PRE MATCH | Robinson hopeful Addicks can benefit from Valley training sessions

George Jones reports

Karl Robinson hopes that training at The Valley will stand his side in good stead ahead of their home fixture against Southend United at the weekend.

The Addicks will use SE7 as a training base on both Thursday on Friday, before the play-off chasing Shrimpers make the short journey to South East London on Saturday afternoon.

And Robinson believes that spending more time at The Valley could enhance his team’s chances of getting back to winning ways. 

“We’re training at The Valley from now on and I want to train here more,” he said. “The Valley is a special place and to replicate movement patterns on our pitch can only aid what we want to do on Saturdays and Tuesdays.

“It’s nice to be able to hit the nets we want to hit, defend the goals we want to defend, rotate on the grass we want to move on, press where we want to press and really replicate down to a tee how we want the game to go.

“Hopefully it can help us to find that little bit extra.

“At the training ground, having a lot of staff, U23s and U18s all mixing and working closely together is fantastic. At the moment, though, my players need to be isolated that from that and need to be very narrow minded in how they approach the last few games of the season.

“It’s almost a case of us locking ourselves away at The Valley; we’ll work here, have meetings here, play here and say everything that we need to say within these four walls.”

The Addicks picked up a point away at Southend on New Year’s Eve, with Andrew Crofts netting a 90th minute equaliser for Charlton.

Robinson is expecting Phil Brown’s side to provide another tough test when they visit SE7 on Saturday. 

He said: “We have to focus our minds and get ourselves ready for a very difficult game. This Southend team are a very good side.

“Phil has done a great job – they are very cohesive in the way they move, they are very aggressive in their press and are very forward thinking in the way they attack.

“They attack in numbers with Wordsworth, Cox, Ranger, Fortuné, Theo Robinson; all players that are very good.

“They’re strong at the back, as Phil Brown teams always are, and we know that we will be in for a difficult afternoon and no stone can be left unturned.”