Mugged!

Addicks 0 - Bandits 1.

Nobody can deny Norwich City have been the stand out team in this division over the season.
City thoroughly deserve their now guaranteed promotion.

Norwich have the luxury of being from a one club town. Their support has been unwavering.
Being the only show for miles and miles around, surely helps their attendances being close to the ones they enjoyed in their Premiership season.

Norwich is a lovely town with, for the most part, good natured citizens, - I'm pleased for the people of Norfolk.

So on to today.

I'm not going to waste my time typing out what happened.
The statistics speak for themselves.

CHARLTON ATH.

NORWICH

Possession

• Charlton 
• 68%      32%
• Norwich

Attempts on target

• Charlton 
• 9            2
• Norwich2

Attempts off target

• Charlton 
• 7           1
• Norwich1

Corners

• Charlton 9           1
• Norwich9          1

 

                                  9            1

Fouls

• Charlton                              11    14
• Norwich14

How on EARTH did Charlton come away from the game with nothing?

The star of the game was, without a shadow of doubt, Forster in the Norwich goal.
He made some fantastic reaction saves, not least from Bailey and Burton.
Forster also received rather a lot of protection from the referee, which seemed tinged with irony for any of us who were at Carrow Road earlier in the season.
On that day, Grant Holt smashed our keeper, Robbie Elliott, out of the way to grab a draw in added on time.
Today our keeper Darren Randolph was mostly a spectator.

We do seem to be coming good at the right time.

A few weeks ago, I was worried we were going to be a spent force if we managed to stumble into the Play Offs.
The performances against Southampton, Colchester and now Norwich might only have plundered 3 points but the team really 'gave it a go' and goals aside, we are playing with more of the early season panache.

Crispy commented today that we seem to be a 'warm weather' side.
 We were absolutely flying early in the season, then fell apart somewhat throughout the colder months.

Perhaps we've come back to life again now the clocks have gone forward?

A Casual Rating
Every member of the Charlton side is being awarded a Lacoste polo this time.
It's not often I've felt the need to clap the team off the pitch after a defeat but today I just had to agree, there wasn't much more our team could have done.

We were proud of our team and that felt good.

We played Norwich off the park, they grabbed a rather fortuitous goal and then they 'parked the bus'.
City left a single player up front, (at the most), throughout the game and created very little.

The fact that Norwich started to waste time with only 65 minutes played, speaks volumes about how they saw the game progressing.
Only when Jose Semedo was substituted, did Norwich gain even a minor foothold in the proceedings.

The Norwich crowd were obviously down here for a party but our support was also quite bright.
Everyone could see our team were giving everything they could and but for wayward finishing and solid defending, Norwich would have been looking back wistfully on last years 4-2 defeat, leaving South London completely humbled.

The Primark novelty slogan tee shirt is staying on the hanger this time.
Nobody had a howler and the officials generally played their part in a good game, though it did take them rather a long time to catch on to the pushing in the back whenever the Norwich defence thought the referee was unsighted.

Bring on Exeter!