Charlton will be without Chuks Aneke and Lewis Page for their season opener at Blackburn Rovers on Saturday whilst Macauley Bonne is declared 'not ready.'
Speaking ahead of their return to the Championship, Addicks boss Lee Bowyer revealed new signing Aneke and Page have hamstring injuries whilst Bonne is not ready to start.
Aneke pulled a hamstring in Charlton’s final pre-season fixture, Chris Solly’s testimonial against Aston Villa on Saturday.
“Sometimes you do get injuries in pre-season because you’re pushing them to their limits,” Bowyer said.
“Thankfully we we’ve got another left-back to cover Lewis, and Chuks, who’s been good pre-season, is not so bad, I think that it’s just this game that he’s going to miss."
The Addicks have had a vigorous pre-season, taking in a training camp to Portugal before six friendlies in the space of 15 days.
Bowyer justified the intense camp and although admitting he would've preferred more bodies to rotate during the matches, the fitness was necessary to compete this campaign.
“We’ve had to push our lads even harder this summer," he continued.
"We’re going to a different league so it’s a completely different level of fitness.
“The players that we’re playing against now are different machines to the ones we were playing last year.”
Charlton, operating on the smallest budget in the league have yet to add any loan signings to their squad, and until they do so, Bowyer admitted his middle and attacking third are threadbare.
“At the moment we have Lyle Taylor and Macauley Bonne as our only two strikers in the building. Macauley isn’t quite ready yet to start so we are limited in the attacking third.
“At the back we are solid.
“Two very good goalkeepers, eight defenders with one out, so we have got two for every position and we are solid everywhere, but the middle of the park we are short of numbers and in the attacking third.”
Despite missing the key personnel through injury, Bowyer was upbeat ahead od his trip to Ewood Park, citing an improvement from their season opener in League One last season.
“We are fitter than last season with probably one or two more players in the squad, last year at Sunderland we couldn’t fill bench!”
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