Alfie May was one of the marquee signings of the summer for Charlton Athletic

The 30-year-old signed a two-year deal with the option for an additional year. He had scored 20 league goals last season for a Cheltenham Town side that only scored 45 goals; so 44.4% of all of Cheltenham's goal were scored by one man. When you add the three assists that he registered, he was directly involved in over half of all of Town's league goals, in the previous campaign.

May has continued where he left off, scoring eleven goals in 14 League One appearances since joining the Addicks. With his finishing abilities, playing in a team that was going to create a lot more chances that Cheltenham were, this was always likely to happen.

Things haven't been completely smooth sailing though. Charlton have encountered problems when facing teams with physically imposing centre backs.

When May played against Bolton Wanderers, last weekend, he struggled as he was up against Ricardo Santos who is a technically sound defender, as well as being someone who's usually bigger than the strikers he comes up against.

At the League One level, facing central defenders like this is quite common, and Michael Appleton and his team have worked out how to get around it

Alfie May's issues against physical defenders

May is 5'9" tall.

Some forwards of this size still have the physical power to be able to battle with bigger defenders, but that's not the type of player that the 30-year-old is. He's more dainty and clever on the ball, rather than someone who relies on physical attributes.

Because of this, against teams like Bolton, and defenders like Santos, it's harder for him to get on the ball in the right place, and he's harder to find in and around the box, which is where he scores a lot of his goals.

The game at the weekend saw May tend to be more on the right-hand side of the pitch. This is because Santos was mainly operating in the areas that May likes to be in, just off centre on the left-side of the pitch. Santos and manager Ian Evatt will have known that that area is where the forward does his best work, and therefore neutralised it.

May gets into poachers positions for many of the goals he scores, but, against Wanderers, he only managed a couple of shots in the box; none of them were on target.

Not being able to get to his usual comfort areas on the pitch made him less effective, but there's a way to sort it.

How Michael Appleton has seemingly fixed the Alfie May issue

Any team that comes up against Charlton knows where the threats are going to come from. May is the top scorer in the league, so attention will be focused on him, leading up to the game.

So, against Wigan Athletic, a different plan was enacted. 19-year-old Miles Leaburn has been another strong point of the Addicks' attack. But instead of using him as a traditional goalscorer, he was deployed as a helping hand for his fellow forward, on Tuesday night.

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Over Leaburn's previous few games, before he faced Wigan, he was averaging around 17 touches per game. But in this game he got on the ball 33 times, almost as many as the 30-year-old.

The average positions of the 19-year-old and May show how close they were to each other. Leaburn was used as a bit of a decoy player to help out his fellow forward.

Leaburn registered two key passes and an assist. Playing physical strikers with the 30-year-old occupied the attention of defenders, and allowed May to get into spaces on the ball that were less congested.

Putting up big strikers against big defenders may sound a simple thing to do, but it was a clever, effective adjustment from the boss.