Where Did It Go wrong This Season?

The players. 

The (old) manager. 

The arrogance that the owners could do it on the cheap again. (Until the correction in late January)

That opening 45 mins against Aberdeen in the friendly was probably the worst defensive showing I have ever seen watching Charlton. Need to stop giving away these stupid cheap goals. 

Win percentages:

- Holden 20% (1/5)
- Appleton 22.7% (5/22)
- Jones 25% (4/16)

Went downhill from HT away at Millwall pre season…

Garrymanilow said:

Holden was the wrong man for the job. He was just for cheering up the players when he came in but didn't set high enough standards in training and we ended up with unfit players who didn't know what they were doing. He was also screwed over in not getting the players he needed in the right areas; having to start with May and Campbell up front because we'd only really planned for May and Leaburn to play was pretty terrible. Jack Payne played at the start, that's how short we were going into the opening day. Holden couldn't do it and then we compounded the errors by bringing in Appleton. To avoid it again we need to spend and we've sort of started to do that. Proper manager, some decent signings in REG, Coventry, Ramsay and Small and from there we need to do it again in all the areas the manager needs to get his team playing the way he wants. Skimping out with our injury record will just lead to more failure.

Hard to say Holden was the wrong man for the job when he didn't have the tools. He had nowhere near the quality of players available to him he needed and was sacked before players were brought in /recovered from injury. 

Appleton was always the wrong appointment though, and he would have taken us down, which I don't think Holden would.

We have a manager capable of getting us competitive, but bottom line how many of these players would get into our last promotion team? Relatively few, frankly. That's the bottom line. 

Started with poor summer window, where we once again didn't have enough depth and the players we did bring in bat May haven't been good enough. I liked Holden and felt maybe it could have been different if he had been backed properly, but I concede he was limited as a manager.

Although we have been poor all season I think it started to go really bad from the Cray Valley mess up. We weren't great before that but we're winning enough home games and May was scoring goals which kept us in mid table and not looking over shoulder too much at relegation. After that we seemed to be completely implode under Appleton.

Some of the Jan signings have been ok, but again we bought in a lot of duds that haven't been good enough. 
 

rikofold said:

Garrymanilow said:

Holden was the wrong man for the job. He was just for cheering up the players when he came in but didn't set high enough standards in training and we ended up with unfit players who didn't know what they were doing. He was also screwed over in not getting the players he needed in the right areas; having to start with May and Campbell up front because we'd only really planned for May and Leaburn to play was pretty terrible. Jack Payne played at the start, that's how short we were going into the opening day. Holden couldn't do it and then we compounded the errors by bringing in Appleton. To avoid it again we need to spend and we've sort of started to do that. Proper manager, some decent signings in REG, Coventry, Ramsay and Small and from there we need to do it again in all the areas the manager needs to get his team playing the way he wants. Skimping out with our injury record will just lead to more failure.

Hard to say Holden was the wrong man for the job when he didn't have the tools. He had nowhere near the quality of players available to him he needed and was sacked before players were brought in /recovered from injury. 

Appleton was always the wrong appointment though, and he would have taken us down, which I don't think Holden would.

We have a manager capable of getting us competitive, but bottom line how many of these players would get into our last promotion team? Relatively few, frankly. That's the bottom line. 

Over the last year we have recruited the worst set of players Charlton have ever had for 100 years. That’s where we went wrong.

Watch Nathan Jones’ post match interview. At the end he says…

‘Trust me, this is a bigger summer than even I anticipated’

The above is basically him saying ‘this squad is even shitter than what I thought when I joined’.

We’ve just finished 16th in a very weak league one & failed to achieve more points than two clubs (Wigan & Reading) that had points deductions. To call this year a massive failure would be an understatement. 

Callumcafc said:

Off_it said:

Callumcafc said:

Win percentages:

- Holden 20% (1/5)
- Appleton 22.7% (5/22)
- Jones 25% (4/16)

What are the defeat percentages?

- Holden 80% (4/5)
- Appleton 36.3% (8/22)
- Jones 12.5% (2/16)

Thanks.

I think that puts things into a bit more perspective.

Chunes said:

The promoted sides keep clean sheets in around 40-50% of their games. Our record is 25% last season and 11% for this season. 

I asked at the beginning of this season where the improvement needed was to come from. We only signed Lloyd Jones, was he supposed to do it by himself? We tried to make up for it in January but even REG and Gillesphey haven't been picked at times.

So once again we need another massive improvement and it surely has to come from several new additions. This is not a 'minor tweak' situation.

Nail on head.

We need to be improving the defence and the keeper.  We shouldn't be looking to keep Hector and Thomas because they might be able to do a bit of a job, we need to improve drastically in that area with at least two quality additions.

Whoever is left can be the backup, REG, Jones etc.

Appleton. Should have been sacked after being matched toe to toe by a pub team on national television

It was always going to be a struggle to hit where we wanted with the squad we had but I believe it has to be recruitment, we got a couple players we all thought were going to play big parts who were either injury prone (Camara) or not interested.

I think we jumped the gun when we sacked Holden as he was dealing with an incredibly injury hit team that said you pay for results however when we did sack him we should of done better than Appleton.

As I type this I expected to list a few reasons but it now dawns on me the singular biggest reasons was purely recruitment in both players and managers. As for holden perhaps he would of turnt it around, perhaps not but I would say I dont believe we were going up with him and if getting rid of him wa spart of fates plan to get Jones here I am happy to endure the Appleton months. 

Off_it said:

Callumcafc said:

Off_it said:

Callumcafc said:

Win percentages:

- Holden 20% (1/5)
- Appleton 22.7% (5/22)
- Jones 25% (4/16)

What are the defeat percentages?

- Holden 80% (4/5)
- Appleton 36.3% (8/22)
- Jones 12.5% (2/16)

Thanks.

I think that puts things into a bit more perspective.

It does, and when these stats are used to evaluate managers, they should be presented complete over their managerial careers, not cherry picked to show how bad managers were at clubs where they failed, especially when those spells amount to a relatively small part of their careers.

That was done on here, listing Appleton's stats at clubs where he failed miserably, including with us now, but ignoring Oxford and Lincoln where he managed for the larger part of his career. I haven't checked, but if you were to take Luton's stats out of Jones's, his record at clubs where he's failed wouldn't look quite as impressive.

As you say, you need the full picture to make comparisons. 

I haven't seen enough under Jones to believe we'd have been challenging for the play offs using the current squad at his disposal this season, but I'm confident he knows what needs changing to make us competitive next.

Sacking Holden so early leaving us going into the summer deadline with Andy Scott signing players for a manager he hadn't even got around to appointing 

the players he signed not being good enough

the manager he appointed being an awful appointment, both on paper and in reality 

signing players in January requested by said awful manager only to sack him within weeks or even days of the signings 

inability to use the loan market properly, every single loan this season was ineffective at best, 

Fiorini - more minutes for the U21 than first team
Chem Campbell - dumped out in January, no real impact
Tedic - bundled a couple of goals in but otherwise awful
Ladapo - one moment of quality but otherwise hugely underwhelming, the best thing about his loan is that it's only a loan and he's not ours to keep
Bakinson - best of a bad bunch but didn't do much 
Camara - couldn't stay fit 
Abankwah - will be excellent for a guess who quiz somewhere down the line of our ex players
Watson - good start but couldn't get a run of games under a few different managers


back the manager in the market and pay the money to get his players in early rather than drag things out and be prepared to take hits to get the unwanted players off the books this year and we will be better off before a ball is even kicked 

Squad under prepared lacking in fight and under an under par manager, who then was replaced with an absolute bellend in raincoat.