Written By Max
Ground #20
The Valley – Charlton Athletic FC
Saturday 28thth August 2021 – EFL League 1
Charlton Athletic 2-0 Crewe Alexandra
Attendance: 13,167
Entry: £24
It was fitting that we were down in the Capital for today’s game, as after over 500 days without seeing The Alex, just like London Buses, 2 games come along at once! After our trip to Leeds on Tuesday night, we were treated with another away trip to a big stadium as today we were playing in the 27,111 all-seater home of Charlton Athletic.
The Valley has been home to ‘The Addicks’ since the 1920’s and was expanded to its current layout in 2001 in time for their promotion to the Premier League. Charlton spent 7 years in the top flight but have since struggled and yoyo’d between the Championship and League 1. With new owners in place the future is looking bright for The Addicks and they will be hoping to be back in the second tier sooner rather than later.
We were joined at today’s game by Emma’s Brother Jamie and his Girlfriend Mel as they got their first taste of the Emma’s Ground Guide experience! Unfortunately for them they also got the full experience of being a Crewe fan for the day as the Alex put in another poor performance in the League!
The game began with Charlton on the front foot creating a number of early chances. Crewe settled into the game and from the 20th minute onwards started to create a few chances of their own, although not looking very dangerous. Just as the fans surrounding us in the away end were getting confident that maybe a positive result was on the cards there were 2 goals from nothing putting the hosts well clear at half time.
The first goal came from a floated cross which was headed in from around 5 yards. I don’t like to slag off Goalkeepers but Will Jaasklainen in the Alex goal stayed rooted to his line when surely it was his ball to claim. The second goal came just 5 minutes later as a quick counter from the home side saw them 2 v 2 and the striker cooly took it round the keeper and slotted home for 2-0.
Into the second half we went, and the away end was deflated to say the least. Crewe were much better though in the second period and had the majority of the ball and chances. A couple of good saves from the Charlton keeper kept the visitors at bay, although they never looked likely to give up the 2 goal lead.
In the end a deserved first win of the season for the hosts, with Crewe still looking for their first 3 points of the year. Something will have to change and quickly otherwise we are in for a long season battling relegation as struggling at the back and not scoring is not a good combination!
It is time now though to rate our day out at The Valley:
Location: 8/10
The Valley is located just a 5 minute walk from Charlton Station which has trains going directly to Central London. This is the closest a ground has been to a station so far on our travels so a very easy ground to get to! The only negative being we struggled to find many pubs near the ground, especially ones that allowed away supporters so we ended up going into the ground extremely early instead!
Kit: 7/10
This years Home kit for The Addicks is, as you’d expect, a red shirt with white shorts and red and white socks. The kit is made by Hummel so contains their Trademark chevrons on the sleeves and shorts which look nice and the kit also includes a dark red pattern on the front. The sponsor fits in nicely with the design of the kit. A decent effort.
Facilities: 4/10
The pitch at The Valley is actually below ground level and therefore the away end does not have a concourse under the stand. Instead the food and Drink is bought at a stall to the side of the stand. This is a nice little area, although it filled up rather quickly and with only 500 Crewe fans in attendance at the game I dread to think how crowded it gets when bigger clubs come to town and fill the away end which can hold up to 3,000 fans.
Luckily at today’s game the weather was ok, but as the bar was outside it would be horrendous on a cold windy winter night as there is no cover from the elements.
Look: 9/10
The Valley is a ground I have been looking forward to visiting for a long time as I had seen on TV that it was a really nice ground. It’s even better in person than I had imagined though! I hadn’t realised that the ground is actually built below ground level. As you walk into the away end from street level, you enter the ground half way up the stand which is not what I expected and something you don’t see at many grounds!
The 3 home stands are all connected and each have their own character with a mixture of 2 and 1 tiered seating. The away end being the only one separate from the rest, and other than a large pillar in the middle, a good view of the action can be had from anywhere within the stand.
We were surprised how nice the ground was and you can certainly tell that it graced the Premier League less than 15 years ago and it wouldn’t look out of place back there today.
Food and Drink: 5/10
After the disappointing lack of food at Elland Road earlier in the week, we were looking forward to getting our first Football League pie since starting this blog! There weren’t too many options available, but we were happy to find out that Chicken Balti Pies were on offer so we had one of those! It was pretty average, about what you expect from a football pie although there wasn’t a huge amount of chicken inside. It was pretty cool to see they had attempted to print the Charlton logo on top of the pie (although not very successfully!)
Emma wasn’t impressed with the lack of dark fruits on offer and there was only Heineken available on the day.
TOTAL SCORE 33/50
Overall we really enjoyed our visit to The Valley, and our weekend in London as a whole! The ground has to be one of the best in League One and I’m glad we managed to tick it off while Charlton are in the same league as Crewe.
Talking of Crewe, much improvement is needed if we want to stay in the league this season and we hope to see them make a few signings and improve before we see them next month away at Rotherham!
If you want to see where this puts The Valley in our Leaderboard you can check out the table here: Football League Leaderboard
If you’d like to see our Leaderboard of Non-League Grounds click here: Non-League Leaderboard
Emma’s Ground Guide 