Richard Cawley’s big-match verdict on Peterborough 2 Charlton 1: We’ll have better idea of Addicks’ promotion credentials by the end of January

BY RICHARD CAWLEY

Even just a quick glance at the playing surface at the Weston Homes Stadium told you a couple of things.

The first was that any notion of a flowing and attractive game of football was in the realms of pure fantasy.

And the second was that it was likely to be the side which made the fewest mistakes on a difficult pitch – the damage inflicted by a burst water main fixed last month – who would emerge victorious.

For 66 minutes, Charlton were serenely on course for back-to-back League One wins that would have firmly put their promotion push back on track.

But defensive errors have never been far away in a patchy period from the start of December.

And once again their vulnerability to a long ball forward was exposed – in similar fashion to when Colby Bishop put Accrington on their way to maximum points at The Valley earlier this month.

Deji Oshilaja and Jason Pearce had kept Posh dangerman Jonson Clarke-Harris quiet up until the point when the duo failed to deal with Frankie Kent’s punted effort.

Pearce got sucked into helping his centre-back partner deal with the ball after it had bounced. But he failed to win his aerial duel with Clarke-Harris, Sammie Szmodics controlled on his chest before stroking past Ben Amos to cancel out Conor Washington’s first-half penalty.

Szmodic’s second came on a counter created by Andrew Shinnie’s touchline slip with the Addicks advanced as they attacked a long throw by Paul Smyth.

There seemed no danger as Siriki Dembele flicked the ball down the wing but the on-loan Luton man lost his balance, the ball skidding just into the visitors’ half. Clarke-Harris was able to take a few touches before slipping in Szmodics.

Ian Maatsen had tried his best to catch the Peterborough number 15 but he helped himself to a brace for the second successive match with another composed finish.

Only the alertness of Amos denied the former Bristol City man from walking away with the matchball.

If a 2-1 defeat was harsh on Charlton then 3-1 certainly would have been even harder to stomach.

Lee Bowyer’s side were marginally the better side in the opening 45 minutes even if that wasn’t reflected in a glut of chances.

The match as a whole was disjointed and scrappy, entirely what you would expect on a pitch which looked as if a herd of grazing cattle had chewed it over.

But the Addicks applied themselves excellently right up until Peterborough’s equaliser. After that they never looked like fashioning a response.

The South Londoners only managed two efforts on target and one of those was from the spot.

Pearce made the most of a slight hold by Ethan Hamilton from a Jake Forster-Caskey’s free-kick to collapse to the mud. Washington made no mistake as he found the bottom left corner of the net for his seventh goal of the campaign.

Another Forster-Caskey free-kick should arguably have yielded more just seconds before Szmodics first struck. Omar Bogle could not make enough of his initial contact near the back post but it dropped for Chris Gunter, who headed over the crossbar from about eight yards out.

Washington had also done superbly in the 54th minute to hold the ball up despite pressure from former Millwall centre-back Mark Beevers before astutely picking out Smyth in the box. But the QPR loanee made a poor decision to slam over a cross when a cutback or shot were easily better options.

It’s hard to get an accurate gauge of where this Charlton side is in terms of a top-six finish, just because of the disparity in the amount of matches played in another covid-disrupted campaign.

No team has played more matches than the Addicks and although they remain in sixth spot all the teams above them have at least one fixture in hand. Just as pertinently, so too do the likes of Ipswich, Sunderland and Accrington – the clubs below who are most likely to be promotion rivals.

We’re probably best to wait until the end of this month to make an assessment on Charlton’s credentials.

By then we will have a better idea when injured centre-back duo Ryan Inniss and Akin Famewo will be back. Plymouth (39) are the only club in the top half of the table to have conceded more goals than the Addicks (30).

And Bowyer will also hope that he is able to do more incoming business before the transfer deadline. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some of his senior players not being named in Charlton’s squad for the second half of the campaign, so as to free up some extra slots.

It could be the only way to reshape things if they can’t shift people on in what appears to be a pretty stagnant market.

STAR MAN
Conor Washington. It wasn’t a night when any Charlton player was at their best – but grafted away up top and took his penalty well.

BEST MOMENT
Showed strength and awareness to find Smyth in the box, just a shame that the Irishman’s decision-making saw a promising moment come to nothing.