Port Vale 1 (Butterworth 57) Charlton 0
Kevin Nolan watched the livestream and squirmed through two hours of unrelenting drudgery. Had Charlton emerged with three points, he would have forgiven them everything. But at least he wasn’t faced with the same daunting journey home as the unhappy pilgrims who paid to get in.
From his seat in the stands, suspended Charlton manager Ben Garner was ideally placed to see what the rest of us saw and was in no mood to sugercoat what he had just witnessed. His summation of this dire, drab, dreadful game was unusually blunt.
“A horrible pitch. A horrible performance. A very disappointing afternoon,” he moaned, before expressing an unapologetically bitter opinion on his side’s spineless contribution to the grisly proceedings. “We weren’t good enough with the ball. We didn’t fight enough without it. We gave a horrendous goal away. Port Vale just want to stop you. That gave them something to hold on to and they can kill the game.”
Nothing much to disagree with there, except to point out that Charlton’s slavish adherence to “playing out from the back” made it laughably easy for Vale to “stop” them with a well organised press and an energetic willingness to close down defenders as they struggled to cross their 18-yard line. With depressing regularity, the Addicks’ risky passing began and ended at debut goalkeeper Ashley Maynard’s feet, before the laborious process was repeated. Momentum was non-existent, with passes of even modest distance actively discouraged. It’s all very avant garde but it doesn’t work at League One level where ball retention is, shall we say, a somewhat hit-or-miss proposition.
The Valiants were hardly an irresistible force themselves but they were the better side and, despite Garner’s dismissive comments, got their tactics spot-on. Clearly they had done their homework and had answers for everything, including the threats posed by Charlton’s normally menacing wide men Corey Blackett-Taylor and Jesurun Rak-Sakyi. Neither speedster was allowed to turn and run at the home defence as they relish doing but encountered stifling pressure as the ball painstakingly reached them. Neither of them made an impact and faded from view.
Not that Blackett-Taylor or Rak Sakyi should be scapegoats for Charlton’s sorry contribution to this grisly nightmare of a game. Apart from the blameless Maynard-Brewer, who actually had little to do, not a single Addick distinguished himself. A case could possibly be made for Steven Sessegnon but the bar was set miserably low. Even George Dobson was off-colour and was at least partly culpable for Daniel Butterworth’s winning goal. Alongside him, Scott Fraser hardly put a foot right while Charlie Kirk’s input, following his two-goal burst at Burton, went un-noticed. Up front, the sadly out-of-form Jayden Stockley lumbered around fruitlessly and accomplished nothing.
But it was in front of Maynard-Brewer that Charlton’s shortcomings were alarmingly obvious. Neither Sam Lavelle nor Ryan Inniss would claim to be other than sturdy stoppers and neither of them is relaxed with the ball at his feet inside his own penalty area, where they are unreasonably expected to double as playmakers. Inniss’ booking for a late lunge was uncomfortably typical and might have earned him a red, rather the yellow card he received. Right back Sean Clare is prone to the same rashness.
Charlton’s second half substitutions brought faint improvement but by the time the first of them, Chuks Aneke for Stockley as usual, arrived, the Addicks were already trailing. A trio of defensive Addicks tracked Daniel Butterworth as he moved on to Nathan Smith’s pass, with Dobson leading the posse but failing to prevent his quarry from directing a low drive which beat Maynard-Brewer’s full-length dive on its way inside the keeper’s right hand post.
Aneke wasn’t his customary galvanic force but was still impossible to overlook. Turning sharply on to Dobson’s pass into feet, his left footed drive skimmed the bar. He threatened again when a rare incursion Rak-Sakyi set up a fleeting sight of goal but was brilliantly blocked by Connor Hall. It was fellow substitute Jack Payne, however, who came closest to salvaging a point from the wreckage with a venomous shot which was brilliantly tipped over the bar by Jack Stevens.
With an unwanted trip to Plymouth on Tuesday in the lightly regarded Papa John Trophy, followed by a more serious FA Cup tie at The Valley against Stockport County on Saturday, Garner has his hands full with an awkward fixture list. The plan was clearly to tackle the knockout commitments on the back of success in the Potteries but Port Vale had other ideas. An irritated Garner was disingenuous in implying that there was something faintly illegal in their tactical approach.
Vale made no bones about their intention to “win ugly” by choking the life out of Charlton. They worked feverishly to deny their visitors either space or time and put in the effort needed to achieve their ends. They had just enough about them to find the one goal which would settle this scruffy, scrappy encounter and sent the home fans away happy with exactly that outcome. Almost 900 travelling Addicks, an intensely loyal number in support of a team with just one victory in eight away games, would gladly have traded places. There’s only one way to mitigate a game of this wretchedness and that is to win the bloody thing. Everything else can be dismissed as red and white noise.
Port Vale: Stevens, Hall, Jones, Smith, Worrall (Robinson 67), Garrity, Wilson (Odubeko), Conlon, Benning, Massey, Butterworth (Politic 78). Not used: Stone, Cass, Charsley, Pett. Booked: Benning.
Charlton: Maynard-Brewer, Clare, Inniss, Lavelle (Morgan 83), Sessegnon, Rak-Sakyi, Dobson, Fraser (Forster-Caskey 77), Blackett-Taylor (Campbell 77), Stockley (Aneke 58), Kirk (Payne 77). Not used: Harness, Elewere. Booked: Aneke, Inniss.
Referee: S, Barratt. Att 7,604 (867 visiting).