DEAN Holden praised Corey Blackett-Taylor for his telling contribution in Charlton’s opening day 1-0 success over Leyton Orient.
The attacker delivered a perfect low delivery to set up George Dobson for a simple tap in just before the break for what turned out to be the decisive moment of the game.
But it wasn’t just his creative display which earned a glowing tribute from the manager afterwards.
Holden said: “When you are getting the ball in them areas you need you know he is going to give anybody problems. He has great feet and pace to burn.
“Obviously the end product with that left foot, we can keep working with, but I think defensively as well today we’ve worked hard with him this week.
“We’ve done a lot of team play , we’ve done a lot of ‘what if’ scenarios, the ball is in a certain part of the pitch where do we need to be defensively.
“I’ve done quite a bit of mileage up and down the training pitch this week on the side of the line talking to him, trying to help him because he is an attacking type of player.
“He is always thinking about attacking them. To play in that position we need him at times just to be a little bit more safe. I thought he did that really well today I have to say.”
More than 18,000 fans came through the turnstiles to witness what was a winning start and the Addicks boss was delighted the majority of them went home happy.
Holden said: “It was really important I think, particularly when you’ve got such a big crowd in The Valley today for the first time in a long time.
“There was a lot of expectant supporters turning up with a lot of optimism.
“I think it was important that they see a team that has shown what we did today, which is we started really well. We started with real intent in the game. We ran all over Leyton Orient.
“We knew they were a team that obviously had a lot of success winning the title last year playing in a certain style.
“They want to play on their terms at times so we needed to get on top of them and force mistakes which we did. We had the big chance through Alfie May early on.
“I thought we went in 1-0 deservedly in the lead at that point.”
Holden added: “We’ve had two big chances in the second half. We had a lot of action around their box. We had the one from Camara which he puts wide and TC (Tyreece Campbell) one-on-one.
“I think we should have won more comfortably. Having said that, we looked really solid defensively today, which was a bit of a concern last week against Aberdeen so we had a lot of work to do defensively.
“But credit to the players, they’ve took that on board. We out ran them today.
“I thought we played some excellent stuff and Corey Blackett-Taylor in that first half in particular gave them real trouble, TC the same. I suppose Scotty Fraser picking up a slight niggle is the only real negative on a really good day.”
