The season is barely a few
days old but already the games are coming thick and fast. We've had
just three days to bask in the glory of Saturday's
impressive opening win, before kicking off our League Cup
campaign away to Charlton.
Supporters are
understandably in buoyant mood going into the match, but it goes
without saying that an away trip to a Championship side will be no
walk in the park. And whereas in previous years we've treated cup
competition as of equal importance to the league, Chris Wilder's
statement after the match on Saturday that he was looking to make
some changes for this match perhaps suggests that the league campaign
is our sole focus this term.
But with the development
squad playing in a friendly at Didcot on Wednesday, changes are
unlikely to be wholesale. Senior players who started on the bench on
Saturday and possibly a couple of the younger players who are closest
to the first team could feature in the starting XI at the Valley.
Expect the likes of James Constable, Michael Raynes and Asa Hall to
play some part.
Charlton will also be
making several changes to the side which suffered opening
day disappointment at the hands of Bournemouth on Saturday, with
an eye on keeping key players fit for the visit of Middlesbrough next
weekend. Former Dagenham midfielder Danny Green and 23-year-old Dale
Stephens are likely to feature, while Amersham-born Simon Church
could make his debut after joining Charlton from Reading in the
summer.
The Addicks may well look
at the cup as a good chance to recover from Saturday's
disappointment, but their form against lower league sides in recent
years has left many of their fans fearing an upset. Recent seasons
have seen Charlton crash out of the League Cup at the hands of
Wycombe, Luton, Yeovil, Hereford, Shrewsbury, Preston and Leyton
Orient - an esteemed list indeed. Further hope can be taken from the
fact that the Valley has hardly
been a fortress of late, with Charlton winning just eight times
at home in the league last season (with six draws and nine defeats)
and their only home pre-season friendly yielding a defeat to
Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
The Valley will be a
familiar hunting ground for Chris Wilder, who spent three games on
loan at Charlton from Sheffield United in 1990 and 1991. Other than
that, it's a step into the unknown for both clubs, with the last
meeting between Oxford and Charlton coming in a 2002
League Cup fixture. On that occasion a drab 0-0 draw (a staple of the Ian Atkins era) was brought to
life by a dramatic penalty shootout which ended with Jefferson Louis
blasting Oxford into a third-round tie against Aston Villa. That
victory was all the sweeter for being our first against Charlton
since 1987 – 13 matches had passed in that time and we had lost the
last seven of them consecutively. In fact, that win was our first
ever at the Valley after 16 previous attempts.
From the Vaults
Charlton Athletic v Oxford United, 16th August 1997
The yellows had made a
good start to the 1997/98 season with 2-0 wins over Huddersfield and
Plymouth in league and cup. But we soon came unstuck against
Charlton, finding ourselves 2-0 down and effectively out of the match
early in the second half. That sparked a horrible run of five defeats
from six league games...let's hope history doesn't repeat itself!
1 comments:
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