There is enough quality in this squad but we need to show it on match days – Charlton boss Ben Garner
Charlton are now winless in six – but Ben Garner says there is the quality within his side to go on and win games.
This afternoon’s 3-1 defeat at Barnsley sees the side drop to 16th in League One. They’ve won just two out of their opening 10 league games and sit six points outside the play-off places.
The South Londoners fell behind early on to Josh Benson’s long-range strike and were unable to find a way back into the match despite creating a number of first-half chances.
Barnsley added two further goals after the break as they took advantage of some slack defending in the Addicks’ back-line. Jack Payne pulled a goal back late on but Charlton were already well beaten.
Garner said: “There’s massive quality in this group. I see it day in day out. For whatever reason that isn’t quite transferring onto matchdays at the moment. That’s for me to work out and find ways to improve that. Find ways to get the players doing what I see they’re capable of. At the moment that isn’t quite happening.
“Not good enough in both boxes will be the perfect summary of it. Between the two boxes we were much the better side, particularly the first-half. It’s a wonder strike and we don’t take our chances. But then you can’t give the goals away that we did in the second-half. It was soft, it was cheap and effectively that wrote the game off for us.
“It’s my responsibility to improve that and fix that. It’s tough because it’s not that teams are killing us and on top of us. We’re not hanging on for our lives. It’s just a moment here and a moment there. We seem to be punished for everyone we make at the moment. We have to stop it. We have to cut those mistakes out, those errors out. We have to be better in that defensive third and get clean sheets. At the other end of the pitch we need to take chances. That’s the whole group and that rests on my shoulders.
“Today [we lacked] some determination, some focus, some concentration. Making the right decisions. They haven’t opened us up at all today. We’ve had really good control of the game for long spells and we’ve given them three goals and only scored one ourselves which on the balance of play isn’t what it should have been.”
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