After contrasting fortunes at fellow play-off outsiders Rotherham and Bolton, Charlton will be looking to climb the ladder with a win against a seemingly tamer challenge at home to Shrewsbury.
Charlton's 2024–25 season has mirrored a game of snakes and ladders, experiencing a bumpy ride of climbs and slides within range of the play-off zone. It's a bit of a jungle up there at the moment, with just over half a dozen teams tangled up alongside each other, arguably from Barnsley in fifth to Mansfield in twelfth. So just when somebody seems to be on a run, having the play-off places firmly in their sights, they hit a hurdle and come crashing down again.
Sooner or later, somebody's going to get a roll of the dice and build a bit of momentum beyond a run of three or four games. A few weeks ago, it looked like it might be Reading. They seemed to be on track to overtake Stockport who were on the slide. Then like everyone else in the chasing pack, they hit a blip, as if they'd reached the ticket barriers to the Top Six and their ticket wasn't being read. Now it's Stockport who've bounced back into contention, whilst Barnsley slipped up last weekend at lowly Bristol Rovers after putting together an impressive four wins in a row. Also Leyton Orient have been in fine form of late, sitting one point and a couple of places above us in the table. At the start of the season, we never imagined that once again, we'd be on a level with our near-neighbours rather than having the likes of Birmingham in our sights.
Presently, the automatic places already look to be out of reach for anyone but Birmingham, Wycombe, Wrexham and Huddersfield. Yet having shown that we can hold our own against any of those automatic promotion challengers on our day, we shouldn't be sitting in tenth, albeit with a game in hand. If we're going to seriously challenge for the play-offs, we have to start now. We have to be that team; put together a run of sixes in every shake of the dice and consolidate ourselves in a top six position to get in line with pre-season ambitions and a recent restatement of that, featuring an evaluation of where we are in comparison to where we wanted to be at this point.
In facing Shrewsbury, two points and two places away from the foot of the table, we have a great chance to put more points on the board. They're firmly rooted in the relegation-facing quartet with a paltry 20 points from 25 matches. They've had problems at both ends of the pitch, scoring 26 goals while conceding 45, resulting in a goal difference of -19. However, they're coming into this fixture with a bit of a bounce in their step, so shouldn't be underestimated. Just over a week ago, they shocked promotion challengers Wrexham with a 2-1 victory, where ex-Millwall man, John Marquis scored both goals, giving them hope of climbing out of their entrenchment in the bottom four.
On the back of that big result, they won't be a walkover in any sense but fans will remember the emphatic 6-0 “Taming of the Shrews” at The Valley in April 2023, a result that we've shown ourselves capable of repeating, through such performances as the one up in Northampton. We need to do that again. Right now though, I think most of us would take five or six 1-0 wins in a row, ahead of a grand 6-0 thumping, to send us up the ladder until next time we face the likes of Crawley, perform below par and take a couple of steps back again. We need consistency. We need to show we are shrewd enough to force our way into the play-off zone and capitalise on the inconsistency of others around us.
Sooner or later somebody will build up a head of steam; we need it to be us. Saturday's game is a long way from the last roll of the dice as regards play-off contention but anything less than three points and we might not be climbing the promotion ladder any time soon.
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