ALFIE May struck twice as Charlton came from behind to brush aside Exeter City 4-1 at The Valley and maintain Michael Appleton’s unbeaten start as manager.
James Scott fired the visitors ahead on 23 minutes but the Addicks drew level on the stroke of half-time when Corey Blackett-Taylor converted after Chuks Aneke’s header came back off the bar.
The Addicks took the lead after Tennai Watson was fouled in the box by Yanic Wildschut and although Aneke’s 65th minute penalty was saved by Viljami Sinisalo, May reacted quickly to fire home the rebound.
Exeter were perhaps unfortunate to go down to 10 men moments later as Will Aimson saw red for a pretty innocuous looking collision with May.
Substitute Miles Leaburn made it 3-1 on 79 minutes after taking a touch inside the box and drilling a shot past Sinisalo.
May struck again four minutes from time when Blackett-Taylor’s inviting low ball fell into his path and the striker made no mistake with a close range finish.
Michael Appleton now has eight points from his opening four games and the new manager was beaming about the display afterwards.
He said: “I was delighted. There was obviously a little bit of lapse in concentration for their goal but I was really pleased with the way we played in that first half.
“I thought we were so close on so many occasions to open them up with a defence splitting pass and it didn’t quite happen.
“But the most pleasing thing was the amount of players who were prepared to run without the ball and really hurt the opposition.
“I was happy with the performance in the first half but disappointed with the goal.”
Despite the frustration at falling behind, Appleton couldn’t fault the way his young side reacted to the setback before eventually making their dominance count over 90 minutes.
The SE7 boss said: “The players keep responding, which is really pleasing because there was a question mark over them as a group of maybe being a little bit of a soft touch.
“That was one thing I wanted to eradicate and make sure that doesn’t happen.
“When we’ve been asked questions over the first four games, they’ve responded really, really well.
“I felt we were good in the second half but the worry is when the opposition go down to 10-men is they are going to take an extra touch of the ball and slow it down a little bit, but we did the opposite and it was great to see.
“We camped for long, long periods in their last third of the field. We still can be a bit more patient at times but it is very difficult for me to be critical of the team tonight because they gave me everything they had.”
