Town manager George Burley was less than pleased with the contribution his defence made to his side's 3-2 loss at Charlton. Town had gone two goals up in the first four minutes but allowed Charlton to come back and score three.
Burley said: "I am very disappointed not to have come away without anything. We took our foot off the pedal and we cannot afford to do that against a team like Charlton who worked for 90 minutes. I was very disappointed with the way we defended. The Premiership is a very tough league and to go 2-0 up at Charlton was a great start for us. We looked lively up front and when you take the lead like that you have to defend better and that wasn't the case. Maybe we started too well but all credit to Charlton who lifted their game and put us under pressure. It was a difficult pitch to defend on but we started brightly, we turned them around, we closed them down quickly but for some reason we stopped doing that when we were 2-0 up and that was the biggest disappointment for me."
Matteo Sereni received criticism in some quarters for his role in the goals, but his manager refutes that he was at fault: "Robinson's shot came through a lot of bodies and the goalmouth at that end was solid so there wasn't much Matteo could do about that. The second was down to bad defending, the first cross should have been cleared straight away."
Burley praised Marcus Bent after his early two-goal salvo had given Town the lead. Bent himself thought his second half shot had gone in and given him his hat-trick: "I thought that shot was going in, I was already celebrating but it had hit a post and I did not realise until I saw Finidi George having a shot."