Charlton Athletic head coach Michael Appleton has explained why Louie Watson has not started their last two matches.
The Luton Town loanee came on in today’s 2-0 defeat to Bolton Wanderers in the second half.
Watson played the final 16 minutes of Tuesday’s 3-1 loss at Lincoln City.
The 22-year-old South Londoner, born in Croydon, has made eight League One appearances.
Scott Fraser has started the last two matches alongside George Dobson in the deeper midfield roles.
What he does bring is he is a good carrier of the ball and good passer of the ball,” said Appleton. “What a lot of people won’t see, and this is just part of his development, is when the opposition midfield run off the back of him. That can hurt us at times.
“Louie is going to be a good footballer. We have to be patient with him. He’ll get his minutes at the right time.
“It’s like anything – you win a game of football and everything is good. You lose a game of football and everything is bad – people want to see the negative side of everything, I get that and understand that. But from an educational point of view and development point of view, I’ve done it many times before and I’ll continue to do it with Louie.”
Appleton spoke in the lead up to the Bolton match about using the January transfer window to boost his squad.
And he reckons there is one key thing that is required to help him build a side capable of challenging for promotion.
“Time,” he said. “We have to be better, of course we do, but you look at the teams that are competing at the top end of the division and they have been doing it for a while with the same group of players. That takes a lot of courage and patience.
“Come January you get the opportunity to mix it up a bit, freshen it up a bit – improve the balance of the group and change the profile, at times.
“You can see in the second half that we were a little more on the front foot – because we had to. It’s making sure we’ve got a group that are comfortable being on the front foot right from the start and knowing you have got players, not just in the starting 11 but the squad as a whole, who can deal with it and do that for 90 minutes.
“It’s alright doing it for 45 minutes or an hour, but doing it for 90 minutes takes some doing.”
