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

elbiglad said:

NabySarr said:

paulsturgess said:

NabySarr said:

paulsturgess said:

NabySarr said:

paulsturgess said:

fenaddick said:

paulsturgess said:

NabySarr said:

FirenzeAddick said:

SouthLincsAddick said:

king addick said:

Braziliance said:

I wouldn't mind him leaving as I think his football is terrible most of the time. 

The issue is, we can't attract any decent coaches/managers cause our ownership don't have the funds for a truly ambitious manager. 

Come to the realisation that we need Nathan Jones as much as he needs us for now. Ffs.

Minus the tonking they just took, no one heard of Vitor Matos when he took over at Swansea and he has done a pretty decent job. Yes they have more money but still competing against the leagues big hitters. 

At the moment we are being put to shame by Lincoln! 

This is the reality our supporters struggle to accept, as it offers little hope for the future. Swansea is an established Championship club and the sole team in a major city. Their revenue, and thus their player budget, far exceeds ours. Consequently, a relatively unknown manager might buy their way to competitiveness. Supporters criticise our recruitment, yet I would bet only a few signings over the past two years were genuine first choices, the remainder were scraps and leftovers. We are blaming the wrong person, please name a manager who would perform better with our available funds.

I don't disagree with any of that. However, this idea that Jones is the only answer just feels so unambitious.

He is a defensive coach (surrounded by defensive coaches) with an abrasive personality - when he is full of energy and has his 'edge' he builds a very competitive and physical side, however he has lost his edge and you can see that in his interviews and post match comments. I don't blame him at all for that, but without that energy it takes away what makes him a great manager a this level.

A new coach with a fresh pair of eyes and renewed energy could come in, look at the players available, see a shape and structure that could benefit them and start to build.

Just because Jones isn't able to do that, doesn't mean that no coach out there is able to do so.

There are managers out there like Ryan Lowe, Liam Manning, Richie Wellens, Dean Brennan even Johnnie Jackson who would all be in the conversation around whether they could get this group going.

What shape and structure would that be? We don’t have a right winger or right wing back so that pretty much rules out every shape or structure from working 

This sort of comment is so ridiculously passive aggressive.

suggestion of a perfectly reasonable possibility that a theoretical new manager could conceivably have a view on a new / alternative system and then the person making that perfectly logical suggestion is supposed to pre empt for Charlton life what ideas this theoretical new manager who’s yet to be appointed or see the squad might have in their mind

macnamara is a RWB, and for what it’s worth managers often come up with new systems / positions / styles. Radostin kishishev was signed as a right back and curbs converted him into an effective premier league DMC. Did any ITK charlton lifers tip curbs off about that? Perhaps somebody even suggested before we’d signed him that we should sign a right back and try and play them in centre mid 

One of my biggest criticisms of Jones is he appears to be incredibly tactically inflexible. He is quite backward in only really seeming to be able to come up with a system drill the squad to the nth degree how to play that and then that’s it. Modern football is much more fluid than that. 

I don't hugely disagree but these comments from Clement on Cawley's (free) substack post this morning directly contradict that and highlight how his changes forced Norwich to change. The issue comes after that, we didn't adapt to whatever Norwich changed.

“We didn’t start the game well. Charlton pressed in a different way than they had been doing for weeks. So the team had difficulty to recognise that.

“It is a big working point for us to get experience on those things and speak on the pitch about what the solutions are. It took 15-20 minutes to get in contact with them. After, when they understood, we started to play our football."

People (in general, not you specifically Paul) often talk about NJ being stubborn or not changing but I just don't think that's the case. I think he changes plenty but gets the same results. I sometimes think he actually changes too much and that throws off the players. We haven't stuck with one formation in a match for weeks and weeks now, it must be so confusing for the players on the pitch.

I think you're clutching at straws there. Saying somebody is incredibly tactically inflexible does not mean they never make a single change; the fact we started one match with a slightly higher pressing system is not evidence of a tactically flexible manager.

We have started many matches well this season but then it's fallen apart and Jones rarely seems able to alter the tide / wrestle control of a match back. Last season we pretty much exclusively, I think, played the 532 and I think never managed to come from behind to win, and again, I can't really think of a match where we were on the backfoot and managed to wrestle control of the game, something which happens frequently to us.

I just don't think it's even a discussion point that he is very rigid tactically.

But we did this all the time in league 1. Lots of changes he made that forced late winners for us 

It’s a lot harder to do that when your players and your subs are worse than your opponents, which is the case for Jones nearly every game. In league 1 when he had a better squad for the level we did these things, now we’re in the championship with a poor squad we don’t do them 

You say the manager is incapable of it, but we did it plenty in league 1. I'd say our squad is incapable of doing it. Norwich bring on Kenny McLean when they want more control in midfield. We bring on a teenager from the academy

Jones doesn't need to become more flexible imo. In all of our best periods under him we've had pretty much the same starting 11 every game, and the same subs coming on every game depending on game state. At the moment he is trying to find the right combination so that he can stick to it, we've seen him try that before and land on something. He desperately needs to land on something soon that works, and stick with it

I don't think we did do it even in L1. In league 1 on our promotion surge it was based on a very well drilled side that hardly conceded and we got through match after match in that way grafting our way through, other than the 2 x corner smash and grab at Orient, I don't think we made any major tactical switches to transform a game or to approach different opponents in particularly different ways. 

Posh away in the promotion season got ahead of us and we didn't have a clue how to come back into it.

Conversely there have been several occasions where even other Championship sides including weaker ones have been able to out think us / or change patterns of games against us and we/Jones are left looking confused and at a loss what to do. 

I agree with the concerns about who better we will get in; but I do not think Jones' is the level we ideally need either. If we persist with him, frankly I think we need to just go back to full basics, shut up shop, get the defence well drilled and try and burgle our way to enough points. I wouldn't back it, and I don't think it's sustainable; but I think that is the only way of managing / coaching that Jones' is actually capable of. 

If you don't think we regularly changed things up to win a game in league 1 then I'm not sure what you were watching. It doesn't have to be a comeback win for that to have happened. So many games we turned from draws into wins by making the right tweaks and subs to win the game with a late goal.

If you still don't believe it then here are the stats. In our league 1 promotion season, Jones was joint first in the league for goals from subs, and outright first for goals+assists from subs. Last season in the championship, Jones was the second best manager in the league in terms of goals from substitutes. And that's with us being a team that scored less goals than most so I'd imagine the share of our goals scored by subs was probably the highest in the league. To say that he isn't able to make the right changes to change a game is just bollocks

To say that Jones is an adept tactician or tactically flexible manager is just bollocks 

you sound like Jones with his chip on his shoulder arguing for the sake of it

Every single team makes subs every single match of football and have done for about 25 years

Swapping Alex Gilbert for Luke berry for some fresh legs is not the same as a major tactical switch to change the pattern of a game 

Jones plays and continues to play to a very rigid system style and tactics Vs I would say the majority of managers certainly in the top 2 leagues 

The evidence is a very consistent and quite longstanding pattern of games where we’ve lost control of matches we had control of and Jones unable to adjust it, and often doesn’t even make any changes or until very late on

Alex Gilbert for Luke Berry is a poor example here as they are completely different players so swapping one for the other is quite a change to how you are playing. A lot of the time it was Aneke coming on for Godden, or coming on for Small and moving TC to wing back. Again the formation stays the same but the way you are playing it is totally different. 

Your claim that Jones is unable to make a major tactical switch to approach a different opponent is completely wrong too, one our best wins of his time here was him doing exactly that to Birmingham in league 1 and it was widely praised as a masterclass in tactics from a manager with only a few days to prepare such a plan 

Not The Top 20 Pod on X: "An impressive managerial performance from Nathan Jones at the weekend. His Charlton side beat Birmingham 1-0 💪 🆕 Full pod: https://t.co/Dm82NNSDqZ #CAFC https://t.co/czZhx93Bv4" / X here is a neutral making the same point

Every manager has principles of play that are central to however they set a team up. Jones has these and they are very consistent like with nearly every other manager in the game these won't change.To say he plays to a rigid system and tactics is wrong though. Even just in his time with us we have had 3 different formations being our main formation. And even within that there has been variety within those formations, his 3-5-2 when he started vs our promotion in league 1 vs the end of last season were all the same system but played very differently. He's more flexible than a lot of managers we have had previously that we only saw one formation and style from ever. 

If you look at the 2 promotions he's won in his career. One was with Luton where they had the highest possession in the league and scored the most goals. One was with us which was a much more direct style and built on clean sheets. Surely a manager capable of pulling both of those off isn't inflexible? 

We won promotion with a hybrid 3-5-2/4-2-3-1 setup. To suggest Jones isn't an adept tactician after pulling off a promotion with a hybrid formation is just wrong. It was a clever system that got the best out of the players he had available. He is one of the best out of possession tacticians in the football league in terms of setting up a team to press high, knowing when to trigger etc. And also defensive shape, as we've seen his teams are usually able to absorb pressure and be difficult to break down. You might ignore them because they are defensive but that's still tactics

There are plenty of valid reasons to criticise Jones and want him sacked. But for me throwing out that he's tactically inept is a lazy criticism up there with "he's lost the dressing room" that you hear from fans when things are going badly

I agree with pretty much all of this, and am on your side in the debate.

However, it seems that whichever formation we play this year it’s not working. The principles that you go on to reference appear to have been lost. There are explanations: the squad isn’t very good and we under invested. But this doesn’t look like a Nathan Jones team any more. 

That is a coaching issue. Jones keeps telling us the players are not carrying out instructions or performing in the way they are told. Why is that? Why did we fail to respond to Norwich’s adjustments on Saturday? Why didn’t we attack Watford from the off?

To me the debate isn’t about how adaptable Jones is, it’s about whether he’s still able to get his message across to this squad. In his time with us Jones has had a core group of players that support him; hence why so many Luton disciples follow him around. Who is that in this current squad? Did we properly replace Doc as a leader? Jones has taken that role and his performances have dropped, though this may be due to the formation. 

I’m not saying he’s ’lost the dressing room’, but I do worry that this squad isn’t responding to him anymore. I don’t like the sound of any potential replacement and am still a believer in Jones, but I think there are deeper issues than whether he is adaptable. 

This was always the worry for many on here (including you NabySarr) when the signings indicated we wanted to ‘evolve’ to play four at the back. We didn’t buy well enough for it to work and are now stuck in limbo, without the players to play expansively and seemingly without the structure and solidity we once had. Chopping and changing between formations; the worst of both worlds. 

We can all accept poor performances if the results are there. We can accept poor results if we play well. At the moment we have nothing to cheer for. 

paulsturgess said:

NabySarr said:

paulsturgess said:

NabySarr said:

paulsturgess said:

NabySarr said:

paulsturgess said:

fenaddick said:

paulsturgess said:

NabySarr said:

FirenzeAddick said:

SouthLincsAddick said:

king addick said:

Braziliance said:

I wouldn't mind him leaving as I think his football is terrible most of the time. 

The issue is, we can't attract any decent coaches/managers cause our ownership don't have the funds for a truly ambitious manager. 

Come to the realisation that we need Nathan Jones as much as he needs us for now. Ffs.

Minus the tonking they just took, no one heard of Vitor Matos when he took over at Swansea and he has done a pretty decent job. Yes they have more money but still competing against the leagues big hitters. 

At the moment we are being put to shame by Lincoln! 

This is the reality our supporters struggle to accept, as it offers little hope for the future. Swansea is an established Championship club and the sole team in a major city. Their revenue, and thus their player budget, far exceeds ours. Consequently, a relatively unknown manager might buy their way to competitiveness. Supporters criticise our recruitment, yet I would bet only a few signings over the past two years were genuine first choices, the remainder were scraps and leftovers. We are blaming the wrong person, please name a manager who would perform better with our available funds.

I don't disagree with any of that. However, this idea that Jones is the only answer just feels so unambitious.

He is a defensive coach (surrounded by defensive coaches) with an abrasive personality - when he is full of energy and has his 'edge' he builds a very competitive and physical side, however he has lost his edge and you can see that in his interviews and post match comments. I don't blame him at all for that, but without that energy it takes away what makes him a great manager a this level.

A new coach with a fresh pair of eyes and renewed energy could come in, look at the players available, see a shape and structure that could benefit them and start to build.

Just because Jones isn't able to do that, doesn't mean that no coach out there is able to do so.

There are managers out there like Ryan Lowe, Liam Manning, Richie Wellens, Dean Brennan even Johnnie Jackson who would all be in the conversation around whether they could get this group going.

What shape and structure would that be? We don’t have a right winger or right wing back so that pretty much rules out every shape or structure from working 

This sort of comment is so ridiculously passive aggressive.

suggestion of a perfectly reasonable possibility that a theoretical new manager could conceivably have a view on a new / alternative system and then the person making that perfectly logical suggestion is supposed to pre empt for Charlton life what ideas this theoretical new manager who’s yet to be appointed or see the squad might have in their mind

macnamara is a RWB, and for what it’s worth managers often come up with new systems / positions / styles. Radostin kishishev was signed as a right back and curbs converted him into an effective premier league DMC. Did any ITK charlton lifers tip curbs off about that? Perhaps somebody even suggested before we’d signed him that we should sign a right back and try and play them in centre mid 

One of my biggest criticisms of Jones is he appears to be incredibly tactically inflexible. He is quite backward in only really seeming to be able to come up with a system drill the squad to the nth degree how to play that and then that’s it. Modern football is much more fluid than that. 

I don't hugely disagree but these comments from Clement on Cawley's (free) substack post this morning directly contradict that and highlight how his changes forced Norwich to change. The issue comes after that, we didn't adapt to whatever Norwich changed.

“We didn’t start the game well. Charlton pressed in a different way than they had been doing for weeks. So the team had difficulty to recognise that.

“It is a big working point for us to get experience on those things and speak on the pitch about what the solutions are. It took 15-20 minutes to get in contact with them. After, when they understood, we started to play our football."

People (in general, not you specifically Paul) often talk about NJ being stubborn or not changing but I just don't think that's the case. I think he changes plenty but gets the same results. I sometimes think he actually changes too much and that throws off the players. We haven't stuck with one formation in a match for weeks and weeks now, it must be so confusing for the players on the pitch.

I think you're clutching at straws there. Saying somebody is incredibly tactically inflexible does not mean they never make a single change; the fact we started one match with a slightly higher pressing system is not evidence of a tactically flexible manager.

We have started many matches well this season but then it's fallen apart and Jones rarely seems able to alter the tide / wrestle control of a match back. Last season we pretty much exclusively, I think, played the 532 and I think never managed to come from behind to win, and again, I can't really think of a match where we were on the backfoot and managed to wrestle control of the game, something which happens frequently to us.

I just don't think it's even a discussion point that he is very rigid tactically.

But we did this all the time in league 1. Lots of changes he made that forced late winners for us 

It’s a lot harder to do that when your players and your subs are worse than your opponents, which is the case for Jones nearly every game. In league 1 when he had a better squad for the level we did these things, now we’re in the championship with a poor squad we don’t do them 

You say the manager is incapable of it, but we did it plenty in league 1. I'd say our squad is incapable of doing it. Norwich bring on Kenny McLean when they want more control in midfield. We bring on a teenager from the academy

Jones doesn't need to become more flexible imo. In all of our best periods under him we've had pretty much the same starting 11 every game, and the same subs coming on every game depending on game state. At the moment he is trying to find the right combination so that he can stick to it, we've seen him try that before and land on something. He desperately needs to land on something soon that works, and stick with it

I don't think we did do it even in L1. In league 1 on our promotion surge it was based on a very well drilled side that hardly conceded and we got through match after match in that way grafting our way through, other than the 2 x corner smash and grab at Orient, I don't think we made any major tactical switches to transform a game or to approach different opponents in particularly different ways. 

Posh away in the promotion season got ahead of us and we didn't have a clue how to come back into it.

Conversely there have been several occasions where even other Championship sides including weaker ones have been able to out think us / or change patterns of games against us and we/Jones are left looking confused and at a loss what to do. 

I agree with the concerns about who better we will get in; but I do not think Jones' is the level we ideally need either. If we persist with him, frankly I think we need to just go back to full basics, shut up shop, get the defence well drilled and try and burgle our way to enough points. I wouldn't back it, and I don't think it's sustainable; but I think that is the only way of managing / coaching that Jones' is actually capable of. 

If you don't think we regularly changed things up to win a game in league 1 then I'm not sure what you were watching. It doesn't have to be a comeback win for that to have happened. So many games we turned from draws into wins by making the right tweaks and subs to win the game with a late goal.

If you still don't believe it then here are the stats. In our league 1 promotion season, Jones was joint first in the league for goals from subs, and outright first for goals+assists from subs. Last season in the championship, Jones was the second best manager in the league in terms of goals from substitutes. And that's with us being a team that scored less goals than most so I'd imagine the share of our goals scored by subs was probably the highest in the league. To say that he isn't able to make the right changes to change a game is just bollocks

To say that Jones is an adept tactician or tactically flexible manager is just bollocks 

you sound like Jones with his chip on his shoulder arguing for the sake of it

Every single team makes subs every single match of football and have done for about 25 years

Swapping Alex Gilbert for Luke berry for some fresh legs is not the same as a major tactical switch to change the pattern of a game 

Jones plays and continues to play to a very rigid system style and tactics Vs I would say the majority of managers certainly in the top 2 leagues 

The evidence is a very consistent and quite longstanding pattern of games where we’ve lost control of matches we had control of and Jones unable to adjust it, and often doesn’t even make any changes or until very late on

Alex Gilbert for Luke Berry is a poor example here as they are completely different players so swapping one for the other is quite a change to how you are playing. A lot of the time it was Aneke coming on for Godden, or coming on for Small and moving TC to wing back. Again the formation stays the same but the way you are playing it is totally different. 

Your claim that Jones is unable to make a major tactical switch to approach a different opponent is completely wrong too, one our best wins of his time here was him doing exactly that to Birmingham in league 1 and it was widely praised as a masterclass in tactics from a manager with only a few days to prepare such a plan 

Not The Top 20 Pod on X: "An impressive managerial performance from Nathan Jones at the weekend. His Charlton side beat Birmingham 1-0 💪 🆕 Full pod: https://t.co/Dm82NNSDqZ #CAFC https://t.co/czZhx93Bv4" / X here is a neutral making the same point

Every manager has principles of play that are central to however they set a team up. Jones has these and they are very consistent like with nearly every other manager in the game these won't change.To say he plays to a rigid system and tactics is wrong though. Even just in his time with us we have had 3 different formations being our main formation. And even within that there has been variety within those formations, his 3-5-2 when he started vs our promotion in league 1 vs the end of last season were all the same system but played very differently. He's more flexible than a lot of managers we have had previously that we only saw one formation and style from ever. 

If you look at the 2 promotions he's won in his career. One was with Luton where they had the highest possession in the league and scored the most goals. One was with us which was a much more direct style and built on clean sheets. Surely a manager capable of pulling both of those off isn't inflexible? 

We won promotion with a hybrid 3-5-2/4-2-3-1 setup. To suggest Jones isn't an adept tactician after pulling off a promotion with a hybrid formation is just wrong. It was a clever system that got the best out of the players he had available. He is one of the best out of possession tacticians in the football league in terms of setting up a team to press high, knowing when to trigger etc. And also defensive shape, as we've seen his teams are usually able to absorb pressure and be difficult to break down. You might ignore them because they are defensive but that's still tactics

There are plenty of valid reasons to criticise Jones and want him sacked. But for me throwing out that he's tactically inept is a lazy criticism up there with "he's lost the dressing room" that you hear from fans when things are going badly

I get the message Nathan, you managed a team that beat Man City so how could you not be a great tactician and stuff 

ive watched practically every game he’s managed and however many words formations or tactical variations you translate it into it’s the same unsightly disjointed and laboured huff and puff 

RonnieMoore said:

DennisBooth said:

Some of Jones signings that haven’t worked.

Kaminski, Burke, Bindon, Knibbs, Ouma, Rankin-Costello, Skipp, Grant, Alli, Apter, Ahadme.

There are a number more. Not a great record is it?

Kaminski think he was a major reason we stayed up, the defence trusted him that why we kept 11 clean sheets .. part of the problem now is the defence ding gave sane trust on AO who looks very shaky .. Knibbs stats are better then most that start regarding assists and goals yet he not been given a chance since day one .. why pick Carey over him yesterday play him give him
10/12 games starting .. same with Ali not seen him apart from 10 mins here and there when we are behind start him give him a run in the side ..Skipp proved yesterday we need him in the team no one made a challenge in our midfield and Coventry needed help .. Apter did nothing wrong , deserved more starts especially with his Campbell played as the season went on .. think this season should have stayed on the right wing and again given a run .. stop be loyal to players that are not doing it and use your squad 

Gravesend_Addick said:

Fuck it, give it to Chris Powell.  We'll still go down, but at least I get to see that wonderful man every week

RonnieMoore said:

The names mentioned Parker , Bowyer , Powell, Dyche, Jackson …. Just shows why Jones needs to stay and be given time .. 

jams said:

I don't even really think it's Nathan's fault but if we can't get a win before the international break all conventional wisdom would suggest we will have a new manager. 

Again, It's not his fault but I do wonder how long the same messages can be effective in squeezing every last drop out of below average players for the level. 

I don't think changing is likely to have a positive medium - long term outcome but I also don't see the owners sitting by and let relegation happen if there is no change in form.