Lee Bowyer admitted he was hurting after the Addicks suffered a cruel relegation.
The Charlton Manager has had to put up with a variety of issues both on and off the pitch as his team battled valiantly to stay in the Championship only to be denied by a cruel late goal by Barnsley against promotion contenders Brentford.
Speaking after his side’s loss at Leeds United he said: “I’m not happy, we’ve been relegated. I just said to the players that it isn’t because of tonight’s game. It’s because since coming back from lockdown we’ve been the better side most of the games and that is what has cost us. We should have been safe before we came here tonight but we weren’t, so I’m disappointed obviously getting relegated is never a nice thing to happen. I’m not in a good place at the moment.
“I’m hurting because I don’t like losing games and the way we’ve gone down, the way we’ve been relegated that hurts me even more. We should have won games, we should have had enough points to keep us in the division easily – that’s what hurts me.
“Like today, they were a different level to us, by far and that’s why they are going up but in the other games that hasn’t been the case, that is what hurts me more than anything because it was in our hands and we didn’t grab it, we didn’t grab that chance to put ourselves safe. Even with all the other crazy stuff that has been going on and, at times I just felt like this job was impossible, even when you’ve had all that, you’ve still got the chance of staying in the division and we never grabbed it. That is what hurts me more than anything.
“We still fought to the last day and we should have still been safe, I believe that, with the group of players we have got, we should have still been safe but that didn’t happen. The chances we created in the games of late, we should have won at least two of them, probably three of them. Decisions that went against us. Alan Wiley apologised to me again on Monday but I said to him that big decisions can cost us points and that is what’s happened.”
Bowyer was asked about his future at the club and said: “I don’t think it is the time to talk about whether other clubs are interested in myself. I’ve been loyal, I could have left on more than one occasion and I’m glad I stayed.”