NATHAN Jones praised his team’s mentality after Macaulay Gillesphey scored an 89th-minute winner for Charlton Athletic against Peterborough United at The Valley on Tuesday night.
Matty Godden put the Addicks ahead in a manic nine-minute spell. Godden scored from the spot in the 54th minute after Sam Hughes had handled.
Posh’s Emmanuel Fernandez was given a straight red card four minutes later for a foul on Thierry Small but the visitors shocked their hosts by levelling with a penalty by Malik Mothersille after Ricky-Jade Jones had been brought down.
And just when it seemed Charlton were going to miss their chance to go fifth in League One, Gillesphey headed home Alex Gilbert’s corner.
“It’s a mentality to keep going,” Jones said. “I want us to instil that and to get late goals shows that we have that mentality and that we have the fitness levels.
“Then there is also there’s other things, like quality and also the game-changers in the squad that can come on and do that.
“I’m delighted with the win. We were pretty dominant for long periods of the game.
“I thought after about the first three or four minutes, we settled down and we were dominant. Then we had a lot of chances, their keeper pulled off some great saves. We missed chances and we needed to score them really when we were on top, but we didn’t and we came in 0-0 at half-time.
“We got the first goal and then we didn’t really kick on and that’s probably the only disappointment.”
Jones added: “It’s pleasant to score late. We kept going. It’s not like we were lucky because you’ve had nineteen shots, eight on target with three clear-cut chances and it should have been [more] in terms of the chances we created.
“At this stage of the season you’ll take any three points you can. We deserved the three points, but we had to wait till very late and from a probably an unorthodox source to do that.”
