Charlton’s preparations were thrown into disarray by a sickness bug ahead of their 3-1 defeat to Sheffield Wednesday, Addicks boss Lee Bowyer revealed.
Bowyer was already without 13 first-team players through injury when some of his players were struck down by vomiting and diarrhoea before Saturday’s game.
The game was level with 10 minutes to go, after Macauley Bonne cancelled out Steven Fletcher’s opener, but Fletcher struck from the spot before Atdhe Nuhiu wrapped things up in stoppage time.
Bowyer said: “It was a tough day. We’ve got enough injuries, but then to chuck in a few illnesses as well doesn’t help. It was a bit of everything. Sickness, diarrhoea, not good.
“Ben Purrington was down to start, but he was ill just before we got on the coach, so we had to send him home.
“Then once we got here and put the team sheet in, Albie Morgan was being sick just before the game. We couldn’t do anything about that.
“We just had to see how he went. Then again at half-time he was sick. That’s why we took him off. He couldn’t move in the end.
“I hate losing. I think that’s quite obvious to see but I’ve just said to the players: ‘Hold your heads up high. You should be proud of putting on a great team performance.’
“They can’t give any more that what they are giving out there. We were in the game right up until the 80th minute.”
Bowyer is boosted, however, by the club’s proposed takeover by Abu Dhabi-based corporation East Street Investments.
He added: “I’ve spoken to the potential new owners and it was a positive conversation. If they do get the green light from the EFL, it’s going to be good news for the football club.
“They have said that there is money to spend in January and that me and the staff are going to get proper contracts.
“It sounds good, so we need to start planning for January. It’ll be nice to be able to strengthen the squad if we can.”
Wednesday manager Garry Monk expressed his delight as his side ended a five-match winless run.
Monk said: “I’m pleased for the players because we’ve had a lot of frustration recently where we’ve played as well as that, we haven’t taken our chances and a couple of costly mistakes have probably caused us not to win more games.
“We know that, but we wanted to show today that we still had the belief and character to respond even though we’ve had a tricky period where we haven’t won games when we have deserved to.
“We’ve taken leads in games and something has gone against us, but I saw the belief in the players today. We could easily have felt sorry for ourselves today when they equalised, but we didn’t and we showed a great response. I think it was a deserved win.”
