Having fallen slightly south of the play-off zone after last week's visit to The Midlands to face Birmingham, we have a chance to head back northwards as we host well-travelled tourists from the sunny South West this coming Saturday.
Exeter City are our visitors this weekend, having made headlines a couple of weeks ago with a fine performance against Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup. That afternoon, Josh Magennis, a familiar face to SE7, scored a brace as they held their Premier League visitors to a 2-2 draw, before eventually losing 2-4 on penalties. This was the latest episode in a colourful history which has included a pioneering tour of South America back in 1914 where they played the first-ever international match against Brazil.
Yep, Brazil; that Brazil - the entire men's team - not just our very own Ellie Brazil from our promotion chasing Women's Team. Exeter lost 2-0 but even today their fans are known to sing 'Have you ever played Brazil?' Well, at least here in Charlton we can sing back 'yes we have - every week in our double promotion hunt.' However, on a serious note, we need the team to get back on song after the temporary blip against Birmingham as midweek results went the way of the teams around us in the promotion hunt. Consider how far we've come in the last few months; to be sitting in seventh place and pushing the runaway leaders so close speaks volumes for where we are at now.
As Forest found out recently, the form book will count for nothing if we're not firing on all cylinders. It's not all that long (for some of us anyway) since they proved to be party poopers at one of the first Football for a Fiver days in modern times when they hit us with three second half goals to win 3-1 at The Valley and damaged our promotion prospects in 2011. Despite traditionally competing in the lower tiers of English football, often this club has punched above its weight, experiencing promotions and overcoming financial struggles. Interestingly too, their Supporters Trust is the major shareholder of Exeter City, controlling 53.6% of the voting shares in the club.
However, it's on the pitch not in the boardroom that the important deals are going to be struck this weekend. With only one win in their last five League games, Exeter seem to be reeling a bit from the sale of 13 goal Irish striker Millenic Alli to Luton Town at the end of the recent transfer window. However they have the formidable Josh Magennis, in fine form of late, with another goal last weekend in his side's 1-0 win over struggling Cambridge United. That's five League goals and eleven in total over the course of the season since he signed in the summer. No doubt he'll be keen to add to his tally against us as former players always are but hopefully he'll find our defence harder to chop through than the Forest.
On 35 points and sitting in sixteenth, our visitors look to be relatively safe barring a late collapse of form. At the moment we are on 50 points, just outside the play-off zone on goal difference and might be far hungrier for all 3 points. Certainly we’d expect to take them all to show the seriousness of our promotion bid. Then hopefully we will show some of that guile Nathan Jones felt that we were missing at the weekend. Maybe the Exeter fans might even come away singing about how it was just like playing Brazil!