Portsmouth provide the opposition on Saturday in Charlton's last warm up game before the season-proper kicks off in Wigan on August 10th.
Although they were unable to beat us Portsmouth were nevertheless impressive champions of League One last season, five points ahead of Derby County and winning 28 games while losing only five.
However, The Championship will be another matter and Pompey face a daunting start to the season - kicking off away to Leeds and coming up against Luton, Sheffield United, Burnley, West Brom and Middlesbrough before the end of September. Their manager John Mousinho is looking forward to it:
"The way we will approach it is to attack every game," he told BBC Sport. "I want us to relish it, these are brilliant games and are massive for us but we’re not going to be daunted by it. We’re going to make sure we take the chance to prove ourselves at this level. The standard will go up. I don’t think you get away with mistakes at this level, you have to be at the top of your game for every minute."
The bookmakers are reasonably confident that his team will be able to punch their weight at the higher level. They are predicted to finish above Blackburn, Cardiff, Millwall, Plymouth, Preston and Oxford. However, they will have to start the campaign without 21 goal striker Colby Bishop who is to undergo heart surgery after a routine pre-season scan revealed a potential risk to him.
Coming to The Valley will also be a step up as they seem to have given themselves a pretty gentle warm-up programme so far. Wins at Gosport Borough, Havant & Waterlooville and Bognor Regis were followed by a 1-1 draw at Milton Keynes on Tuesday evening.
After Charlton's lacklustre performance at Wimbledon last week it will be interesting to see whether Nathan Jones has been able to do anything about what he saw as a lack of aggression in his side. He has named Greg Docherty as captain and we hope that we will be leaving The Valley after the game with a bit more belief that he will be able to set up a team with a chance of taking the game to Wigan on August 10th.
Jones said:
“I’m really disappointed with lots of stuff. It’s not about the result, it’s about the performance really. First half we weren’t aggressive enough. We were categorically different the other day where we were really aggressive all over. Today we were a mile off in terms of that. In possession we weren’t fluent enough. We really weren’t fluent enough today and that’s the most disappointing thing."
Nevertheless, with it only being pre-season, Jones was keen to keep some perspective:
“We’re building into a season and that’s what it’s about. You can’t get too down and you can’t get too high. We should have beaten Crystal Palace, but you don’t suddenly think we’re the best team in the world. It’s about keeping a nice equilibrium in terms of what we do. I was unbeaten at Stoke in pre-season and I lost my job 14 games later!”
Photo by Rhea Spencer-Newman