Jason Pearce was at a loss to explain the performance he and his Charlton side put in during their 1-0 defeat to Preston on Sunday.

Paul Gallagher’s penalty on the hour was enough to send the visitors top of the league after an Addick’s display that lacked the creativity or cutting edge.

Pearce, who conceded the penalty, admitted they didn’t deserve anything from the game and that they were second best throughout.

“We’ve come up and proved ourselves at this level” Pearce said.

“We are where we are on merit.

“We’ve had some good games, and played some really good football, but today we didn’t play good football.

“We sort of got stuck into how they play which is long ball and that isn’t really us.

“We were trying to say to each other to get it down and play but it didn’t happen which is frustrating.

“I felt they were better than us.

“We weren’t quite at it today, I don’t know for what reason, we weren’t on it.

“Passing wasn’t quite right, it just wasn’t us.

“We haven’t had a performance like that this season, so as players we are disappointed.

“Being at home we wanted to do better, but we learn from it and move on.”

Millwall-ready

Charlton travel to London rivals Millwall next weekend looking to put the Preston display behind them, but Pearce is keen to learn from the defeat and take the positives from what has been good start to life back in the Championship.

“We’ll have to dust ourselves down and put a good week’s training in and go to Millwall ready,” he said.

“Be a tough game, massive derby game and we’ll make sure we’re ready for that.

“We have of late played a lot of the ‘bi’ teams, and the positive thing is we’ve put in positive performances against big teams.

“That gives us confidence but today we need to put behind us quickly as we had an off day.”