After the euphoria of Tuesday evening, we head to the Midlands on Saturday as the fifteenth team this season trying to come home from Alfie May's Birmingham with all three points.
Only three of the previous fourteen teams have managed to escape defeat. Reading on the opening day (1-1); Northampton in early November (1-1) and Blackpool just after Christmas (0-0). Since that Northampton goal, The Blues have played eleven hours of football at St Andrews and conceded just once - when Sam Nombe had the temerity to put Rotherham briefly in front a fortnight ago. Meanwhile they have scored thirteen themselves, with the 4-0 defeat of Cambridge on Tuesday their best win of the season.
None of this comes as any surprise to fans of other League One clubs who saw Birmingham splash the dollars on the summer signing of seventeen players including Jay Stansfield, Alfie May, Lyndon Dykes, Christoph Klarer, Willum Willumsson, Tomoki Iwata and Alex Cochrane. In the January window they have strengthened even further by recruiting South Korean international Lee Myung-Jae, defender Grant Hanley from Norwich and front player Kieran Dowell on loan from Rangers.
Alarmingly, manager Chris Davies thinks that his team are "in good shape" and can "push on to another level"
On Saturday, however, they will be facing one of the two teams to have beaten them this season. Apart from a shock 2-3 defeat at Shrewsbury in December, Davies's team have only tasted defeat once - at The Valley in October when a goal from Matty Godden saw them go home pointless. Although there can be little doubt that Birmingham have a stronger squad than they did then, the same can be said of us. The emergence of Tyreece Campbell and Thierry Small, the return of Miles Leaburn, the form of Matty Godden and the evident class of Alex Gilbert mean that Charlton are a confident outfit these days and are well worthy of their fifth place.
Alfie May was an unused substitute for Birmingham on Tuesday while Matty Godden was increasing his League goal tally to ten for the season so far. Alfie also has ten but the statistics show that Godden is the more prolific of the two. He scores every 136 minutes but you have to wait another twenty minutes for one of May's. On the other hand Alfie does have five assists to his name compared to Godden's one. There really isn't much in it but the league table undoubtedly shows that May's departure in the summer didn't bring about the disaster many predicted. Despite his fourteen goals, the team was in twentieth place by this time last season without a win in thirteen games. We now head for St Andrews having won eight of the last thirteen and lost just once. Furthermore, with seventeen different goal scorers on the score sheet, we have shown that goals can come from anywhere this season.
Nathan Jones is looking forward to it:
"It's going to be a wonderful occasion. We're taking our proper football club to play against another proper football club so it should be a good day."
Yes, Birmingham are unbeaten in their last fourteen but, if Reading, Northampton and Blackpool can survive at St Andrews, why can't we go one better?
PS - Can you name the only outfield player in the squad (not counting Alex Gilbert) who hasn't scored yet?
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Photo by Rhea Spencer-Newell