Speaking after Charlton’s first loss of the season, Lee Bowyer discussed Charlton’s performance, the incident that saw him sent off and evaluated Tomer Hemed’s first start.
His post-game press conference will be available on Valley Pass shortly. Click here to purchase Valley Pass.
Below are some of the talking points.
On the performance…
“I thought we were slow to start. I told them what to expect and we knew what to expect from Birmingham. They were going to make it difficult and sit there.
“The first half we didn’t move the ball quickly enough and the second half I thought we were better, but we didn’t take our chances. We had enough chances to win the game I thought, certainly not to lose the game.
“It’s disappointing to lose our record in the manner of the way the game has ended. It’s just disappointing. The lads are disappointed, I’m disappointed. But, it is what it is we can’t change that now. We just have to dust ourselves down and go again next week.
“We have to [bounce back]. That’s the mentality that we have; we’re winners and we don’t like losing. This does hurt us and it’s how you react. I’ve just said to the players it’s how you react we go again next week, and we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
On being sent off…
“They threw a ball on the pitch to try and waste time and I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve. I’ve never seen anything like it. All game they were just wasting time – especially when they went 1-0 up and then it was just thing after thing.
“They throw a ball onto the pitch and then I said to their staff ‘is this your ball?’ They said 'yeah', so I threw it back to them and then he sends me off and they’re the ones that have thrown the ball on. It’s crazy. To me it just seems like they’re making up their own rules as they’re going along and it’s frightening.”
On Tomer Hemed making his first start…
“I thought Tomer did okay, you can tell he’s a bit off it fitness-wise. That’s just natural. He hasn’t played many minutes from pre-season up to now.
“I thought he did okay, he worked hard. Some things came off for him, some didn’t. But he’ll get up to speed, I have no doubt in that.
“Lyle [Taylor]’s not good. It’s worse than what we first thought it was going to be so he’s going to miss a period now, so we’ll have to adapt. We’ve got a good squad. Obviously it’s disappointing for us but that’s the game unfortunately.
“I’m not going to chuck any figures out there because we don’t know for sure yet. We know that he isn’t going to be back in the next few weeks so he’s going to miss a run of games. we won’t know how many until he starts getting treatment and starts trying to make himself better but we’re going to miss him for sure.”
His post-game press conference will be available on Valley Pass shortly. Click here to purchase Valley Pass.