Manager Kieran McKenna is happy to keep his fellow bosses guessing when it comes to selecting his front players.

The Blues boss has made a habit of rotating his forward players on a match-by-match basis, the switching of the three who started against Derby - Tyreece John-Jules, Kayden Jackson and Marcus Harness - for the Port Vale game - in which Freddie Ladapo, Kyle Edwards and Conor Chaplin were in the XI - illustrative of his approach.

Those that don't start are usually involved from around the hour mark from the bench.

“I think it’s helpful, it’s not certainly the only reason why we do it,” he said when asked whether the regular changes of personnel is to give his fellow managers something else to think about ahead of a game.

“The focus is on us first and what strength we want to bring to the game and what areas we want to try and exploit.

“But, of course, from personal experience, it’s more difficult to prepare against a team when they have variations of what they do.

“And Charlton are one of those teams, to be fair, who have, even within their same system, different variations that they can use.

“And that makes it a little bit more difficult to plan because you can’t speak in definites to your players, you have to prepare them for a couple of different scenarios.

“I think it’s a healthy position to be in where we have versatile forwards, who can play in different roles and have different skillsets and strengths within that department.

“That means that they can play the same role in different ways and I think those variations that we have hopefully make it a bit more difficult for the opposition to be absolutely certain what they’re going to see on a matchday against us.”

Photo: Matchday Images

RobITFC added 17:07 - Oct 27 Brilliant, the MM years were so predictable and boriing!
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pg888 added 17:17 - Oct 27 Certainly much brighter than the mm years of chanting we won't win with one up front!
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brassy added 17:22 - Oct 27 playing for a draw at home thats the way to do it buh
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tractorboybig added 08:41 - Oct 28 but mm played opposition that was not third tier crap without owners who out spent the rest of the div
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Linkboy13 added 09:50 - Oct 28 Mick McCarthy's motto was the best form of attack is defence. I met Mick down at the training ground after my disabled friend and were allowed to watch training he came and spoke to us for a few minutes along with some of the players he was a pleasure to talk too. After he left here he never really had any success. He always seemed to start well at clubs and then it would go pear shaped. I think probably his methods were a bit old fashioned for the modern game but a really good bloke and a pleasure to meet.

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PortmanTerrorist added 11:22 - Oct 28 This story is about today and our current manager....why dredge up MM?! He was a good coach who did OK initially but drifted alongside the owner. Who is to say how things will look going forward for Kieran, but he has not just done OK, he has added joy to the process and so let's just enjoy the ride as we all know these periods never last, whoever is at the helm.

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