Michael Appleton: People won’t like what I say but Charlton’s performance at Bristol Rovers was good – until we let ourselves down

Charlton head coach Michael Appleton was pleased with his side’s overall display despite a late 2-1 defeat at Bristol Rovers.

Substitute Chris Martin’s brace, the latter in the 5^th minute of added-time at the end of the game, saw the Addicks fall to a second successive reverse.

Slobodan Tedic seemed to have rescued a point for the South Londoners as he cancelled out Martin’s 68th-minute opener five minutes from the end of normal time.

But the Addicks, who had carved out chances in good spells at the start of either half, revealed their soft underbelly as they left former Palace loanee Martin unmarked twice inside their penalty area.

The result means the Addicks have now won just twice in 11 League One outings and remain 14 points adrift of the top six. They’ve not kept a clean sheet since mid-October.

Appleton said: “As a performance, people will probably get angry and disappointed with what I’m about to say, we were fine. We were good. We just let ourselves down, badly, in that last moment. It wasn’t just one or two that switched off, it was five or six.

“As a whole, I was reasonably happy. We started the game really well and could have been two or three nil up. Didn’t take the opportunities. We dealt with a bit of pressure they applied to us in the first-half towards half time pretty well. Second-half I was delighted. We certainly had three or four really good opportunities before they scored the goal. We got punished the first time they got in our box in the second half.

“You look at the quality of player they’re bringing on. Taking John Marquis off, who has scored a lot of goals at this level and bringing Martin on. That was hard to take. The character and response the players showed after that was top draw.”

The Charlton boss was booed by some in the away end at the Memorial Ground when he replaced top scorer Alfie May with Tyreece Campbell in the 77th minute.

“He’s injured,” explained Appleton when asked for his reaction.

“When you get to know the whole truth, it covers the ifs, buts and maybes. He was lucky to play. Yesterday, he wasn’t playing. He was really sore with his back and was struggling. He wanted another 24 hours to see if he was okay. He’s done that, given us everything he possibly could.

“He’s struggling a little bit earlier in the game. But he wanted to get through as many minutes as he possibly can. He’s a big character who can score a goal at a drop of a hat.”

PHOTOS: KYLE ANDREWS