Chris Solly: Words don’t mean a thing – we have to do our talking on the pitch now
By Louis Mendez
Chris Solly says that the time for talking is over after Charlton Athletic dropped yet more points in the race for a play-off place.
The South Londoners’ suffered their third defeat in a row as they lost 1-0 at League One strugglers Blackpool on Tuesday, with Jimmy Ryan’s injury-time goal sending the poor visitors back down south empty-handed.
Karl Robinson’s men are five points adrift of the top six with only one of their games in hand remaining – but Solly reckons the league table is irrelevant when the side aren’t picking up victories.
“As a player there’s no point looking at the table if we’re not winning games,” explained the Addicks right-back.
“We still feel like we’re in a position to get [into the play-offs] but unless we start winning then nothing is going to change. It’s all on us. It’s in our own hands. If we win enough games we’ll make it, it’s as simple as that.
“Words don’t mean a thing. I can say every cliché under the sun but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s up to us on Saturday [at home to Fleetwood Town] to put in a performance and get the points. That’s the only way that we can show the fans now.
“The games in hand and all this mean nothing if we don’t pick up points and put in the right performances. We aren’t going to go anywhere in the table if we don’t win games.
“Everybody was disappointed. We’ve spoken so much over the past few weeks about what we’re going to do and put right and we haven’t done it. We’ve let ourselves down. It’s our performance that will change it and win the fans back on side.”
Charlton were well below-par at Bloomfield Road.
“It was a disappointing performance,” admitted the 27-year-old.
“The gaffer has told us straight in there that it’s not good enough and as players we know that. It’s up to us to turn this around now. We’re on a bad run of form.
“We’ve had one or two half chances but it’s nowhere near good enough. As a team we’re just not performing. You can’t blame the forward boys for not putting the chances away. We’re not creating enough from midfield. From the defence we’re not helping those boys enough.
“Everyone has to take a real good look at themselves in the mirror now and put this right. We’ve got to stick together, look at ourselves individually but as a team we’ve got to work together and put this right on Saturday. Fleetwood at home, we need three points. It’s a massive game for us now.
“It’s an unbelievable effort from [the fans] and we can’t thank them enough for coming up and supporting us. It wasn’t good enough from us and I apologise for that.”
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The main problem is lack of confidence in the players.We all know we should be playing two up front,but watching Magennis in warm ups at The Valley most of his practice shots finish up in the Upper Tier of the North Stand–what chance has he got in matches!! None of our players have scored more than 10 goals this season and this is another root of the problem.Also we never ever look like scoring 1 or 2 goals at the most which is nowhere near enough if you want to finish in the top six!!!
We will never put teams to bed with Magennis upfront . We needed a far better goal scorer months ago.We concede far to many late goals, costing us dearly. Teams above us are far superior, and we have no chance now of catching them up. Hopefully the takeover will make things better,it can’t be much fun being there not knowing the future. But we can forget this season.
For a team that we were told had a pre-season concentrating on fitness levels I find it amazing how many matches we have dropped points in the final 10 minutes of a match.
Also everyone knows we need a couple of proven strikers who actually know how to convert chances.