Andy King made a losing start as Leicester City interim boss after Charlton capitalised on Caleb Okoli's red card to ease their Championship relegation fears.

Okoli was dismissed after just 15 minutes for pulling back Miles Leaburn, and Charlton took full advantage through Sonny Carey and Lyndon Dykes goals to climb further away from the drop zone.

The 2-0 defeat - a sixth in Leicester's past nine matches - added to the sense of misery after Marti Cifuentes was sacked on Sunday following their shock home loss to Oxford.

Jordan Ayew hit the post from a second-half penalty to compound the Foxes' woes when they threatened a comeback.

Just about the only positive for Leicester was Harry Winks' return as he replaced the injured Hamza Choudhury to make his first appearance since 29 November after being frozen out by Cifuentes.

Conor Coady impressed on his Charlton debut as a holding midfielder against his former side following his loan move from Wrexham, and Latics boss Nathan Jones will be delighted with his side's response after he accused them of treating last weekend's derby drubbing by Millwall "as a day in the sun".

The game's decisive moment came when Okoli was rightly shown a straight red card for pulling back Leaburn when the Foxes defender was the last man.

And after Harry Clarke had a header controversially disallowed for a foul by Leaburn, Charlton's top scorer Carey gave them the lead in the 36th minute with his seventh goal of the season.

Clarke swung in a cross from the right and Carey lifted the ball over Ricardo Pereira with his first touch before volleying home left-footed with his second.

Leicester were a mess, and in the fourth minute of first-half stoppage time, Dykes steered home Luke Chambers' cross right-footed to register his first Addicks goal since joining from Birmingham just over two weeks ago.

Leicester rallied in the second half, but spurned a glorious chance to haul themselves back into the game on 56 minutes when Ayew hit the post from a penalty after Abdul Fatawu was pulled back by Amari'i Bell.

Thomas Kaminski saved a 20-yard drive from Pereira, and many unhappy Leicester fans left the King Power Stadium before full-time.

Leicester interim boss Andy King told BBC Radio Leicester:

"It's always hard when you get a red card after 15 minutes. A lot of our prep work has gone out of the window then and it's a long time to be defending with 10 men against a big, physical side.

"Then a senior midfielder gets injured, and we don't know how long that will be. So it was a real disruptive first half and we went in 2-0 down, which was massively disappointing.

"I said to them at half-time, 'you've got two ways of playing this. We can either go under and show what we've been labelled as, and be soft and it can go to three, four or five. Or you can come out and show a bit of fight, try and galvanise our season a little bit'.

"We didn't get back in the game, but I thought the response in the second half was good. With the penalty, if that had gone in, we'd really have had the momentum to go on and get back into the game."

Charlton manager Nathan Jones told BBC Radio London:

"That's a massive win, the result was everything today.

"Last week [losing 4-0 to Millwall] was damning, it was really hurtful to the football club. One, because of who we played, two, because of the manner of it, and three, because we care.

"I'm immersed in this football club, so it hurts me because I live and breathe this club, so I wanted to have a reaction today.

"Miles [Leaburn] was clean in and got pulled back, a definite red. That kind of changed the complexion of the game, but I'm really pleased because we wanted to be aggressive against them and put it on them."