Nervous???

However strange it seems, referring to a home game against Yeovil as a massive match, that certainly what this evenings match is.

It's been a slog this season. One thing that is really telling about the two teams contesting tonight s game is their inability to score goals. Take Yeovil's Miller, who's been kicked back to Forest, goals away from Yeovil and they have scored only one more goal than ourselves this season. But have conceded 15 more times than ourselves.

Charlton's real plus point in amongst the teams around us is our mean defense. At 48 conceded you'd have to go up to 13th placed Middles borough to find the next team who have conceded 48 goals or less.

In fact we've lost by a single goal margin no fewer than 10 times this season (convert half of those to a draw and that gives us 5 more points). We've drawn nil on four occasions (so lets say half of those we managed to nick a goal, that's another 6 points) and we've score drawn seven times (apply the same rule that if we were as average going forward as we are defensively we could have nicked a winner just under half of these games - another 10 points missed out on). So that's potentially 21 points that if we had the creative spark we so needed along with a competent striker - which would have put us on 59 points and in the upper echelons of mid table.

It's these tight margins that can dictate a season. The whole debate around Stephens and Yan going misses me a touch. Yes Kermo would certainly have given us a bit more snarl going forwards over recent weeks, but our form didn't suddenly dip post their departure.

The bottom line is whether we stay up or not, we will need two decent wide men and a striker with some competence who's not afraid to miss up top.

Tonight's game, with all of the other sides around us playing, will be a nervy affair. Yeovil seem to enjoy being underdogs, and despite the fact that we certainly won't be viewing them as that, will approach the game with that kind of spirit. Which will make life difficult for us.

I'm keeping everything crossed for a one nil victory, three points and a bit of breathing space going into the next few days.