Fasten your seatbelts...

Tonight's JPT game at Southampton has taken on more importance following Sunday's shoddy defeat by non-league opposition. This is a competition that Addicks fans were warming to after victory in the last round and realisation that a Wembley appearance was so relatively close and not completely unrealistic for a change. In fact, we were close favourites.

Kings Hill Addick covers the Wembley angle very neatly here, although I do not share his confidence about the result. I will be following events on the box and team selection, formation and the players attitude will be of as much interest to me as the score. Southampton are on a very good run and have been scoring freely for the last 5 or 6 matches. I expect them to get at us and to score which immediately makes it hard to see a Charlton victory when we are struggling to score at all, let alone more than once in games. penalties might be as good as we can hope for.

As a minimum we should see a positive reaction to Sunday's defeat and I hope that comes in the form of a concentration on playing football and not a harder foot in the tackle. The last thing we need is our discipline fragmenting and the loss of key personnel through suspensions. In spite of our well recognised weaknesses upfront, we have already shown that we have enough footballing talent within the squad to play competitively against League One opposition and that must be where we refocus now in the hope of getting some results going for us to re-inspire the side.

I'm sorry to see original Charlton blogger, Wyn Grant suspending his Addicks Diary due to a frustration with our fickle fans. It will be our loss as Wyn has the knack of unearthing snippets the rest of us can't find and he has a unique take on all things Charlton. I hope his holiday will be brief because it will mean our loss of form is temporary and the wailing and gnashing of teeth will be short-lived.