Charlton Athletic finished bottom of the 2019/2020 FA Women’s Championship table on a points-per-game basis after failing to record a league victory but thankfully for them, they were spared relegation with the third tier being declared void.
The Addicks have already put that unwanted winless record to bed this season with their 1-0 win over Blackburn Rovers in just their second game of the new campaign.
They would have entered their fixture against Liverpool on Sunday with a slight sense of optimism despite taking on full-time opponents. They were left disappointed as the Merseyside club ran away 4-0 victors but were far from disgraced at Prenton Park.
The Addicks manager Riteesh Mishra shared his thoughts with FA Women’s Super League Full-Time after the game. He said “I think everybody expected us to lose the game, they’re clearly one of the best teams in the division.
“We were coming into the game with quite a lot of confidence and we came here wanting to frustrate them and maybe try and nick something.
“I think for large parts of the game we did do that.
“I think they deserved to win, they had better chances of course and in the last 10-15 minutes we opened out a little bit to try and get something out of the game and they punished us.
“There are things that I am pleased about from the performance, we defended really well at times, had some good passages of play but we’ve lost 4-0 so it’s hard to swallow.”
In many instances, finding positives amongst a 4-0 defeat would be quite difficult but not for Mishra. He added “I think we showed today that we can compete.
“We’ve definitely improved since last year. I think that Liverpool would say that we gave them a tough game today, it wasn’t an easy 4-0 for them but it’s still no consolation.”
A defeat is never a good thing particularly when you have to take points wherever you can get them and the Charlton Athletic boss is not naive to the uphill battle that his side faces against some of the more professional sides in the league. “You have to recognise that there are three or four teams in this division that are full-time” said Mishra. “It is a big difference.
“It is a free hit, we’re an underdog in these types of games so we’ve just got to try and learn from the experience and see what we can do next time.
Following their decent start to the season, Mishra is ready to see his side fight for every point possible in what is a very competitive league.
“We want to do better than we did last season, that’s on and off the pitch” stated Mishra. “We’re not setting ourselves a league position target. I think it’s a real competitive league, I think there’s five or six teams that are going to be competing for the top of the table and then everybody else is going to be fighting for the rest of the spaces.
“We’ve had a good positive start apart from today, so we just need to try and regain our confidence.”
Growth is clearly on the agenda for Mishra and Charlton Athletic are well on their way to achieving it even at this early stage. The Addicks have already racked up more than half of their points tally from last season giving them a solid base for a much-improved campaign.