Naby Sarr believes that Charlton’s squad can use last season’s play-off heartache as motivation for the new campaign.
The Addicks – who recorded a 1-1 draw with Premier League Brighton & Hove Albion in their penultimate pre-season match on Tuesday– finished sixth in League One last term before being beaten over two legs by Shrewsbury Town.
And ahead of their final friendly against Norwich on Saturday and first league game of 2018/19 at Sunderland next weekend, Sarr says that the players are determined to go one better next term.
“Last season, we were close so this season we want to be even closer and get into the Championship,” said Sarr, who scored in Tuesday's draw with Brighton. “Last season was motivation for this season and we know what we have to do to achieve promotion.
“There are some details that we have to take care of and we are training hard every single week to change that and to try and get promotion.
“We have good elements about us this year. We lost a few players who were on loan and we still have more players to join us.
“We now have Prats [Darren Pratley] and we have Lyle Taylor, who are two good players for us. The window is not closed yet but the squad we have is good, so I think we can achieve something this season.”
Sarr's equaliser in Tuesday’s friendly against Brighton was fantatsic. Having intercepted a Brighton attack and after playing a one-two with Nicky Ajose, he slotted the ball into the bottom corner to earn his team a draw.
And the defender hopes to contribute more goals once the league season kicks off.
He said: “Last season, I played maybe 25 games and I didn’t score once. This season I hope to change this because it is important to help the team sometimes if we can’t score with our strikers.
“Patrick Bauer and Jason Pearce got goals last season, so I have to start scoring too. Every season, at the beginning, you want to show everything to the manager to be part of the starting XI.
“With a performance like Tuesday, maybe I have a chance to be in the XI. We will see and there is one more game on Saturday and after then we start the league games.”
Sarr also spoke about how new signing Lyle Taylor is trying to ‘turn him into Jason Pearce’. To read more, please click here.