Striker Lyle Taylor says that heads mustn’t drop after play-off chasing Charlton suffer consecutive defeats

Charlton striker Lyle Taylor will keep his chin up despite the Addicks suffering two consecutive defeats.

The League One play-off chasers had won seven in eight league games before falling to a Boxing Day loss at Coventry City. That was quickly compounded three days later by a 2-1 reverse at fellow top six hopefuls Barnsley.

Taylor says that this is no time to lose focus, with the South Londoners still inside the play-off places and fixtures against Walsall and Sunderland still to come within the next week.

“We’re not going to lose confidence over two not so good results,” explained the Montserrat international.

“It’s a horrible time of year. I can attest to the fact that we’ve spent absolutely no time with our families which is obviously hard. It’s hard for the fans spending their hard-earned money coming all this way over this period of time. I want to apologise because we expect to pick up better results than we have. We have no God-given right to, but we expect to.

“If someone said in a block of 10 games, you’re going to get 21 points, you’d probably take 21 points. Bow’s target is 18 from blocks of nine. It’s frustrating that we’ve missed the opportunity by losing these two games but if you can take 21 points from every block of ten games you’d take that and it would get you close to promotion. The aim is to get back to that. It’s two games. There is another game in a few hours’ time. We will aim to be better and do what we can to go and win our next game.

“It doesn’t get any easier, it never will. Coventry proved that. It was a horrible game on a horrible pitch, something akin to a cow field if I’m honest with you. It shouldn’t be allowed at this level in my opinion. We have to deal with what’s in-front of us and they had to play on the same pitch.”

The South Londoners had a mountain to climb after just 15 minutes at Oakwell on Saturday as fine goals from Brad Potts and Mamadou Thiam had the hosts in control.

Ben Reeves pulled one back with just over a quarter-of-an-hour to go but Charlton were unable to find a leveller in the closing stages. Chris Solly was shown a second yellow card in added time to add insult to injury.

Taylor felt that referee Darren Bond should have made use of his red card in the first-half, when Ethan Pinnock got away with just a caution for hauling down Karlan Grant as he broke through on goal.

“It’s the same story, different day,” he said.

“We played them at home and it was him or Cavare who should have been sent off when Karlan was through. We played them here and he should have been sent off here. It’s the same old same old with the referees. I hope that eventually it swings and we get the same sort of embarrassing decisions for us.

“Three great goals in the game. It’s frustrating because in the second half we absolutely battered them. In the first half an hour they were better than us and in the next 60 minutes we were a lot better than them. The only difference is they managed to get two goals while they were on top. We couldn’t quite match that.

“We have got take the positives from today. We fight tooth and nail until the death and we don’t give up. The way we were able to be better than them in the second-half, we’ll take that as well. We’ll look to push that going forward in the next game and the one after that.

“That’s one of those things in football. Sometimes your luck is in and sometimes it’s out. Is our luck well and truly out at the moment? I wouldn’t say so. Are we a little less fluid in my opinion than we have been? Yes. Can we and will we be better next time we step out onto the pitch? We’ll have to be. Because Walsall are no mugs. For us to pick up the three points at home we’ll have to be better than we were in the first half an hour today. I have full faith in the team that we are able to do that. We’ll have to get home and recover right and be ready to go again.”