A manager is only as good as the players he has and these players aren't good enough. No creative players.
Why are we bringing in unknowns from Jamaica ?
Who knows what the dynamic is, has Scott prevented us from being loaded up with even more past it Luton players or has NJ had to compromise, like sign an ex Luton player he wants if he takes the suspect Ahadme and raw Dixon. I cannot believe Andy Scott has nothing to do with recruitment anymore. Is there a power struggle going on? Is the departure of Hart a coincidence? What's evident is something is not right.
Talking of ghosts of moments past, I am still haunted by @bobmunro's cryptic comment about Nathan Jones. Signing so many ex Luton players and not being able to accommodate May worries me, as does the seeming ghosting of Taylor and perhaps now Small. Sprinkle a bit of Edun on that too. Is Jones a coach who can make things better (he has done with TC) or somebody who majors in deploying already known quantities? I felt a bit unsettled when he signed and played Lua Lua last season, couldn't work that one out at all.
What was the comment?
It was cryptic, I can't remember the exact words, but it hinted at what Jones was like at Stoke.
Not the old proverb - "If it looks like shit, and smells like shit, it's shit"?
Have some degree of sympathy with him. Previously our more successful teams (Powells aside) have been built on keeping hold of our better players and adding 1 or 2 to improve us each season. We let let arguably our best 2 go and started from scratch.
This is not without criticism because when Jones come in we rushed teams into mistakes with a press that seems to deserted ourselves. The constant tinkering doesn't help.
Jones dropped May last season & didn’t want him.
Jones knew that Dobson terminated his Hungarian contract in Aug but didn’t make a move to sign him.
Why do you feel sorry for him? He thought he knew better & could bring in better replacements but f&cked things up spectacularly.
Dobson was never coming back once the contract with the Hungarian mob was cancelled Wrexham would have offered a far better package and Dobson had ill feeling with the non playing side.
May I believe the money was too good for the club to turn down coupled with the fact he wanted to go. Yes he wasn't Jones first choice and with the performances at the end of last season there was belief that there was a style in place that others would suit the system better.
The underlining factor is our signings don't seem to have improved us and players that were part of the run at the end last season have shown little improvement or similar levels of ability.
Small, Kanu, Anderson IMO are not at the levels of last season. Is this because as a club we are relying too much on youth when form can be erratic?
GAS, Berry, Mitchell and Godden were deemed good signings and yet it hasn't quite clicked yet. There was a time when signings was given settling time at a new club unfortunately in todays game your last performance is all anything is based on.
I'm not enjoying the football by any stretch but effectively we are starting again which we cannot keep doing.
A manager is only as good as the players he has and these players aren't good enough. No creative players.
Why are we bringing in unknowns from Jamaica ?
Dont see what the point is of bringing up Dixon, nothing wrong with thinking about players for the future as well as the present - By not thinking about players with potential has meant we've missed out on some decent options at this level in recent seasons.
I still don’t understand the Alfie May episode. But, what difference would he have made to a team that isn’t creating chances. He might create a chance out of nothing which might have turned a loss into a draw but the bigger issue here is the lack of chances being created, awful set pieces and park football standard crossing
What strikes me is how he excelled in recruitment at Luton and how that made the real difference. It’s clear, now we’ve seen our new players, he’s not been as successful this summer. I’m left wondering why this is.
Has he recruited too many of his old players? One of the negatives in the post above is how loyal he was to his ‘favourites’ even though they weren’t performing. At Luton he started from scratch, so there were no favourites to bring in. He was forced to go out and find the talent, and coming from an academy coaching/assistant coach position he had recent experience of watching the league’s best young talent
Also, how much autonomy does he have with recruitment? From a few throw away comments already, he has hinted he has had to fight for certain players. That makes me worry about possible friction between him and Andy Scott. I mean what does Scott actually do, I’m sure he’s on decent money, I can’t imagine he’s sat there waiting for Jones to tell him who to buy. Some of the recruitment must be his players and as we know his formula of ‘buying from the division above guarantees success’ has rarely worked out, while he’s been keen to dispose of our best league 1 players. I mean who thought Ahadme was a good player. NJ is famous for playing a tall striker up front but who thought he was the future? Even Cambridge fans couldn’t say what he was actually good at.
Also in that post is a recurring theme of Jones’s side playing with passion and intensity. That was evident in the first few games but it has disappeared in the current losing streak. We’ve dropped our Captain, which is worrying, has Jones had one of his ‘burning the table tennis’ meltdowns already?
What I fear from reading the NJ post is we’ve already seen the best of the man, that the single mindedness worked at a club with no expectations, he wasn’t clouded by previous players and the passion worked with young hungry and talented players.
There’s definitely a trend for successful coaches at this level being first time managers, coming through the ranks with an astute knowledge of up and coming players. I’m hoping Jones isn’t already yesterday’s man.
I think the old Luton players thing is a bit of a red herring to be honest, at least on the pitch. The Hylton signing is the weird one, though I doubt we'll ever see him on the pitch apart from if we need bodies for a banter cup game, but I don't think the other ex-Luton players are where my main concerns lie. Potts is a decent pickup who has had injuries but has 90 odd Championship appearances and has been brought in as short term cover. Berry is similar except he got Premier League games and goals, and Allan Campbell felt like a coup we only could have got with the Jones connection. I don't look at any of those as players and think they're bizarre signings. He's definitely not been too loyal to them either, Berry is the only one who has played consistently so far and even he gets rotated out a lot.
The only thing with the Luton players is we were doing ok, and then we brought in more and more players where Jones was at pains to say they were there to be an example of professionalism to others. Did we already have a problem with attitude that he was trying to address, or did some players take badly to repeatedly being told they needed life chaperones to be brought in and down tools a bit? We haven't heard anything either way but it did seem slightly odd that Potts AND Hylton were talked about glowingly as model pros and then vaguely mentioned to also be footballers when Jones talked about them. The effort on pitch has dipped since then
What strikes me is how he excelled in recruitment at Luton and how that made the real difference. It’s clear, now we’ve seen our new players, he’s not been as successful this summer. I’m left wondering why this is.
Has he recruited too many of his old players? One of the negatives in the post above is how loyal he was to his ‘favourites’ even though they weren’t performing. At Luton he started from scratch, so there were no favourites to bring in. He was forced to go out and find the talent, and coming from an academy coaching/assistant coach position he had recent experience of watching the league’s best young talent
Also, how much autonomy does he have with recruitment? From a few throw away comments already, he has hinted he has had to fight for certain players. That makes me worry about possible friction between him and Andy Scott. I mean what does Scott actually do, I’m sure he’s on decent money, I can’t imagine he’s sat there waiting for Jones to tell him who to buy. Some of the recruitment must be his players and as we know his formula of ‘buying from the division above guarantees success’ has rarely worked out, while he’s been keen to dispose of our best league 1 players. I mean who thought Ahadme was a good player. NJ is famous for playing a tall striker up front but who thought he was the future? Even Cambridge fans couldn’t say what he was actually good at.
Also in that post is a recurring theme of Jones’s side playing with passion and intensity. That was evident in the first few games but it has disappeared in the current losing streak. We’ve dropped our Captain, which is worrying, has Jones had one of his ‘burning the table tennis’ meltdowns already?
What I fear from reading the NJ post is we’ve already seen the best of the man, that the single mindedness worked at a club with no expectations, he wasn’t clouded by previous players and the passion worked with young hungry and talented players.
There’s definitely a trend for successful coaches at this level being first time managers, coming through the ranks with an astute knowledge of up and coming players. I’m hoping Jones isn’t already yesterday’s man.
I think the old Luton players thing is a bit of a red herring to be honest, at least on the pitch. The Hylton signing is the weird one, though I doubt we'll ever see him on the pitch apart from if we need bodies for a banter cup game, but I don't think the other ex-Luton players are where my main concerns lie. Potts is a decent pickup who has had injuries but has 90 odd Championship appearances and has been brought in as short term cover. Berry is similar except he got Premier League games and goals, and Allan Campbell felt like a coup we only could have got with the Jones connection. I don't look at any of those as players and think they're bizarre signings. He's definitely not been too loyal to them either, Berry is the only one who has played consistently so far and even he gets rotated out a lot.
The only thing with the Luton players is we were doing ok, and then we brought in more and more players where Jones was at pains to say they were there to be an example of professionalism to others. Did we already have a problem with attitude that he was trying to address, or did some players take badly to repeatedly being told they needed life chaperones to be brought in and down tools a bit? We haven't heard anything either way but it did seem slightly odd that Potts AND Hylton were talked about glowingly as model pros and then vaguely mentioned to also be footballers when Jones talked about them. The effort on pitch has dipped since then
The other thing with Hylton and Potts is we were told they were going to sign, then there was a four or five week gap, as if Jones was battling someone at the club to get his own way. It does feel as there’s something wrong at the club right now. This dramatic loss of form must be down to something serious.
Which would have got you 10th place last season. I am comfortable with my pre-season prediction that we would end up outside the playoffs around mid table.
His record during that time: W9 D13 L6 // GF34 GA31 // PTS40 PPG1.43
Charlton’s record during the preceding 28 league games: W6 D10 L12 // GF42 GA45 // PTS28 PPG1.00
50% more wins 50% fewer losses 19% fewer goals scored 31% fewer goals conceded 43% more points gained
I think it’s fine to compare with the 28 games that came before him - but that was the form that ultimately got a manager sacked. So to say he’s achieving better than sackable results is pretty faint praise.
So far this season, with a squad constructed seemingly in his image, so far we’ve:
Played 12 Won 5 Drawn 3 Lost 4 Win % 42%
Points per game 1.5 Goals scored 13 Goals conceded 12
It might be better than sackable, but right now it’s not good enough. Let’s hope there’s a significant upturn over the next 28 matches.
His record during that time: W9 D13 L6 // GF34 GA31 // PTS40 PPG1.43
Charlton’s record during the preceding 28 league games: W6 D10 L12 // GF42 GA45 // PTS28 PPG1.00
50% more wins 50% fewer losses 19% fewer goals scored 31% fewer goals conceded 43% more points gained
I think it’s fine to compare with the 28 games that came before him - but that was the form that ultimately got a manager sacked. So to say he’s achieving better than sackable results is pretty faint praise.
So far this season, with a squad constructed seemingly in his image, so far we’ve:
Played 12 Won 5 Drawn 3 Lost 4 Win % 42%
Points per game 1.5 Goals scored 13 Goals conceded 12
It might be better than sackable, but right now it’s not good enough. Let’s hope there’s a significant upturn over the next 28 matches.
It’s a lot better than sackable. We’ve been in decline for nearly 2 decades.
someone needed to come in, steady the ship and rebuild!
jones has had one transfer window. He was never going to turn a team in free fall into the best team in the world in one window.
Callum’s stats show promise. The slide has stopped and we are improving. This was never a one window fix
Comments
May I believe the money was too good for the club to turn down coupled with the fact he wanted to go. Yes he wasn't Jones first choice and with the performances at the end of last season there was belief that there was a style in place that others would suit the system better.
The underlining factor is our signings don't seem to have improved us and players that were part of the run at the end last season have shown little improvement or similar levels of ability.
Small, Kanu, Anderson IMO are not at the levels of last season. Is this because as a club we are relying too much on youth when form can be erratic?
GAS, Berry, Mitchell and Godden were deemed good signings and yet it hasn't quite clicked yet. There was a time when signings was given settling time at a new club unfortunately in todays game your last performance is all anything is based on.
I'm not enjoying the football by any stretch but effectively we are starting again which we cannot keep doing.
The only thing with the Luton players is we were doing ok, and then we brought in more and more players where Jones was at pains to say they were there to be an example of professionalism to others. Did we already have a problem with attitude that he was trying to address, or did some players take badly to repeatedly being told they needed life chaperones to be brought in and down tools a bit? We haven't heard anything either way but it did seem slightly odd that Potts AND Hylton were talked about glowingly as model pros and then vaguely mentioned to also be footballers when Jones talked about them. The effort on pitch has dipped since then
His record during that time: W9 D13 L6 // GF34 GA31 // PTS40 PPG1.43
Charlton’s record during the preceding 28 league games: W6 D10 L12 // GF42 GA45 // PTS28 PPG1.00
50% more wins
50% fewer losses
19% fewer goals scored
31% fewer goals conceded
43% more points gained
So far this season, with a squad constructed seemingly in his image, so far we’ve:
Played 12
Won 5
Drawn 3
Lost 4
Win % 42%
Goals scored 13
Goals conceded 12
It might be better than sackable, but right now it’s not good enough. Let’s hope there’s a significant upturn over the next 28 matches.
someone needed to come in, steady the ship and rebuild!
jones has had one transfer window. He was never going to turn a team in free fall into the best team in the world in one window.
Callum’s stats show promise. The slide has stopped and we are improving. This was never a one window fix
Whatever we think about the football, that’s massive improvement on where we have been the last two seasons.