I am going to say it!! Yes I am, Nathan Jones......................

fenaddick said:

Leuth said:

The reason I always defend Coventry is because he is, by a distance, our most slandered player right now. No other player of ours gets such utter nonsense thrown at them. No other player of ours can put in that showing vs Ipswich and still get called useless 

Coventry tends to go completely under the radar until you bring him up, then he gets criticised. He is totally fine. Not great, not bad, fine. He rarely makes the error that leads to a goal but he also rarely makes the defensive intervention to stop one. He’s also rarely directly involved in goals. Neither of those things are criticisms really, they just mean he goes unnoticed 

I'll come in to bat for him 

He is firstly a very underrated wind up merchant, watch him any amount of time and whilst he isn’t charging about screaming at people and diving he loves leaving a reciept on people, off the ball trips clipping heels and all manner of stuff that just gets up peoples noses. 

Added to that, I don't know why he isn't taking more set pieces as he delivers a decent far post corner generally hitting his mark and like someone else said, the decent deliveries from the right are often his. He must have been told to keep it fairly simple playing as that 4/pivot deep midfielder but he has a lot more in his locker than he has shown this season. Coady is absolutely the player to stick in there if you want things broken up and disrupted, balls won against the more expensive or fluid teams but I'm not having that he is a better midfielder than Coventry 

My own personal view of a back 5 with wing backs is one of the centre halves has to step into midfield and be the overload which we don't tend to do, Scichenje was trying on Wednesday but I think he was going off script and trying to get involved. 

hoof_it_up_to_benty said:

Sick of watching us get battered under NJ allowing our opponents most of the possession and hoping they don't take their chances. It's awful to watch and not very effective.

Not really clear how we move forward under NJ given that we are one of the worst teams in this division at present. What is going to change?

I don't enjoy watching Charlton at present. The style of football and the results have been shit....

Assuming we stay up with NJ in charge what will be different next season?

I thought we started the season well but have spent months going backwards...

When NJ took charge in Feb 24, if we was told we will be in this situation today we all would have taken it regardless of the style of football. Aresnal fans moan about their style of football. Its not NJ its the current trend of the game

He is working with what he has 

We would easily be in the bottom 2 if we did not approach games with the players we have from a defensive point of view 

The two managers I thought we should go for and to be honest didn't think we would get were Alex Neill and Nathan Jones when we sacked Appleton. We have to weather this season and assuming we sign players that are physically robust and are of a pedigree in the summer we are not a million miles off it. 

82Stu said:

Time to close this I think……..

Until September…

Credit where credit is due... Got it spot on today 

Kept us in L1, got us promotion, then kept us in the Championship without spending a day in the relegation zone.

Well done Nathan!!

(Yes I'd like him to now look to make us less reliant on defence and long-ball).

Job well done. He kept us up where most people had us down. Last few week were rough but all in all happy days. What he has done over the past 2,5 seasons is very impressive and I am very grateful for that.

Yes, we lacked quality but Jones identified that and we had a good January window with Sichenje, Dykes and Coady and Fevrier coming in to strengthen us. 

Hope we can now add some quality and move on from the ultra defensive direct style of play we adopted over the past few months.

First season: 60th 
Second season: 44th 
Third season: (currently) 38th 

That's very strong, sustained progress up the football league pyramid. 

Carter said:

He is working with what he has 

We would easily be in the bottom 2 if we did not approach games with the players we have from a defensive point of view 

The two managers I thought we should go for and to be honest didn't think we would get were Alex Neill and Nathan Jones when we sacked Appleton. We have to weather this season and assuming we sign players that are physically robust and are of a pedigree in the summer we are not a million miles off it. 

Forgetting the amount of players he brought in and shipped out, and players he has also not played.
That said, he's kept us up so can only be classed as a success.
I don't think he'll last next season if he continues with the football given this season.

Anyone with realistic expectations would have been hoping for 50 points or so this season. We’ve done that. It was never going to happen without a number of poor performances, bad runs, questionable line ups and tactics etc, Jones was usually juggling options where there was no ideal choice.

Yes we were up against 3 clubs with point deductions, but we also got promoted alongside two big spenders who had ambitions of consecutive promotions.

The money spent in the summer window wasn’t spent well, but £10-12m or so isn’t a lot at this level, especially when spread around so many players.

There wasn’t a way around that, we needed the increase in depth - a year ago we got through the playoffs despite very limited benches, including two now retired strikers in Aneke and Hylton, and pre-Colchester Mbick.

Playing more open attacking football wasn’t an option with this squad, but games like today show we can find a better balance and Jones deserves the chance to try to get us there.

We’ll still need several signings, but hopefully move closer to focusing on quality over quantity with a stronger base than we had a year ago. There’s more to come from our academy players too, I still expect players such as Fullah to step up to this level in time.

It took longer than we’d like but one good thing is we’ve secured our Championship status at the end April. Last year we didn’t know what division we’d be in until late May. That can only help our recruitment plans.

Scoham said:

Anyone with realistic expectations would have been hoping for 50 points or so this season. We’ve done that. It was never going to happen without a number of poor performances, bad runs, questionable line ups and tactics etc, Jones was usually juggling options where there was no ideal choice.

Yes we were up against 3 clubs with point deductions, but we also got promoted alongside two big spenders who had ambitions of consecutive promotions.

The money spent in the summer window wasn’t spent well, but £10-12m or so isn’t a lot at this level, especially when spread around so many players.

There wasn’t a way around that, we needed the increase in depth - a year ago we got through the playoffs despite very limited benches, including two now retired strikers in Aneke and Hylton, and pre-Colchester Mbick.

Playing more open attacking football wasn’t an option with this squad, but games like today show we can find a better balance and Jones deserves the chance to try to get us there.

We’ll still need several signings, but hopefully move closer to focusing on quality over quantity with a stronger base than we had a year ago. There’s more to come from our academy players too, I still expect players such as Fullah to step up to this level in time.

It took longer than we’d like but one good thing is we’ve secured our Championship status at the end April. Last year we didn’t know what division we’d be in until late May. That can only help our recruitment plans.

Take those away and we'd still be safe with a game to go.

The margins are fine in this league. 3 more wins would have us in the top 10.

Year on year improvement is how to do it. Just look at our neighbours.

Even Hull finished last season staying up on the final game.

Jones deserves the summer to build again. 

Chizz said:

First season: 60th 
Second season: 44th 
Third season: (currently) 38th 

That's very strong, sustained progress up the football league pyramid. 

Never thought of it in this way, kind of tells us all we need to know in a very simple way, hopefully this trend continues.