CHARLTON boss Alan Curbishley said he felt no pressure after the Addicks' `kept their automatic promotion hopes alive with a win at the Valley on Saturday.

With just two games left, and with slip-ups needed by both Middlesborough and Sunderland, plenty of Charlton fans will feel rather less cool and collected about the run-in.

Steve Jones' 57th-minute header secured the Reds' seventh win on the trot, equalling the club record set in 1980/81.

The first half saw the Addicks raining in balls from both flanks, while failing to find the final touch.

Danny Mills, Sean Newton and Neil Heaney put in decent crosses, but Jones, Mendonca and Keith Jones were all kept at bay.

Captain Mark Kinsella forced a save from Aaron Flahavan with a 25 yard drive from a free kick on the half hour.

Early in the second half Heaney picked up the ball on the right wing and delivered a delightful deep cross to Steve Jones on the far post. Jones rose to head the ball against the bar.

Three minutes later Heaney was on the opposite flank. He again floated the ball perfectly to Steve Jones who this time found the back of the net.

Jones, in for the injured Mark Bright, has come back from a month's loan at Bournemouth, and the sea air appears to have done him the world of good.

"He looks a foot taller and a yard quicker," commented Curbishley after the game.

Jones also hit the woodwork and had a goal disallowed for handball. He will be missed through suspension at Charlton's last home game of the season, on Saturday against Tranmere Rovers.

Heaney, in the starting line-up for the first time, confirmed Curbishley's cunning in signing the winger from Manchester City on transfer deadline date.

Portsmouth never really threatened until injury time when Jamaican international Paul Hall had a fantastic opportunity to level the game and keep his team's chances of avoiding relegation alive.

Hall had replaced John Aloisi mid-way through the second half, and a rare mistake by Charlton's right back Danny Mills left him with just Sasa Ilic in goal to beat.

But clean through, he skewed the ball wide of Ilic's left post from just 12 yards out.

That miss will almost certainly send Portsmouth sinking into the second division.

Portsmouth manager Alan Ball paid tribute to Charlton after the game, praising the Addicks' fans and board for the patient approach that has brought them this far.

"They are an object lesson to everybody.

"It has taken an awful lot of hard work from an awful lot of people, and long may it continue.

Thomas Worden

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