Karl Robinson will be without eight senior players for the visit‎ of Blackpool on Saturday.

Lewis Pager, Patrick Bauer, Jason Pearce, Ahmed Kashi, Jake Forster-Caskey, Tariqe‎ Fosu, Ricky Holmes and Billy Clarke are all ruled out.

Only Holmes, and possibly Pearce, are likely to feature again this year. Robinson even mentioned, semi-jokingly, that Lee Bowyer could be brought out of retirement to sit on the bench:

“Lee Bowyer is fit and can sign a form if we need him to! We’re laughing but he could sit on the bench for us. He’s eligible to sign and I’m sure he could do a cameo for 15 minutes or so.

“He scored 99 goals in his career and probably got 99 bookings as well, so he’s one off each of them to get that hundred. It would be nice if he could come on, score, get booked and we win 1-0!”

‎Robinson also gave his thoughts on the current situation at The Valley:
“We’re going to have to embrace the situation that we find ourselves in. It’s going to be hard and the players who are fit have worked really hard.

“The injured ones have been great too and have lmost been like cheerleaders around the place.

“They’ve really got each other going, there is a good vibe in the building and this is a really close team. We stick together through thick and thin.

“A lot of the players have been playing with a ew niggles because they care so much and want to put a shift in for the football club.

“With the backlog of games that we have had, it was going to be difficult to keep everyone fit.

“One or two things will change in January now having lost Billy Clarke for the rest of the season; that’s a big blow for us.

“Injuries are part and parcel of football and the fans will judge us in the same way as always, we’ll still have the same intense build up as we always do. We’ll still wear the shirt and will try to do our best.

“We’re going to need the fans more than ever, it’s a tough period anyway and in the last few games that we haven’t won we feel like we are playing well.

“I’ve been banging my head against the wall in the last few days but we need to stay positive about things,” said Robinson.

Robinson will now try to recruit an attacking central midfield player to replace Clarke when the January transfer window opens. It may mean he will now only be able to bring one striker in next month.

Blackpool are not in the best of form, and‎ despite their crippling injury list,‎ the Addicks can still put out a team strong enough to win the game.

Charlton could look like this:

Amos; Solly, Konsa, Sarr, Dasilva; Dijksteel, Aribo, Marshall, Reeves, Ahearne-Grant; Magennis.

Subs: Phillips, Lennon, Jackson, Lapslie, Dodoo, Hackett-Fairchild, Best.

‎John Busby from Oxfordshire will be the referee.

Robinson – despite all his problems – will be confident of getting the holiday period off to a winning start.