Charlton must take positives from display during 2-1 defeat at Sunderland – Lewis Page

Photo by Kyle Andrews

BY LOUIS MENDEZ

There was plenty of encouragement to take from Charlton’s late 2-1 defeat at promotion hopefuls Sunderland, says Lewis Page.

Lyle Taylor had given the Addicks an early lead from the spot at the Stadium of Light on the opening day of the League One season.

But second-half strikes from Josh Maja and Lynden Gooch, the latter coming deep into injury time, secured victory for the Black Cats during their first third tier game for 31 seasons.

The South Londoners will have felt hard done by as their injury-ravaged side looked good value for a point from the contest.

“It’s gutting,” admitted left-back Page, after the Addicks had adapted well to changing their formation to a three at the back due to Jake Forster-Caskey suffering a season-ending injury in training in midweek.

“First-half I thought we played really well. We had the shape pretty much spot on. Second-half they matched us up and put us under a lot of pressure. When it went to 1-1, away from home we probably would have taken that. I thought we had the job done. Great delivery, he pulled off from me on the back post and headed it in. It’s a good goal to be fair, we’ve looked at it a few times. There wasn’t much you can really do, maybe I could have affected him a little bit more.

“We were sapped. It was a lot hotter. As soon as kick off started, the sun came out. We’ve got to learn from it. The first half we’ll take a lot of positives out of it. It’s the first game. We’ve got another 45 games left. We’ll take the positives and move on, hopefully we can get three points next time.

“They’ve got some big players still, some of them may have played in the Premier League. If we can do well these in the first half, if we can prolong that in the second half we would have won the game. It was a game of two halves. They put us under a lot of pressure. Probably we deserved a draw but they score in the last minute.

“Sunderland are a good side,” he added.

“They will probably be there or thereabouts this season. Hopefully we can do a job on Shrewsbury (next Saturday) and get our own back (for last season’s play-off defeat.) We need to get some points on the board and set ourselves off on a run.”