Carlos Carvalhal was pleased with Wednesday’s second-half display against Charlton after the team, not for the first time this season, struggled to stamp their authority on a game at Hillsborough in the first 45 minutes.
The head coach talked about the difficulty of playing on the far from perfect surface early in games, when visiting teams tend to close down play more readily, and said: “The team for moments in the first half lacked confidence but never lost control or organisation.”
Carvalhal said that this tends to change as games progress and visitors lose their intensity, adding: “We knew Charlton couldn’t press all the time and when we had more time and space we started playing very well.
“When they lost energy we played better and we had a very good second half at a very good level. We deserved the win and the scoreline.
“We are the second or third best attack in the division and I am very happy about this because we promised our fans good attacking football and we are delivering it.”
The half-time double substitution of Alex Lopez and Atdhe Nuhiu for Sam Hutchinson and Aiden McGeady brought much-needed tempo and attacking threat to our game and Carvalhal reflected: “During the season we have evolved as a team. We have a number of ways we can play against different teams and we showed this today.
“We made changes at half time and this gave us more space in attacking positions.
“It shows that we have different options and can adjust to situations during games.
“We will continue to grow as a team in the last games.”