No Ben Thatcher due to a broken nose, and crocked Sir Les on the bench with his dodgy knee.

It had started reasonably well with Marcus Bent grabbing an early goal with a wonderful lob that left the Charlton goalie stranded, and putting us 1-0 up after only 5 minutes.

The next hour saw us battling to hold on and some mistakes gave the ball away at times. We didn't look like increasing our lead and needed to rely on defending and Newcastle to beat Man City. Charlton were nothing special at all and ony Di Canio looked like he had any class.

City did have a couple of goes on goal with Dickov and Heath both putting headers wide. Feund had a great attempt. And of course missed.

Charlton didn't have a proper shot on goal until just before half time, with Walker making a save from Johansson.

Alan Curbishley, the Charlton boss, obviously had major words at half time and Charlton came out more fired up and put us under presure. We caved in and allowed Fortune to level with a header from a Di Canio corner.

It went from bad to worse when Rob Styles not only pointed to the spot for Dabizas's minimal contact on Johansson, but then the red card came out too. How to get kicked when you're down. Di Canio put the penalty coolly away. 2-1 to Charlton. Nationwide here we come.

City didn't give up though, and Sir Les did what he does best, scoring with a few minutes to go to restore some pride, if not Premiership survival. The Man City score was well known throughout the ground and we knew we were down.

Oh well, at least we didn't have to go to Highbury needing to win. Bring on Plymouth.