Steven Schumacher delighted with Plymouth intensity in victory over Charlton

Posted Sunday, March 05, 2023 by PA

Plymouth boss Steven Schumacher was delighted with his promotion-chasing side as they claimed their 15th home Sky Bet League One victory of the season by beating Charlton 2-0.

Ryan Hardie took his tally to 16 goals with a superb solo strike at the start of the second half after having a first-half stoppage-time penalty appeal waved away.

Fellow striker Niall Ennis reached 11 goals with Argyle’s 87th-minute second goal to seal victory.

Schumacher said: “We knew we wanted to get three points because we dropped some last week so we focused on this one. Now we go into a home game against Derby, who are in the top six as well, on Tuesday, which is going to be another exciting game.

“We played well. We started the game at a really good tempo and defended well as a team.

“We did the basics better this week than we did last week and created some really good opportunities in the first half.

“We played some good attacking football and I was disappointed we didn’t go in ahead at the break.

“I felt that we should have had a penalty. The lad looked like he handballed right on the line for Ryan’s chance.

“I was still going mad at the start of the second half and before I knew it, it was 1-0 and I felt a little bit better.

“Throughout the whole 90 minutes I was impressed with the intensity at which we played. It was good to get another three points on the board.

“We didn’t really speak about the penalty at half-time. We just felt when we got to the final third we could get our shots away a little quicker because Charlton were defending well.

“You couldn’t get away any quicker and earlier than Ryan did, after nine seconds (of the second half) to get us in front was brilliant.

“I did feel we needed that second goal and thankfully it came with 10 minutes or so to go.”

Charlton boss Dean Holden said: “Their first goal was a clearance that was blocked and within 10 seconds of the second half it puts them 1-0 up.

“They are second in the league and flying high at the moment and that was always going to be difficult from there.

“We threw the three subs on and I thought we gave them problems. Around the 60-minute mark until around 75 minutes we had a lot of pressure, a lot of moments around their box. We just couldn’t get on the end of something.

“They scored the second on 87 minutes from our set-piece which we didn’t quite get right from an attacking point of view. They have countered and we didn’t quite get the press right and the ball is in the back of our net.

“But the bigger picture, since beating Forest Green, we have had a fortnight where we have played three teams in the top four and lost by the odd goal apart from today.

“The bigger picture is that we got the five wins early which was really important and now we are taking a bit of pain in this last three or four games.”