Charlton arrived at White Hart Lane on Sunday in expectant mood having worked a draw against the reigning champs in the Premiership, on their previous outing away from The Valley.
It wasn’t to be a repeat showing at Spurs unfortunately, certainly not when it mattered during the opening hour when the contest was effectively thrown away.
"What's so disappointing is that we went to Chelsea the other week, we knew we were in for a game and battled and got a point. We turned up here and it should have been the same case. But instead we went 3-0 down after 46 minutes," said Alan Curbishley after the game.
Five straight defeats and a Carling Cup exit followed the previous draw at Stamford Bridge (after extra time). Surely the same thing is not going to happen again – it simply can’t. Not with a FA Cup run in progress and ground to make up following that barren run.
Curbishley has since then accepted the blame for Charlton’s shortfalls. He wished he had made changes to the team, which included leaving out a fit (and now consequently departed) Danny Murphy from the side, sooner than he actually did. On Sunday he was voicing disappointment in himself again. With Spurs well on top from the start Curbs felt he should have done something instead of waiting for the first goal to go in.
"At 1-0 down with four minutes to go until half-time we haven’t given ourselves a chance (by conceding again before the half was up) but even after being unable to see things out until then, we said if we could keep things tight in the first five or 10 minutes (of the second half) then we might have been able to turn things round," he added.
Radostin Kishishev who recently lost his place in the starting line-up to Alexei Smertin paid for giving the ball away in the middle of the park, leading to another golden opportunity for the home side (prevented by an excellent tackle from backtracking Hermann Hreidarsson). Substitute Jerome Thomas was busy on the left wing in the second period and scored the consolation goal after injecting some pace to beat the full back as he cut inside to shoot. In pursuit of a quick second goal however on this occasion Jay Bothroyd couldn’t help complete a Charlton comeback after replacing Darren Ambrose who had previously delivered some testing deliveries from set-pieces.
It’s back home this Wednesday night as the European champions, set to be without skipper Steven Gerrard, visit south-east London for the two side’s rearranged Premiership fixture.