlton at The Valley.

So how do you make those fine margins start to drop in your favour? You leave less to chance. Charlton weren’t ready for this season’s curtain to raise at the start of the month.

They haven’t backed up their summer recruitment yet. May is a certified goal-getter. Pan Camara has serious League One pedigree. But it’s no good cherry picking a few good players if you’re still inserting subpar pegs into round holes for the first month of the campaign.

Every point counts over the course of the season. Three points against Bristol Rovers in August aren’t any less valuable than the three up for grabs at Wycombe Wanderers on the final day.

There’s 15 up for grabs in the first calendar month. That’s a fair old chunk of points that you’re taking too many risks with. If it comes down to fine margins at the end of the year then losing out on a significant portion of those 15 because you’re not firing on all cylinders from the off could be massively costly.

Tuesday’s game reiterated a lot of the problems that Charlton displayed at Peterborough last weekend. May needs a more effective foil than makeshift forward Jack Payne.

Daniel Kanu’s composed finish to haul Charlton level 17 minutes from time certainly staked a claim for the academy graduate but the 18-year-old isn’t ready to start week in, week out.

So far the Addicks haven’t really improved defensively since last season. Everyone in a red shirt seemed to suffer from collective amnesia when they forgot to react to

Maynard-Brewer’s parry from Anthony Evan’s free-kick. A simple square ball was tapped in by Scott Sinclair just before the hour mark. Rovers had two or three other gilt-edged chances before Kanu’s leveller.

It was a late sucker punch that ultimately decided Tuesday’s game in Rovers’ favour.

But Charlton have loaded the dice against themselves again this year. The new ownership in SE7 still have two weeks to mould Holden’s squad into one with enough quality running through it to tip more fine margins in their favour.

But the holes in the squad at time of writing means Charlton are once again more susceptible to just being edged out. Time will tell how costly that is.

STAR MAN
George Dobson. Has found another level this season. He’s always been combative in midfield but looks more comfortable on the ball now.

BEST MOMENT
Academy products Karoy Anderson and Dan Kanu linking up for Charlton’s goal. The Addicks are over reliant on youth at the moment, but it was a fine move.

PICTURES: KEITH GILLARD AND PAUL EDWARDS