Charlton Athletic 1 v Plymouth Argyle 2

Charlton lost their unbeaten home record this evening in a feisty encounter with Plymouth Argyle which will be remembered for another inept referring performance by the clown Ray Styles.

Charlton started with a reasonable enough line-up bearing in mind all the pre-match consternation over how we would fill the left-back slot. The solution was straightforward enough, Mills went in at left-back and Yassin Moutaouakil came back at right-back. Ambrose was replaced by Varney in a wide right position, which looked ok to me at the start, although he had a poor game and was ineffective (not unlike Ambrose of late).

The game started very brightly with a goal a-piece inside the first 12 minutes or so. Plymouth attacked from the off and deserved their early lead when some quick movement and slick passing saw them play in from the left and several touches later Ebanks-Blake found himself with the simple task of steering the ball wide of Weaver. I could be critical of the Charlton defending but this was very early in the game and there was worse to come.

Having taken the lead, Plymouth took a breather and Charlton picked up the reigns with several good attacking moves of their own culminating in a ball being played out to Mills on the overlap at the left edge of the box on 12 minutes. His rasping drive from 20 yards looked to have been tipped onto the post by Luke McCormick but the ball cannoned back and the unfortunate keeper knocked it over the line. At this stage we had a great game in prospect.

There then followed a number of niggly fouls from both sides which Styles either failed to punish or simply got wrong - Semedo was clattered three times. Todorov was the inevitable first booking when Coco finally decided to impose himself on the game. Unfortunately he then failed to book a retaliatory cut-down on Todorov minutes later that saw him stretchered off (to be replaced by Izale McLeod). At this point Mr Styles was probably concerned at the number of things he was getting wrong and the evident abuse he was getting from the Valley crowd. So, he decided he was going to award a free-kick for every subsequent tackle and a yellow card for anything bordering a committed challenge until the end of the game. I lost count at 10 yellow cards, six to us a and four to them. For every booking he blew his whistle as loud as he could, stepped back theatrically and summonsed the player towards him. No quick kicks were allowed and we had a 15-20 second delay as he took his notes for each booking. In between times his other decisions were inconsistent and on several occasions blatantly wrong. There was precious little advantage played and when he did he was waving play on because he couldn't decide if there had been a foul committed or not! He used these two "advantages" to demonstrate that he knew the correct signal for "play on" by waving his arms profusely as if to ensure we were all aware that he was somehow contributing to the flow of the game (which he failed to do spectacularly).

Luke Varney missed the best Charlton chance of the half when he ran onto a long through ball from Jonathan Fortune only to slam his shot at McCormick. Iwelumo met a superb cut-back cross from Reid at the far post and headed down powerfully but, for the third game running, his effort was stopped on the line. In the midst of this Charlton period McLeod gave the ball away in a deep position and Argyle countered swiftly. The ball was lobbed over the back line and Barry Hayles was allowed to get a toe to it before Weaver and it trickled in for 1-2.

Charlton came out fired-up during the second half and created a blizzard of chances in several concerted spells of pressure, but everything looked hurried and there was a sense of panic even with 25 minutes to go. Andy Reid shot wide twice with options available left and right; varney did the same; Iwleumo rose unchallenged to meet a great left-wing cross ten yards out but contrived to divert his header wide of the gaping right-hand post. I think every midfielder and forward fluffed chances during the second half in-between bookings and fouls awarded by Styles. Defeat looked inevitable when Charlton eventually slowed down and Plymouth were able to get back into the game towards the end of the match.

Credit to Plymouth, they came to have a go and you have to think that Ian Holloway had done his homework, although it's pretty evident what Charlton's problems are; we cannot defend for 90 minutes and we have a glaringly obvious problem at centre-back. Our conversion ration of goal-scoring chances to goals must be the worst in the division and this too is becoming a concern.

Danny Mills was my clear-cut man-of-the-match today (Lillian Nalis stood out for them). Reidy was a close second despite his misses. Yassin Moutoakil played well but I think Fortune and Bougherra were exposed for the goals and they don't look comfortable with each other. Semedo and Zheng Zhi both had reasonable games in midfield but Varney looked clearly out-of-position. Iwelumo had another busy game but was guilty of three bad misses. McLeod contributed little. Thomas looked lively when he came on beating his men on the left and putting in several excellent crosses, although he too finished his best opportunity weakly.

This was our first back-to-back defeat and we've heaped pressure on ourselves for Saturday. Our record in live TV games is truly appalling (I'll bet no-one has worse) and QPR will come to frustrate us. I'm so hacked off with this evening's game that I can't be bothered to look at the other results and am off to bed.