Michael Appleton was disappointed with his team’s commitment on Tuesday evening as they were beaten 3-1 by Lincoln City at the LNER Stadium.
“We just didn’t give ourselves a chance tonight. We didn’t compete enough with them,” he told CharltonTV. “And if you do that against a really physical side like Lincoln, there’s only going to be one scenario that’s going to happen and that’s what happened.”
The Addicks had gone ahead inside ten minutes courtesy of Alfie May, and the boss was satisfied with the start. But he explained that his players stopped doing what he wanted after that.
“We did start okay, because we started to sort of play the ball in behind and down the side of them,” he said. “Then we got caught playing in front of them a little bit. We weren’t brave enough in that second period of the first half. We were asking Ash [Maynard-Brewer] to take far too many goal kicks and it was just going into their big centre-halves and coming straight back.”
Appleton also noticed some heads dropping after Charlton went behind: “Once the second goal went in, there were one or two players who looked like they didn’t really think they could get back in the game. I’ve not seen that yet, so that’s something that I’m certainly aware of tonight and I don’t want it to happen again.”
The gaffer took some positives from the night, most importantly the fact that this loss should help keep his players grounded.
“Sometimes these nights can be good for everybody, because it certainly stops people getting carried away,” he said.
With Bolton Wanderers visiting the Valley on Saturday, the gaffer also took heart in the fact that some of the Addicks’ best games have come against big sides at home.
“We’ve seen with the group that they are capable of winning those type of games,” he explained. “We’ve played some decent sides so far and, if anything, the bigger the club, the better the performance.
“It’s at the Valley, which has been good to us in recent weeks. We’ve scored lots of goals and haven’t conceded many there, so hopefully that will be the same on Saturday.”
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