CHARLTON skipper Nicky Bailey admitted the Addicks cannot afford any more points dropped if they’re to remain contenders for the heavily contested second place in League One.

Bailey made his first start since March 20 but captained his side to defeat against fellow promotion hopefuls Southampton on Saturday.

And while the chase is far from over for Phil Parkinson’s men with five games still to play, Bailey declared it will probably take 15 points out of 15 to avoid the lottery of the play-offs.

He said of the result: “It was disappointing, but we’ve got another game on Tuesday to put that right.

“The Colchester game is massive, obviously.

“We still want to get automatic promotion but it’s going to be even harder now and we know we’re going to have to win every game.

“But if we win against Colchester it pretty much guarantees us a place in the play-offs and that’s the least we want, so we’re going to go into that with all guns blazing.

“If you want to get promoted then draws are no good.

“We’ve had too many draws this season and maybe that’s what has cost us.

“But we haven’t gone into any games just to get a draw out of it, we want to win them all and that’s what we’ll be trying to do.

“You want to get into the automatic promotion places first before the play-offs, that’s the main thing, but obviously you have to make sure you’re at least in the play-offs and that’s what we’re looking to do on Tuesday.”

The game itself at St Marys was a close one, with only a well-taken strike from Michail Antonio and some goalkeeping heroics from Kelvin Davis separating the two sides.

And Bailey echoed those sentiments of frustration after the game felt by the well-voiced travelling support in what could easily have been a respectable point gained on the road.

He mused: “Their keeper pulled off a few good saves and we had a few good chances, so maybe the fair result would have been a draw.

“But it didn’t happen and they got the win, so good luck to them.

“He [Davis] seems to play quite well whenever he plays against us. He did his job today and kept us out but we probably just didn’t create enough and that cost us the game.”