Powell expects striker to be out for several weeks (From News Shopper)

Powell expects striker to be out for several weeks

6:23pm Saturday 20th October 2012 in Sport By Paul Green

CHRIS Powell says he expects to be without Ricardo Fuller for several weeks after the striker limped off with a hamstring injury in today’s 1-0 home defeat to Barnsley.

The Charlton manager had already used all three of his substitutes by the time Fuller left the field, leaving the Addicks to play the final 10 minutes a man short.

Powell isn’t clear exactly how long the forward will be out for but his initial reaction was not positive.

The Valley boss said: “After trying to make some changes and trying to get a bit of life and energy into the team at half-time, we make another change and then we lose Ricardo Fuller.

“Really it just summed up our day.

“We look like we are going to lose him for a number of weeks.

“But even with the 10 men, because we had a bit of a cause and knew we were 1-0 down with 10 men, we started to put in that extra effort to try and affect things.

“We did have one or two situations but not enough today.

“Really we’ve picked the wrong day to do it with having a full house through the initiative of Football for a Fiver so it is a real shame we couldn’t put on a real performance and a winning performance for the crowd that were here today.

“Ricardo’s injury will be something which will be assessed over the next 48 hours.

“I’ll know a bit more on Monday.

“It looks like his hamstring and it didn’t look too good.”

With Fuller now potentially out for a while, Powell was asked what were the chances of bringing back in-form striker Leon Clarke from his loan spell at Scunthorpe to boost Charlton’s attacking options.

“It is something I will have to have a look at,” the manager replied after careful consideration.

This was Charlton’s third home defeat from the last four games at The Valley and Powell conceded it was a worry.

He said: “It was a real frustrating day. I just felt we didn’t really play with enough tempo and consistency over the course of the game.

“We started off OK but then Barnsley to be fair really settled into the game and we just didn’t do enough to affect the game and it was a bad day all round in the end.

“You always want to perform and get your majority of your points at home, as most teams do.

“But obviously it has turned out that we’ve been better away.

“The players aren’t edgy or anything like that because I feel the crowd are always behind us, but we do need to turn it around.

“Even if it is a really ugly performance and we nick a 1-0, I like many of our supporters would settle for that because you need to pick up some points and your performances at home.

“But it just so happens that away from home we’ve been a bit more disciplined.

“It actually happens a lot in this Championship that teams pick up more away wins, which we’ve seen quite a lot recently.”

Powell added: “It is up to us to change that around and we’ve got to be ready when Middlesbrough come here after our two away games and we really try our best to get three points and get our home form going again.

“All we can do is approach the games and look to win them.

“There are two teams out there, they’re not going to lay down and let us win, we’ve got to earn the right to win three points and win home games.

“It is a real shame we haven’t done it recently and we’ve lost a number, all by close results but of course it hurts because you want to win, you want to get your season going and you want to be consistent.

“The key really is to get back-to-back wins. I was looking forward to that today after a great result at Blackpool and we haven’t done that.

“We’ve been very up and down so far but it is something we are going to have to resolve quickly.”

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