Derby County suffered a miserable defeat against Charlton Athletic tonight and Joe Wildsmith was largely at fault after making some fatal errors in the match.
Derby County arrived into this match looking to bounce back from their defeat against Barnsley at the weekend.
In the early stages, it looked as though Paul Warne got the reaction he desired from his players as his side started well.
Eiran Cashin, who was playing as a left back on the night, converted a Nathaniel Mendez-Laing cross in the 39th minute but the Rams failed to push on from there and Charlton began to grow in confidence.
After recording consecutive draws against Bolton Wanderers and Portsmouth, they had hope of taking points from another promotion chaser.
And once Joe Wildsmith needlessly hacked down Daniel Kanu in the box with Alfie May converting the resulting spot kick, the visitors’ dreams of taking all three points became a reality as Karoy Anderson put the visitors ahead in the 80th minute.
Ultimately, Wildsmith will receive the brunt of the criticism after making a howler, but the Rams weren’t good enough at all on the night and this was epitomised by the performance of right winger Kane Wilson.
Kane Wilson was poor in the defeat against Charlton Athletic
Derby haven’t shown the cohesion of a team fighting for automatic promotion for months and that was on display once more against tonight.
The hosts were unable to wrestle control of the contest and create quality opportunities in front of their expectant supporters.
Instead, they squandered promising positions on the pitch by being wasteful and generally bad in possession.
This was particularly demonstrated by the performance of Wilson, who has had a good season for the Rams, but on this occasion, he was incredibly poor.
The 23-year-old only completed 65% of his passes, completed zero dribbles and lost possession a whopping 25 times.
Leigh Curtis of the Derby Telegraph summarized his display by awarding him a match rating of 4.5, the joint second-lowest of the starting XI and said: “Can understand why Warne likes him because he can be unpredictable, but does have the odd annoying habit of keeping hold of the ball too long.”
Whilst he left much to be desired on the ball, he wasn’t much better off it as he lost five of his seven ground duels, won zero aerial duels and made just one tackle.
On a bitterly disappointing night for Derby, Wilson was one of several players who failed to leave his mark and that could put him at risk of being dropped for their home fixture against Port Vale.