Charlton steadied the ship again this afternoon with a comfortable win at Bramall Lane. Alan Pardew reacted to last week's capitulation at Blackpool by making four starting changes as well as reverting to the 4-5-1 formation that served us well in the first half of the season.
Andy Gray was dropped and Big Chris came back as the lone striker. Jerome Thomas made a rare start on the left and Kelly Youga came back at the expense of Grant Basey. Sam Sodje was the other change replacing Jonathan Fortune. Iwelumo slotted home on the stroke of half-time after a shot from Darren Ambrose had been saved by Paddy Kenny. Ambrose made the second towards the end of the game when his corner was headed home by Sodje.
This win is reassuring and should bring some confidence ahead of Tuesday's six pointer with Bristol City. It's good to see Darren Ambrose contributing again after his goals last week. I am not his biggest fan due to his inconsistency not his lack of talent. It would be good to see him score again on Tuesday and put Iwelumo under pressure as top scorer. His performance and the win should re-energise the squad and hopefully have a good number of players chomping at the bit to get on again.
If we can follow this up with another three points on Tuesday we should get some breathing space. Ipswich and Hull are both at home with winnable matches on Tuesday but Hull play Burnley so we can expect to make some progress if we can do the double over Bristol City. We have another home game next Saturday against Preston so could really cement our play-off place. Hving won at Bristol City and Preston already, it's not too much to expect another six points this week. If we can do that, there might we one last shot at an automatic place, although I don't expect it......
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