Robinson critical of ‘selfish’ players as Charlton suffer late loss

Charlton boss Karl Robinson criticised his team for “being selfish” and losing their discipline after they conceded twice in the final five minutes to lose 3-2 at home to Oxford.

Josh Magennis had restored Charlton’s lead with 12 minutes left and a victory would have put them back into the League One play-off places.

But Todd Kane made it 2-2 in the 89th minute before Ryan Ledson struck Oxford’s winner in the fourth minute of stoppage time.

Ahmed Kashi’s first goal since August 2015 had given the hosts the lead midway through the second half, shortly before substitute James Henry drew 10th-placed Oxford level.

Following last week’s postponement at Blackpool, defeat represents a further loss of the momentum Charlton had built and leaves them in seventh place, two points off the top six.

“We lost our discipline with five minutes to go,” said Robinson, whose team were consistently vulnerable in defence. “There are no positives, we lost. It’s all about the team, and the team lost. We became selfish.

“It was down to our offensive players we lost. We asked our wingers to be more disciplined and give our full-backs protection, they never gave that protection.

“We let a player run for the second and it was something we worked on.  We spoke about it at length, but somebody chose not to do it.

“When we were winning we got a little too confident and we became individuals offensively. It was ‘I want to score’, not ‘We need to score’.”

Asked if defeat would mean him next starting new signings Sullay Kaikai and Michal Zyro, who both made their debuts as second-half substitutes, he said: “The players who came on didn’t really change the game. There is a lot of work to be done.”

Oxford  manager Derek Fazackerley praised their “outstanding” recovery from twice going behind, but warned his team their defending needs to improve to avoid giving themselves such difficulty.

“The performance in many respects was outstanding,” he said. “We’re disappointed with the two goals we conceded, we keep giving ourselves mountains to climb but we climbed that mountain.

“We have to look at ourselves there. It’s not the first, second, third or fourth time we’ve done that. But the quality of our forward play always posed a threat. The three goals were outstanding finishes, and we hit the post and bar too.

“Our passing at times on the counter-attack in the second half was fantastic and ultimately led to us scoring three times.

“It’s nice to see players getting into those areas and passing the ball into the net as opposed to smashing them. Three outstanding goals gave us three very important points.”