Unless there is a big improvement in performances and results the writing is on the wall. People just won’t pay money to watch the dross being dished up ! Jones can try and bullshit all he likes but fans decide if they are getting value for money and so far this season they aren’t
I would never use the term 'value for money' as it seems to indicate buying a product, and nobody with any sense would buy our product. Football supporters are blinded by the emotional attachment (for most of us lifelong) and all I want is pride in MY football club. I have that with CACT, The Upbeats and the general community feel, I just want it on the pitch too.
Sadly I feel like I’ve steadily lost those things over the last five years or so Bob. There doesn’t feel like there’s much identity left in the club nowadays. All stems from on pitch decline, but it’s really not the club it used to be imo. Saddens me to say it
A constant lack of success over such a prolonged period is likely to have that effect on anyone. We, as a club, are very good at some things, such as all the community stuff and even the women's team. Personally, I'd prefer it to be the other way around. To me, the primary focus of CAFC should be on the mens football team, and I'd like to see all efforts, and all resources, dedicated to getting that right first, before all the other stuff.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Is this a serious question?
But what you actually said was it's "more to do with the level of player we can afford". We bought Ahadme, who cost more than pretty much any club in the division apart from Birmingham spent on a single player in the summer. It's pretty clear that money could've been better spent, which is surely therefore a recruitment problem?
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
I don't believe the majority of stuff that comes out of Methvens mouth.
No but I think we can be confident our budget is closer to the top 6 than the bottom 4, yet the team look more like the latter.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
I don't believe the majority of stuff that comes out of Methvens mouth.
No but I think we can be confident our budget is closer to the top 6 than the bottom 4, yet the team look more like the latter.
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
My fear about NJ losing the dressing room is absolutely conjecture - I'm not in any way ITK and couldn't be factual. This is based around my impression around the body language/form of certain players (particularly some of our attacking players e.g. Leaburn/Godden and when Small was substituted early a month or two ago). There was also the random dropping of AMitchell for the Reading game. It's a feeling I have after some of the losses, and my perception on how some of those players might want to play.
I try and put myself in the place of the players, and think how they might be feeling. They would have absolutely expected a better league position than where we are, and yet, here we are. The constant pressing of players has certainly been nowhere near what was expected. I don't feel like all of the players are buying in to the tactics and strategy that NJ sets us up for. I think there will be niggles at the belief in whether this manager is the one that the players feel will carry us forward, and they don't truly believe that playing this way will get us promoted.
Players are media trained and wouldn't dare saying anything publicly that could be even construed as negative. Even if this was done privately, I reckon NJ would drop that player immediately and, ultimately, they want to play. My sneaking suspicion was that Taylor was impacted by this. I think these players are able to still put together clean sheets with this system, even if they don't believe in it/NJ. It's incredibly defensive and most L1 teams can't unlock the raw numbers.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
I don't believe the majority of stuff that comes out of Methvens mouth.
No but I think we can be confident our budget is closer to the top 6 than the bottom 4, yet the team look more like the latter.
I reckon they are trying to Moneyball recuitment
Isn’t everyone other than the likes of Birmingham who don’t need to? With the losses clubs make the aim should always be to sign good value (and for some like us use our academy) and sell for big profits to fund and grow the club.
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
It’s not that hard to defend with 5 men if you have any personal pride
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
My fear about NJ losing the dressing room is absolutely conjecture - I'm not in any way ITK and couldn't be factual. This is based around my impression around the body language/form of certain players (particularly some of our attacking players e.g. Leaburn/Godden and when Small was substituted early a month or two ago). There was also the random dropping of AMitchell for the Reading game. It's a feeling I have after some of the losses, and my perception on how some of those players might want to play.
I try and put myself in the place of the players, and think how they might be feeling. They would have absolutely expected a better league position than where we are, and yet, here we are. The constant pressing of players has certainly been nowhere near what was expected. I don't feel like all of the players are buying in to the tactics and strategy that NJ sets us up for. I think there will be niggles at the belief in whether this manager is the one that the players feel will carry us forward, and they don't truly believe that playing this way will get us promoted.
Players are media trained and wouldn't dare saying anything publicly that could be even construed as negative. Even if this was done privately, I reckon NJ would drop that player immediately and, ultimately, they want to play. My sneaking suspicion was that Taylor was impacted by this. I think these players are able to still put together clean sheets with this system, even if they don't believe in it/NJ. It's incredibly defensive and most L1 teams can't unlock the raw numbers.
If losing the dressing room means players aren't buying into the managers wishes, but want to play, they don't play to deliberately undermine him do they? If any player pulls on a Charlton shirt and purposely underperforms, he's a fraud and should never be allowed to wear the shirt again imo, no matter who the manager.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
I don't believe the majority of stuff that comes out of Methvens mouth.
True. But we likely do have one of the bigger budgets in the league. Wages are usually an indicator of success and final league position. We are massively underperforming. That rests with Jones and Scott.
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
My fear about NJ losing the dressing room is absolutely conjecture - I'm not in any way ITK and couldn't be factual. This is based around my impression around the body language/form of certain players (particularly some of our attacking players e.g. Leaburn/Godden and when Small was substituted early a month or two ago). There was also the random dropping of AMitchell for the Reading game. It's a feeling I have after some of the losses, and my perception on how some of those players might want to play.
I try and put myself in the place of the players, and think how they might be feeling. They would have absolutely expected a better league position than where we are, and yet, here we are. The constant pressing of players has certainly been nowhere near what was expected. I don't feel like all of the players are buying in to the tactics and strategy that NJ sets us up for. I think there will be niggles at the belief in whether this manager is the one that the players feel will carry us forward, and they don't truly believe that playing this way will get us promoted.
Players are media trained and wouldn't dare saying anything publicly that could be even construed as negative. Even if this was done privately, I reckon NJ would drop that player immediately and, ultimately, they want to play. My sneaking suspicion was that Taylor was impacted by this. I think these players are able to still put together clean sheets with this system, even if they don't believe in it/NJ. It's incredibly defensive and most L1 teams can't unlock the raw numbers.
If losing the dressing room means players aren't buying into the managers wishes, but want to play, they don't play to deliberately undermine him do they? If any player pulls on a Charlton shirt and purposely underperforms, he's a fraud and should never be allowed to wear the shirt again imo, no matter who the manager.
This is obviously correct although has happened quite a few times over the last 18 years - Reed/ Luzon / Robinson / Garner certainly . The players cannot possibly be having fun at the moment
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
I don't believe the majority of stuff that comes out of Methvens mouth.
No but I think we can be confident our budget is closer to the top 6 than the bottom 4, yet the team look more like the latter.
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
The players defended Appleton last season, even some coaches.
It's rare a human will bite a hand that feeds. A lot of people would paint Kim Jong Un a hero so long as he paid them. I wouldn't buy into what a player says too much.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Agree we could spend more as other clubs have and recruitment won’t be the only issue, but we still spent over £10m on wages in 22/23 (presumably includes non-playing staff too, players will make up the bulk of it), and that dropped 8% from the previous year.
Maybe we’re spending less now, but I doubt we’re getting value for money and are likely still spending more than a lot of L1 clubs. We know most clubs don’t pay transfer fees at this level.
Methven claimed we have the 4/5th highest budget, that’ll be based on the figures clubs have to share with the EFL. Even if he’s exaggerating we’re still underperforming for the money we spent.
Charlton Athletic made an operating loss of £9.6million in 2022-23 – equating to around £190,000 a week.
The Addicks’ revenue over that period, up until the end of June, stayed at the same figure as the previous accounts – £9.8m – while wages dropped eight per cent to £10.3m.
I don't believe the majority of stuff that comes out of Methvens mouth.
No but I think we can be confident our budget is closer to the top 6 than the bottom 4, yet the team look more like the latter.
I reckon they are trying to Moneyball recuitment
Isn’t everyone other than the likes of Birmingham who don’t need to? With the losses clubs make the aim should always be to sign good value (and for some like us use our academy) and sell for big profits to fund and grow the club.
Think the sad truth is although our academy is good, loaning players (not a full team just one or two players to compete with everyone else) from bigger clubs would be more effective than promoting a full team of academy talents.
The criticism is keeping up value while staying competitive- we have moved on players for profits (Alfie May going, good example), but the aim is to stay competitive while doing that.
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
The players defended Appleton last season, even some coaches.
It's rare a human will bite a hand that feeds. A lot of people would paint Kim Jong Un a hero so long as he paid them. I wouldn't buy into what a player says too much.
This is spot on, take a look at Small’s video from last week, he talks as if NJ is the messiah
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
My fear about NJ losing the dressing room is absolutely conjecture - I'm not in any way ITK and couldn't be factual. This is based around my impression around the body language/form of certain players (particularly some of our attacking players e.g. Leaburn/Godden and when Small was substituted early a month or two ago). There was also the random dropping of AMitchell for the Reading game. It's a feeling I have after some of the losses, and my perception on how some of those players might want to play.
I try and put myself in the place of the players, and think how they might be feeling. They would have absolutely expected a better league position than where we are, and yet, here we are. The constant pressing of players has certainly been nowhere near what was expected. I don't feel like all of the players are buying in to the tactics and strategy that NJ sets us up for. I think there will be niggles at the belief in whether this manager is the one that the players feel will carry us forward, and they don't truly believe that playing this way will get us promoted.
Players are media trained and wouldn't dare saying anything publicly that could be even construed as negative. Even if this was done privately, I reckon NJ would drop that player immediately and, ultimately, they want to play. My sneaking suspicion was that Taylor was impacted by this. I think these players are able to still put together clean sheets with this system, even if they don't believe in it/NJ. It's incredibly defensive and most L1 teams can't unlock the raw numbers.
I do agree with you to an extent that frustration has been apparent at times and not surprisingly strikers. To me, losing the dressing room is when it is a complete shambles and players are making catastrophic individual mistakes culminating in 4 or 5 nil drubbings that it is so obvious the manager has lost the players.
Most of what you wrote is fair comment and as fans we are all frustrated and naturally air our views. I only commented because of the suggestion of it being put to the SMT and we all know they would come back with an easy defence.
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
The players defended Appleton last season, even some coaches.
It's rare a human will bite a hand that feeds. A lot of people would paint Kim Jong Un a hero so long as he paid them. I wouldn't buy into what a player says too much.
This is spot on, take a look at Small’s video from last week, he talks as if NJ is the messiah
We'll just have to wait and see after this weekend. As his predecessor found out anything but a win/draw vs Northampton is costly.
We haven't had good enough players or Managers for a while now. It's mostly down to money IMHO
It’s due to poor spending of money. Our budget hasn’t really been a problem other than in 2022/23 when Sandgaard had given up. I suspect that would have been our lowest budget of recent times and we actually finished higher up the league
Poor recruitment is our problem, until that changes we are just going to keep cycling through managers that get an initial performance bounce but then trail off
Not sure poor recruitment is the entire problem. It's more to do with the level of player we can afford IMHO
It is definitely poor recruitment. We can afford to pay transfer fees, a lot of clubs in this division don't, we pay decent wages, a lot of clubs in this division pay a lot less, and yet here we are sat in 14th battling for the right to finish top of the bottom half with Mansfield, Stevenage and Exeter.
Reading don't have a pot to piss in, can't buy anyone and their owner has given up on them and they are still above us.
And how do u know we pay transfer fees and decent wages, u seem to state that as a fact? I never said recruitment wasn't a problem just not the entire problem...
Is this a serious question?
But what you actually said was it's "more to do with the level of player we can afford". We bought Ahadme, who cost more than pretty much any club in the division apart from Birmingham spent on a single player in the summer. It's pretty clear that money could've been better spent, which is surely therefore a recruitment problem?
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
The players defended Appleton last season, even some coaches.
It's rare a human will bite a hand that feeds. A lot of people would paint Kim Jong Un a hero so long as he paid them. I wouldn't buy into what a player says too much.
This is spot on, take a look at Small’s video from last week, he talks as if NJ is the messiah
We'll just have to wait and see after this weekend. As his predecessor found out anything but a win/draw vs Northampton is costly.
I suspect nothing will happen this weekend, win, lose or draw.
Imo, we would have a difficult time if we came up against him and MK Dons right now. Sometimes it's more to do with the club itself than the level of football.
Elliot Lee for instance dropped down and is now back in this league, above us, has also picked up more man of the match awards and goals than all of our midfielders combined.
He was absolutely naff for us, but obviously something clicks for him there. It doesn't always work that way, cause Charlie Kirk is the opposite example of Lee, but I do believe some players just move to us at the wrong time and Gilbey might have been one of them. Looking like there is a chance we will find out next season the answer to this question anyway, oh joy.
Completely agree with this. Have to start looking at ourselves as a club to why a large majority of players don't work here. It obviously falls under not recruiting the right players but there's a much deeper issue there as well.
How many signings in the last 4/5 years have looked brilliant on paper and turned out to be poor/ineffective. Kirk, MacGillvray, Fraser, Jaiyesimi, Payne and Greg Docherty spring straight to mind. Reckon you could put a list of over 20 players in this category.
Then you have your players like Alex Gilbey and Elliott Lee who were playing well before and after us.
Then even injury wise. We saw about half hour of Panutche Camara last season, he's played 21 in all comps for Crawley already this season! I know he was only there for 6 months but believe Chuks' injury record at Birmingham was decent as well.
It is odd, I think we may actually be cursed. It's pretty ridiculous when you hear how good the reviews are about players before they get here, and when they get here they usually underperform.
It might be some in house stuff, maybe behind the scenes there are some issues, who knows.
I can't put it down to the expectations, because respectfully, our ground is too big for us, and there can't be much pressure playing at a half empty Valley every week. I don't think we are a fan base who will wait outside the game in our numbers after a poor game like some fan bases.
I'd love to see a documentary type series around our club. Behind the scenes, the dressing room vibe etc. If you think how well JiMMy 85 does with his BoA docu series, and had that at Charlton, it would make for excellent TV.
Agree with a lot of this except the stadium thing, one thing I will say about us a fanbase, which is understandable what we've been through over the last 10-15 years, that we do have a habit of turning on players/managers quite quickly. I don't think we're unique in this regard, but it doesn't take much before you can audibly hear grumbles around the valley. I think we've had a number of squads who let that get to them, and in turn their confidence goes in the toilet, as opposed to having a squad who will use that as a motivation to kick on and win the fans back over.
But yes, we are 100% cursed, particularly so over the last 5 years.
On this point, I recall watching Pompey fans belting out tunes and claps post match in a game they lost AND played poorly in. That's not something I'd expect to see from our fans. Maybe other clubs do see that keeping the faith is an essential element to success.
My dad is old enough to have chose the mighty Sam (not Lloyd) as his favourite ever player (he's watched from the terraces). As each game passes, he often takes a pragmatic approach, telling me that we are Charlton and have to keep supporting, no matter the weather or result. But, even he has now had enough of what Jones is serving up. There is no hope of success (the kind needed for a promotion run) and even less hope is seeing good football (which is all he expects).
I can't see how any club owners with a top 4, 5, 6 budget, can leave a manager in charge, that have fashioned a poorly performing AND playing, bottom half side, two seasons running. It doesn't just show a lack of ambition, it shows a lack of business acumen or more importantly, lack of interest!
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
My fear about NJ losing the dressing room is absolutely conjecture - I'm not in any way ITK and couldn't be factual. This is based around my impression around the body language/form of certain players (particularly some of our attacking players e.g. Leaburn/Godden and when Small was substituted early a month or two ago). There was also the random dropping of AMitchell for the Reading game. It's a feeling I have after some of the losses, and my perception on how some of those players might want to play.
I try and put myself in the place of the players, and think how they might be feeling. They would have absolutely expected a better league position than where we are, and yet, here we are. The constant pressing of players has certainly been nowhere near what was expected. I don't feel like all of the players are buying in to the tactics and strategy that NJ sets us up for. I think there will be niggles at the belief in whether this manager is the one that the players feel will carry us forward, and they don't truly believe that playing this way will get us promoted.
Players are media trained and wouldn't dare saying anything publicly that could be even construed as negative. Even if this was done privately, I reckon NJ would drop that player immediately and, ultimately, they want to play. My sneaking suspicion was that Taylor was impacted by this. I think these players are able to still put together clean sheets with this system, even if they don't believe in it/NJ. It's incredibly defensive and most L1 teams can't unlock the raw numbers.
If losing the dressing room means players aren't buying into the managers wishes, but want to play, they don't play to deliberately undermine him do they? If any player pulls on a Charlton shirt and purposely underperforms, he's a fraud and should never be allowed to wear the shirt again imo, no matter who the manager.
There's a big difference between deliberately playing badly to undermine the manager (which I don't think the players are doing, to be clear) and not playing very well because you don't enjoy or understand what the manager is asking of you (which I DO think is part of the problem.)
NJ is on the record as both saying that the pressing stuff is what he wants (so presumably is doing on the training ground too) but ALSO that he's not happy with the results.
I for one would not begrudge the players for not being particularly motivated after the manager is critical of them for doing exactly what he asked them to do. Especially when fans are struggling to find much to cheer on as a result.
Unless there is a big improvement in performances and results the writing is on the wall. People just won’t pay money to watch the dross being dished up ! Jones can try and bullshit all he likes but fans decide if they are getting value for money and so far this season they aren’t
I would never use the term 'value for money' as it seems to indicate buying a product, and nobody with any sense would buy our product. Football supporters are blinded by the emotional attachment (for most of us lifelong) and all I want is pride in MY football club. I have that with CACT, The Upbeats and the general community feel, I just want it on the pitch too.
Sadly I feel like I’ve steadily lost those things over the last five years or so Bob. There doesn’t feel like there’s much identity left in the club nowadays. All stems from on pitch decline, but it’s really not the club it used to be imo. Saddens me to say it
Interesting comment. Not necessarily disputing it at all, but wondered what makes you feel this way beyond the poor side and low attendances...
Unless there is a big improvement in performances and results the writing is on the wall. People just won’t pay money to watch the dross being dished up ! Jones can try and bullshit all he likes but fans decide if they are getting value for money and so far this season they aren’t
I would never use the term 'value for money' as it seems to indicate buying a product, and nobody with any sense would buy our product. Football supporters are blinded by the emotional attachment (for most of us lifelong) and all I want is pride in MY football club. I have that with CACT, The Upbeats and the general community feel, I just want it on the pitch too.
Sadly I feel like I’ve steadily lost those things over the last five years or so Bob. There doesn’t feel like there’s much identity left in the club nowadays. All stems from on pitch decline, but it’s really not the club it used to be imo. Saddens me to say it
Interesting comment. Not necessarily disputing it at all, but wondered what makes you feel this way beyond the poor side and low attendances...
For me is a succession of poor owners, poor senior management teams, poor managers and poor players. I think next season will be about our 11th in the last 15 seasons we have been in league one. Plus despite what Charlie and the gang keep telling us there doesn't appear to be any signs of things improving any time soon. Totally depressing.
I just can’t get my head round why it seems that everyone but me thought getting Jones in was such a coup. He made an absolute arse of himself in his last two jobs including a couple of interviews on national TV where he was a laughing stock. Yet we seem to think he’s the Messiah. Sorry but I just didn’t and still don’t get it.
I was pleased at the time because of the positive impression he left when he was with us previously. I remember Diego Poyet saying that the young players were "in awe of him". He was certainly very successful with the U-21's. The way it's worked out since is all the more disappointing for my previous optimism.
Unless there is a big improvement in performances and results the writing is on the wall. People just won’t pay money to watch the dross being dished up ! Jones can try and bullshit all he likes but fans decide if they are getting value for money and so far this season they aren’t
I would never use the term 'value for money' as it seems to indicate buying a product, and nobody with any sense would buy our product. Football supporters are blinded by the emotional attachment (for most of us lifelong) and all I want is pride in MY football club. I have that with CACT, The Upbeats and the general community feel, I just want it on the pitch too.
Sadly I feel like I’ve steadily lost those things over the last five years or so Bob. There doesn’t feel like there’s much identity left in the club nowadays. All stems from on pitch decline, but it’s really not the club it used to be imo. Saddens me to say it
Interesting comment. Not necessarily disputing it at all, but wondered what makes you feel this way beyond the poor side and low attendances...
For me is a succession of poor owners, poor senior management teams, poor managers and poor players. I think next season will be about our 11th in the last 15 seasons we have been in league one. Plus despite what Charlie and the gang keep telling us there doesn't appear to be any signs of things improving any time soon. Totally depressing.
Yeah agree, but still think this sounds more like "we've been shit for so long" rather than "we've lost our identity."
The club's identity definitely suffers when its chronically shit, but you'd hope our history, fanbase, local area etc keeps that flame alive even if things are bad on the pitch. As I say, haven't made my mind up on where we are with that.
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
The players defended Appleton last season, even some coaches.
It's rare a human will bite a hand that feeds. A lot of people would paint Kim Jong Un a hero so long as he paid them. I wouldn't buy into what a player says too much.
This is spot on, take a look at Small’s video from last week, he talks as if NJ is the messiah
Ok but you can’t say that and then also say he’s lost the dressing room surely?
No manager will lose the dressing room ever? Glad we’re throwing that old cliche out the window…
Would rather see Methven, Scott and Rodwell go before Jones. Sad to see some (or one) in particular brown-nosing Methven on the other site (pics taken etc with)
I think that fans staying away from The Valley and a reduction of actual consistent attendance (as in, some kind of reality-based metric for tracking attendance through the turnstiles of season ticket holders, for example) will be, from the business-side of things, one of the non-footballing reasons that pressure will be applied to NJ. As so many have said before, success on the pitch goes symbiotically with revenue growth off it. This is the angle that may apply more strain on the tenure of NJ, as people simply won't want to turn up to see awful football AND poor results.
Although I absolutely agree that we need stability in our manager, I feel we have already reached a notable end point for what NJ can offer us and our fears of him being being the more recent incarnation of himself rather than the earlier one at Luton have come true. It's completely true that he came in last year and did perform a level of managerial magic to prevent what was looking, prior to Feb/Mar this year, a L1 relegation fight. However, you are only as good as your most recent results in the savage world of football management, and only extreme outliers of sustained success can counteract that. His recent press conferences are political answers to keep him in a job, and the fans are seeing right through it.
With a full pre-season and recruitment with his oversight, we've played overly negative football with the aim of grinding out every result, coin-flipping (almost) every game. In league fixtures, practically all of them have been tight affairs. Last season, I remember a Derby fan talking about their unstylish football on Charlton Live and how Louis had to remind him that they were still in the automatics. I could absolutely tolerate this NJ anti-football if it was getting us out of this sh*thole that is L1, but it's just not. At best, it's very rarely got us wins, and at worst, it's regularly lost us games and as good as written off our season before Xmas (if not arguably before).
Honestly, I feel the blame does lie with both NJ and Andy Scott for the hole we find ourselves in currently - I know people want to find blame with both Methven and Rodwell too, but I feel they are not as much at fault here for the more notably visible issues from the footballing side (unless you want to attribute them for the mess of NJ/AS in the first place, which was tricky to predict at the time). Recruitment over the summer has had us stagnate - we've been better defensively when AMitchell and LJones have been paired together, but gone significantly backwards in the attacking elements in selling May and not signing an attacking/creative midfielder or enough pace/crossing from wing backs and their cover. That falls on NJ and AS for incorrectly identifying and signing players, plus FULLY IGNORING the loan system. This is where my ire lies, because despite January being an option to use to recruit, your core identity of a style of play needs to be there before that - it simply isn't there and apart from a couple of signings, the summer recruitment was nowhere near good enough.
I'd sack NJ and remove AS as well. AS has failed consistently over time, and NJ, I fear, has lost the dressing room. I see no reason why things will improve as things stand. The only argument against that is that NJ has been through this situation last season and that we don't have a realistic replacement in mind. I have no idea why we would keep AS, given his consistency of bad signings. If this season is a write-off behind the scenes, then the planning should already be happening for next season without either of them. Honestly, I'd bite the bullet now and let a new manager have January and the remainder of the season to salvage something. Delaying that any longer feels pretty pointless.
I don't want any more anti-football. I don't want any more signings like the ones in the summer, from either NJ or AS. I want a manager on the up and not on the way down. I want a Charlton team to be actually front footed and be proactive and not reactive. I want my academy graduates to not regress to only be off the ball players.
Time for change.
Excellent post. It needs to be printed off and sent to our owners!
Even though it is factually incorrect?
Senior players have come out in defence or agreement with Jones recently. Secondly you honestly think we would have got 2 clean sheets if the dressing room was lost.
Lost the fans I would agree with but not the dressing room, as yet anyway.
The players defended Appleton last season, even some coaches.
It's rare a human will bite a hand that feeds. A lot of people would paint Kim Jong Un a hero so long as he paid them. I wouldn't buy into what a player says too much.
This is spot on, take a look at Small’s video from last week, he talks as if NJ is the messiah
Ok but you can’t say that and then also say he’s lost the dressing room surely?
No manager will lose the dressing room ever? Glad we’re throwing that old cliche out the window…
I am certain that Mr Fraeye did not have the respect of the dressing room.
Comments
We, as a club, are very good at some things, such as all the community stuff and even the women's team.
Personally, I'd prefer it to be the other way around.
To me, the primary focus of CAFC should be on the mens football team, and I'd like to see all efforts, and all resources, dedicated to getting that right first, before all the other stuff.
But what you actually said was it's "more to do with the level of player we can afford". We bought Ahadme, who cost more than pretty much any club in the division apart from Birmingham spent on a single player in the summer. It's pretty clear that money could've been better spent, which is surely therefore a recruitment problem?
Just not to mislead you Sam Parkin, you know that famous Charlton striker, shares his opinion.
I try and put myself in the place of the players, and think how they might be feeling. They would have absolutely expected a better league position than where we are, and yet, here we are. The constant pressing of players has certainly been nowhere near what was expected. I don't feel like all of the players are buying in to the tactics and strategy that NJ sets us up for. I think there will be niggles at the belief in whether this manager is the one that the players feel will carry us forward, and they don't truly believe that playing this way will get us promoted.
Players are media trained and wouldn't dare saying anything publicly that could be even construed as negative. Even if this was done privately, I reckon NJ would drop that player immediately and, ultimately, they want to play. My sneaking suspicion was that Taylor was impacted by this. I think these players are able to still put together clean sheets with this system, even if they don't believe in it/NJ. It's incredibly defensive and most L1 teams can't unlock the raw numbers.
It's rare a human will bite a hand that feeds. A lot of people would paint Kim Jong Un a hero so long as he paid them. I wouldn't buy into what a player says too much.
The criticism is keeping up value while staying competitive- we have moved on players for profits (Alfie May going, good example), but the aim is to stay competitive while doing that.
Most of what you wrote is fair comment and as fans we are all frustrated and naturally air our views. I only commented because of the suggestion of it being put to the SMT and we all know they would come back with an easy defence.
How much did he cost?
My dad is old enough to have chose the mighty Sam (not Lloyd) as his favourite ever player (he's watched from the terraces). As each game passes, he often takes a pragmatic approach, telling me that we are Charlton and have to keep supporting, no matter the weather or result. But, even he has now had enough of what Jones is serving up. There is no hope of success (the kind needed for a promotion run) and even less hope is seeing good football (which is all he expects).
NJ is on the record as both saying that the pressing stuff is what he wants (so presumably is doing on the training ground too) but ALSO that he's not happy with the results.
I for one would not begrudge the players for not being particularly motivated after the manager is critical of them for doing exactly what he asked them to do. Especially when fans are struggling to find much to cheer on as a result.
I think next season will be about our 11th in the last 15 seasons we have been in league one.
Plus despite what Charlie and the gang keep telling us there doesn't appear to be any signs of things improving any time soon.
Totally depressing.
The club's identity definitely suffers when its chronically shit, but you'd hope our history, fanbase, local area etc keeps that flame alive even if things are bad on the pitch. As I say, haven't made my mind up on where we are with that.
I am certain that Mr Fraeye did not have the respect of the dressing room.