At a time of year when mid-table fixtures might seem meaningless, the Addicks still have a few targets to strike for when they travel to Cambridge United.
Parts of the season might have felt like Friday the 13th at times, but we head to Cambridge on Saturday 13th April with a few goals to aim for. Most importantly, we now look a very different side from the one that Nathan Jones inherited. After Tuesday night's 2-2 draw with Wigan, we have extended our unbeaten run to twelve games.
That is Charlton's best run for ten years - dating back to the start of the 2014 /15 season under Bob Peeters. That season we finished twelfth in the Championship, with Peeters eventually replaced by Guy Luzon. With so many comings and goings on the sidelines in the decade since, that all seems a lifetime ago. Another notable feature of that blast from the past is that our joint top scorers were Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson and Igor Vetokele, with eleven goals each.
Even when combined together that's less than the inimitable Alfie May's total for this season. Alfie now needs just two more goals to overtake Clive Mendonca's 28 in all competitions in 1998 and to draw level on 29 with Cyril Pearce, Johnny Summers and Arthur Horsfield from previous decades.
He might well fancy his chances of adding to that total against Cambridge who've conceded 57 goals over the course of the season. Of course, due to defensive generosity earlier in the season, we have conceded 62. But with 62 goals also scored compared to Cambridge's 37, we have a far superior goal difference of 0. Hopefully we can reach at least 65 goals scored before retiring for the season!
Before then our main ambition must be to achieve fourteenth place and thus avoid finishing in our lowest league position for ninety eight years. The maximum number of points we can get at this stage is 60 which would take us one point above eleventh placed Northampton's current total of 59. Most likely then the highest position that we'll finish in is twelfth, fighting it out with Exeter, Wigan and Wycombe.
Cambridge on the other hand are still on the relegation borderline, needing a few more points to be certain of safety. Unlike us, they've found the goals hard to come by, which is surprising (or not) after their January acquisition of Lyle Taylor on a short term deal until the end of the season. In the twelve games he has played so far he has only scored three goals and may well miss Saturday's match after suffering a groin injury in a surprising victory away at Barnsley on Good Friday.
That was new manager Gary Monk's first win at the helm and they followed that up with an Easter Monday home win over Wigan so, just like us under Nathan Jones, Cambridge are having a managerial bounce. However, it's likely that the in-fine-form Addicks will be firing on all cylinders and hoping to make it thirteen games unbeaten up in the university city. By the end too, we might have learned where Alfie May's goals total will sit in Charlton's history.
Six goals in the final three games would see him equal Ralph Allen's 89 year old record of 33 and, if he hits the 30 mark, then there's every chance that the Addicks might strike the 60 point mark and even slip into Northampton's shoes in eleventh.
We can but live in hope that this "tayl" has a happier ending than Lyle's of late.