The 4 or 5 players set to miss Charlton Athletic v Derby County | OneFootball

There are four or five players that will be unavailable for the Championship opening day clash between Charlton Athletic and Derby County.

The 2026-27 Championship season gets underway this weekend with some stellar ties and an intriguing opening day clash at The Valley sees Charlton Athletic take on Derby County in South London.

Nathan Jones’ Charlton steered themselves clear of the bottom three and the relegation places last season, following their promotion via the League One play-offs in the 2024-25 campaign.

The Addicks have not spent as heavily as they did last year with the addition of Charlie Kelman for around £5 million headlining their incoming business but they will still be hoping to kick on and push into the middle-of-the-table this time around.

They eased past Cheltenham Town by three goals to one in the first round of the EFL Cup last week, while upcoming opponents Derby County succumbed to a 2-1 defeat at home to last year’s League One winners Lincoln City.

The Rams are expecting to challenge for the play-off places this season, especially with them being expanded to eight teams, having narrowly missed out on the top six on the final day of last season.

Former Derby midfielder John Eustace remains in charge and his pragmatic, effective style of football is again expected to make Derby a bit of a scalp and very awkward to beat.

As the two sides face off on the opening weekend of the season after a three-and-a-half-month off season, this is a look at the players who will not be involved down at The Valley.

Charlton Athletic

Kayne Ramsay

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In his pre-match press conference, Nathan Jones confirmed that former Southampton right-back Kayne Ramsay is not yet available to play at the start of this season.

The 25-year-old Hackney-born full-back, who joined Charlton in the summer of 2024 in League One, has played in pre-season but missed last week’s defeat of Cheltenham due to an ankle injury.

Josh Edwards

Another full-back that is set to miss this weekend is former Dunfermline Athletic man Josh Edwards, who has been unavailable since suffering a season-ending ankle injury in January.

Edwards has recently returned to training but is yet to get up to match fitness and will instead spend the build-up to the opening day of the season taking part in a Q&A in Charlton’s Club 1905 hospitality suite.

Timothy Ouma

Having arrived on loan from Czech giants Slavia Prague earlier on this week, Timothy Ouma is another player who will miss out on the squad for the opening day.

The reason given is that Ouma will try and get himself up to speed having been a recent arrival, having joined from Slavia where he played he managed just one first-team appearance after his move from Elfsborg, spending last season out on loan at Lech Poznan in the Polish Ekstraklasa.

Charlie Kelman

Alongside Kayne Ramsay, last summer’s big money and marquee signing Charlie Kelman is the only other injury issue for The Addicks to deal with.

The former Leyton Orient loanee, who joined Charlton from Queens Park Rangers, dislocated his shoulder against Gillingham in pre-season and is not expected back yet.

Derby County

Matt Clarke

John Eustace has said he has more or less a fully fit and available squad with the only concern being that of centre-back Matt Clarke, who he describes as ‘struggling’.

Eustace did not rule out that Clarke would definitely be unavailable for the trip to the capital city, saying that Derby will ‘wait and see’, but he was not overly optimistic either.