Steve Brown was pleased to see his reserve side pick up a point at Charlton last night and took plenty of positives from the game.
"If I'm honest, a draw was a fair and decent result," he said. "We fielded a lot of kids who played for the youth team on Saturday and some senior players who haven't played a lot of football recently, so I wasn't disappointed with our performance.
"I though the first half was a fairly even contest that we probably just edged. We got the early goal and our back four managed to keep their two lively strikers in check, and I felt we deserved to come in at half-time with the advantage.
"Charlton certainly upped their game in the second half, though, and Jimmy Walker kept us in it with some fantastic saves early on. Unfortunately, we conceded a poor goal following a hashed clearance, but then we opened them up again a couple of times, with Lee Bowyer and Kepa going close, so it could have gone either way late on."
Bowyer played his first full game of 2007 and put in a solid performance. Steve said: "It was good to see Lee get through the entire 90 minutes, and I thought he looked sharp and hungry.
"However much training you do, you can never replicate the experience of an actual competitive game, and Lee will have gained valuable match fitness from the game.
"I thought it was a good exercise for all of the senior players and we came away with no injuries, so all in all it was a productive evening.
"Obviously we would like to have won the game, but this
level isn't only about results and I took a lot of positives
from our actual performance and approach to the match."