Charlton win was a ‘long time coming’ – Ben Garner

Posted Wednesday, October 12, 2022 by PA

Ben Garner directed all the praise on to his Charlton players as they beat Exeter 4-2 to record a first League One victory since August 16.

The Addicks had not won in the league since a 5-1 thrashing of Plymouth, a winless sequence of eight matches.

But the final scoreline did not totally reflect Exeter’s contribution.

Charlton looked on course for a comfortable evening after Miles Leaburn’s fifth goal of the campaign and an Alex Hartridge own goal had them 2-0 up with 24 minutes on the clock.

But on-loan Fulham striker Jay Stansfield smashed a superb half-volley to haul Exeter firmly back into the contest and Jack Sparkes’ ferocious drive came down off the crossbar before Chuks Aneke made an almost instant impact with an 84th-minute close-range finish.

Fellow substitute Jack Payne bulleted home from a few yards out from Corey Blackett-Taylor’s right-wing cross before Sam Nombe reduced the deficit for City from the penalty spot in the fifth minute of stoppage time.

“Long time coming – huge credit to the players,” said Garner.

“It sounds silly saying it’s been a difficult run because we are not losing games on the bounce, or anything like that, we’ve been pretty much difficult to beat but just haven’t picked up as many wins as we’d have liked.

“The players showed a little bit of everything tonight – some great bravery, some really good attacking play, some wonderful goals and good defensive resilience. Apart from the wonder goal first half, and then the official obviously got bored at the end and wanted a bit of excitement to give the penalty that was never a penalty, we were defensively very good again.

“We had a little bit of fortune as well in the first half. I don’t know if it was Jayden who flicked or it went straight in off the defender. Chuks, in off the post, those things haven’t been going for us – they have been hitting the post and going out.

“The impact of the subs was really, really good. A good all-round group performance.”

Exeter’s joint interim coaches Kevin Nicholson and Jon Hill suffered a first defeat since stepping in after Matt Taylor quit for Rotherham.

“Overall I was happy with the performance,” said Nicholson. “The lads were excellent for the majority of it.

“You are at a level now where you get punished for mistakes more than you do in League Two. We came off on the wrong side of that today.

“When you are chasing the game and stepping forward you are always going to leave yourselves slightly open. Unfortunately we got punished today.

“We had our chances to level it up. If we’d done that it would’ve been really hard for Charlton to respond after the run they’ve been on. That’s the fine margins of the game that we’re in.”