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Charlton v Wolves: Charlton need to win and I think they will

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Andrew French talks us through the betting in Sky's televised match, a must-win one for the Addicks if they are to experience Premiership football next season

When Charlton host Wolves in front of the Sky cameras on Saturday afternoon, they will surely look at their visitors from the Black Country and think 'here's what will happen to us if we don't go up'.

The archetypal 'sleeping giants', Wolves are a club with a big history. Their older fans will probably find it very difficult to be mixing it with the Scunthorpes and Colchesters of this world. Trouble is, for some of their younger supporters, life outside the top flight has probably been the rule, not the exception.

With their impressive stadium and large fanbase, you feel Wolves ought to be in the Premiership. But results don't lie - in the last three seasons they have finished 5th, 7th and 9th, and prior to their 2003/04 campaign in the Premiership, they came 5th, 3rd, 12th, 7th and 7th.

With the Grand National only a week away, Wolves are a bit like one of those horses that plods round Aintree every year but never looks like winning the race.

This season again automatic promotion is beyond them, and if they aren't careful, they'll be forced out amid the rush for a play-off place. Victory at The Valley could put them into sixth, but defeat could well spell another season of chasing former glories.

And so there's the warning for Charlton, a club that slid out of the Premiership just when it looked as if they had been there long enough to be classed a top-flight club.

Alan Pardew has been given funds to assemble a squad that, on paper, looks good enough to go up. However, turning probability into reality has been a problem all season long for the Addicks, and now they part of the scramble for the play-offs rather than contesting the top two spots.

Last week's draw with West Brom was another game in which Pardew's impressive-looking selection of strikers failed to find the net. Leroy Lita, Andy Gray, Chris Iwelumo, Luke Varney: all potential matchwinners, who between them have scored once in Charlton's last nine games.

Surely such a bleak run cannot continue. I think not, and therefore I'm backing the Addicks at [2.24] to start one last push for promotion at the expense of the Old Gold, who can be backed at [3.6]. The draw is available at [3.5].

The Addicks have one of the poorer home defensive records in the Championship, and they always seem to offer their visitors a couple of chances during the course of a match. Indeed, they have only managed two clean sheets in their last 12 league games at The Valley. Therefore, if we are saying the Charlton forward line will click into gear at the other end, then backing Over 2.5 goals at [2.18], or even Over 3.5 goals at [4.1], might be a wise investment.

Pardew has admitted his tinkering with the team has probably not helped Charlton, but he may be forced to juggle his forwards again as Andy Gray suffered a broken nose in last week's draw with West Brom.

However, that virtually guarantees a starting berth for Lita - I think backing him at around [3.2] to score is worth considering. The striker is on loan from Reading and if he wants to break back into his parent club's line-up or earn himself a move in the summer, then a barren loan spell in the Championship won't help much.

For those looking for a big-priced bet, I think the fact both teams have to go for victory will open the game up, and in line with backing Charlton to win, I'll cover a 2-1 and 3-1 home victory at [10] and [23] respectively.