Addicks captain Jason Pearce was pleased with how the side’s “battling performance” earned them a point in the 0-0 draw at home to Sunderland on Saturday.
Speaking to CharltonTV after the game, the defender praised the team’s determination to end the run of recent defeats: “I think off the back of five losses, for me, we had to get back to basics and today and I thought we did that.
"Every single person, every person who started and everyone come on, it was a real battling display against a real good team. They’ve got a lot of goals in them, so we stayed resolute as a unit and obviously got an important clean sheet and something to build on.
“I think as the weeks have gone on we had a meeting and we got told we need to be tougher on each other and us as lads we feel like we had to be tougher on each other, nothing personal, but it was about trying to get the performance and out there today everyone worked their socks off and yeah like I say playing with Gunts [Chris Gunter] and Sam was good obviously, I think it’s the first time I played just with them two, but something to build on and hopefully we can continue that.”
The skipper was also pleased to get the fans back on side after a few disappointing performances in recent weeks: “I think from my point of view, being on the bench for quite a while now and seeing, obviously, the fans weren’t happy with a few of the performances and I think today there was no booing and you can see the fans were really behind us and I think that just goes to show like the performance that the lads have put in now, so that’s got to be the minimum expectation as a group from us. We know we can be better in possession and so we’ll work on that, but it was nice to see the fans back on our side and we gave them a real battling display.”
Pearce said he was keen to see the squad carry that good performance into their trip to Accrington Stanley next Saturday: “Accrington is always going to be a tough game going away there but I think if we play like that, like I said that’s got to be the minimum expectation now from all of us so yeah we will go there and hopefully put on a display like that and hopefully we can be better on the ball and try and nick a goal.”
Article by Gregg Baxter