Charlton Athletic's Leon Cort writes for the KM Group
Every club in the league wants their home stadium to be a
fortress and we’re no different.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened for us this season and last
Saturday’s 2-0 defeat was another chance lost to remedy that.
A quick glance at the Championship table reveals that, before
Tuesday night’s fixtures, only the top three clubs had won more
away games than us this season.
The flip side of the coin is that only Wolverhampton Wanderers,
who have slipped into the bottom three, have won as few matches as
us at home. Red cards never help the situation and last Saturday’s
dismissal of Yann Kermorgant was the third time we have gone down
to 10 players at home this season.
At the end of a week in which we’d played three games in eight
days – and had two tough journeys to Hull and Leicester – it was
the last thing that we needed and Nottingham Forest moved the ball
around well and made it even harder for us.
Forest are a technically proficient side. They try to drag you
into positions that you don’t want to go into and we have to admit
that they were the better side and we struggled at times.
We can’t even use the pitch as an excuse because it was exactly
the same for them.
The sending-off was just down to frustration more than anything
else but Yann swung his leg and kicked the guy and you can’t do
that.
He apologised to the lads afterwards. He wants to win, as we all
do and it was just one of those crazy moments you have
sometimes.
I’m sure that he won’t do it again and he’ll learn from the
episode.
Our home form hasn’t been what we want it to be and we need to
improve it.
However, you have to remain upbeat about being at home and we
need to approach Saturday’s match against Burnley confidently.
It’s no good preparing for the game as if we’re dreading playing
at The Valley. We need to start well, get our passionate fans
behind us and show we can compete.
Saturday’s game is another game for me against a former club –
there have been a few this season – but no one in the squad needs
any extra reason to try to impress or play well.
We need to treat the next home match as an opportunity to start
a good run of home form. Burnley are our opponents but it could be
anyone, really – it’s up to us to reverse our form.
27/02/13