Football
League Championship
The Valley,
Charlton
Admission:
Season Ticket
Programme:
£5.00
Attendance:
16,658
After three
seasons away from having a season ticket at my beloved Charlton Athletic,
during their days in League One to enable some more extensive groundhopping,
the club’s promotion back to the Championship, together with a bargain season
ticket price of £240.00, persuaded me to hop aboard the rollercoaster that is
taking my seat at The Valley throughout the season.
Previous
descriptions of the ground can be found here, and I found my seat this season
to be towards the back of the lower tier of the North Stand, pretty much right
behind the goal. An excellent position, although the slight incline in rows
means that there is a fair amount of head swerving is required to see the goal
action.
Tonight
would be a tough game for Charlton to start their home campaign, against big
spending Leicester City, one of the favourites for promotion to the
Premiership. Having won League One at a canter last season, Charlton opened
their season with a draw at Birmingham City, only being denied by a scrambled
equaliser four minutes into added on time at the end of the game. Leicester won
2-0 at home to Peterborough. There would be a couple of subplots to the game.
The Charlton manager, Chris Powell, was the first team coach at Leicester
before moving to Charlton, and was given his first coaching role at Leicester
by current Leicester manager, Nigel Pearson. The Charlton striker and cult-hero
Yann Kermorgant also played for Leicester, with unhappy memories, with his last
touch as a Leicester player consigning them to a penalty shoot-out defeat to
Cardiff in the play-off semi final the season before last when his tame chipped
shot was comfortably saved. Loud boos greeted his name when announced, although
Charlton fans cheers greeted former Charlton player Paul Konchesky.
On a fairly warm summer’s evening, the opening stages saw
Charlton doing much of the attacking, but Leicester always looked dangerous on
the break. On 18 minutes, it was the home side who took the lead after some
patient build-up play, when Bradley Pritchard played the ball to the edge of
the penalty area, into the path of Bradley Wright-Phillips, who strode forward
and smashed a ferocious low drive into the net past Kasper Schmeichel. On 32
minutes, Charlton doubled their lead when the ball was played across the 18
yard line to Yann Kermorgant, he drove powerfully into the net, for a goal that
must have meant a lot to him personally against
Leicester. For the rest of the half, Leicester were in the ascendancy,
and they were slightly unfortunate to go into the break two goals down.
The second
half saw Leicester dominate, as the Charlton players struggled to retain
possession and did not close the Leicester players down enough, inviting
pressure. Leicester got back into the game on 54 minutes, when the ball was whipped
in from the byline and Andy King finished powerfully from close range. As the
second half wore on, it seemed only a matter of time before Leicester scored an
equaliser, but some poor finishing, combined with goalkeeping by Ben Hamer and
some heroic defending ensured that Leicester just couldn’t score a second goal,
as Charlton held on for a hard earned three points. A very entertaining game of
football to start the season at the Valley.
A match report of this game can be found at here
A match report of this game can be found at here
2 comments:
Danny Drinkwater scored for Leicester not Andy King! :D
Thanks for your comment...think you might have your seasons mixed up though? Drinkwater scored the goal when the teams met at the Valley in August 2013...but this report was from August 2012 and it was definitely King who scored that day...unless all the other online and club reports are wrong too! ;)
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