Ahead of Norwich City’s FA Cup third round tie against Charlton Athletic at The Valley on Sunday (2pm KO), we spoke to reporter Louis Mendez.
Louis covers The Addicks for BBC Sport London and South London Press.
canaries.co.uk: Akin Famewo won’t be eligible for this game as he’s on loan from Norwich, but how has he been getting on this season?
LM: He’s been really impressive. Other than the goalkeeper, he’s the player who has played the most minutes in League One for us, which shows how consistent he’s been playing as part of a back-three since Johnnie Jackson has come in.
He can play that system really well and did last year as well in more of a back four. He developed a couple of good partnerships, looks decent in the air and reads the game well.
One of the things that playing in a back three gives him is that he’s able to bring the ball out. He’s a got a bit more license to run out with the ball, which he does quite well, so overall really impressive.
canaries.co.uk: Jackson has had six clean sheets in all six of his wins so far, so he must have contributed to that as well.
LM: Yeah definitely. It was a defence that wasn’t keeping many clean sheets before Jackson took over, but as soon as he did they looked really solid, even in the ever so slightly disappointing couple of results we’ve had recently.
We’re still not conceding too many goals, so the defence has been really impressive and Akin plays a big part in that.
canaries.co.uk: A couple of defeats recently, but are the spirits high after the 1-0 win on Tuesday, when Charlton got a late winner against MK Dons?
LM: Yeah, obviously it’s only the Papa John’s Trophy, but any win is a win. It was a result that we probably needed after a couple of difficult results. We’ve had key players missing and the preparation was disrupted due to Covid, before and after Christmas.
canaries.co.uk: Charlton are previous winners of the FA Cup. What are your thoughts on the weekend’s game?
LM: I’m expecting pretty much a full strength side. We’ve gone pretty much full strength in both previous rounds against non league sides.
With Norwich coming down, I’m guessing their minds are elsewhere in terms of their league position, so they might be thinking about making a couple of changes.
If Charlton can put a strong side out and attack the game, then maybe they might have a chance of causing a bit of an upset.
canaries.co.uk: Charlton just missed out on the play-offs last season and are 13th in League One at the moment. What are the aspirations for the rest of this season?
LM: The poor start under Nigel Adkins has left us with a bit of a mountain to climb. We’re 14 points behind the play-offs at the moment, so that would be a real tough ask.
When Jackson came in, the first thing he had to worry about was getting out of the relegation zone. They’ve done that and put together a really strong run, only losing once in their first nine or ten games.
Despite all the points they were adding to the table, they weren’t really moving that far up. They closed the gap on the play-offs from 13 down to eight and now, in the space of two defeats, it’s gone all the other way up to 14 points, so all that hard work is undone and sums up how difficult it’s going to be to recover that massive gap.
There are so many teams competing for the play-offs that you need so many to slip up and continue with your promotion winning form. That’s probably going to be quite tough this season, so maybe a cup run would be nice to have for the Charlton fans who haven’t necessarily got too much to be excited about for the rest of the season.
canaries.co.uk: For Norwich fans who don’t know too much about Charlton’s team, who are the players to look out for on Sunday?
LM: Diallang Jaiyesimi is a decent enough player who played for Norwich. I’d say our main attacking threat at the moment is Jayden Stockley and he’s got a bit of a knock, so we’re not sure if he’s going to play, but he’s our top scorer with 14 goals in 25 games in all competitions this season, so he’s got a pretty healthy goal return.
Elliott Lee has been okay earlier on in the season and has possibly slowed down a little bit recently, but he’s good between the lines.
With DJ and Jonathan Leko we’ve got some attackers down the wings. DJ isn’t necessarily the quickest but is good with the ball at his feet and has got a decent cross. Leko is very quick and scores more goals as well.