Athletic's battling performance to earn a point at runaway league leaders Charlton Athletic on Saturday has left manager Paul Dickov heaping praise on his players. Filipe Morais scored the all-important equaliser after Darel Russell had given the home side the lead but Dickov's battlers never gave up and could have even shocked the Addicks by coming away with all three points.
Dickov said, “They are a good team. Not many will take points off them at home. All-round, we defended magnificently. The two centre-halves were excellent, the midfield kept going and Shefki worked his socks off up front. I felt we could get something from the game. I said to the boys at half-time that I felt we would come under pressure, especially away from home at a team that is five points clear at the top of the league. Even when they scored, one thing we didn’t do was give up. We have showed in recent weeks that if we have to roll up our sleeves and get dirty and have a go at people, we can. We also showed with the goal we scored that when we get the ball down and play, we are a good team.”
“When I signed Josh Parker, I knew he could play there. He has played in the Championship for QPR as a right-back. Not many people will out-run him and he defended well and gives us an option going forward as well. We had three of the back four missing and it shows the strength of character and togetherness of the players we have that it looked like nobody was missing at all. Charlton are going to get chances, with the way they play. They have got one the best, if not the best, strikers in the division with Bradley Wright-Phillips and he is a threat. One thing I didn’t want to do was put everyone behind the ball, as you just invite pressure. When you come to places like Charlton trying to win the game, they are going to get chances. That is where you want your goalkeeper and centre-halves to perform.”
“It was a really pleasing performance. We like to pass the ball, and when we do that we are a good team. The goal we scored came about through that. This league is all about big, physical teams, but Charlton can play a bit as well. In the first 10 or 15 minutes, we showed them too much respect. They are a good team. But once the players realised we could match them, we grew into the game. Once we got the equaliser, I thought we were going to go on to win it. We pushed on and they dropped back deep. This is a fantastic place to play football and they have a very good home record. But we put them under a bit of pressure. All-round, all of the team, including the substitutes who came on, as well as all the eight players who travelled down to watch the game — it was fantastic.”