I think we are getting into semantics here. He wasn't using width, the attacking play was guileless, clueless, ineffective, frustrating and was driving fans away in droves. The change to using width was pivotal, fundamental, the very definition of a volte face. I think the reason I am irritated by the term 'small tweak', even if it really was that, is the reductive way it almost absolves Jones of any responsibility for what went before, like the insufferable dogshit was "almost there" and the change was so inconsequential he could have done it anytime if he wanted. It had been going on for weeks, the fans were leaving and we were heading downwards.
Jones had even tried Small on the right away at Huddersfield, and it didn’t work. Which is why he probably tried every possible team combination while things were going wrong, before going back to Small on the right and landing on the right set up
I think we are getting into semantics here. He wasn't using width, the attacking play was guileless, clueless, ineffective, frustrating and was driving fans away in droves. The change to using width was pivotal, fundamental, the very definition of a volte face. I think the reason I am irritated by the term 'small tweak', even if it really was that, is the reductive way it almost absolves Jones of any responsibility for what went before, like the insufferable dogshit was "almost there" and the change was so inconsequential he could have done it anytime if he wanted. It had been going on for weeks, the fans were leaving and we were heading downwards.
I take your point but it's also worth remembering that he kept saying he'd been asking players to play differently to how they actually did. He needed to find a solution to help them to recreate what they did at SL to actual match scenarios. What we saw on the pitch was definitely a big change but my suspicion (mainly based on how quickly it suddenly clicked) is that actually the addition of more width was a relatively minor thing within the system he coached. It created a bit more space in the middle and that made a huge difference. A small change can have major effects, that's the whole thinking behind the butterfly effect theory.
I think we are getting into semantics here. He wasn't using width, the attacking play was guileless, clueless, ineffective, frustrating and was driving fans away in droves. The change to using width was pivotal, fundamental, the very definition of a volte face. I think the reason I am irritated by the term 'small tweak', even if it really was that, is the reductive way it almost absolves Jones of any responsibility for what went before, like the insufferable dogshit was "almost there" and the change was so inconsequential he could have done it anytime if he wanted. It had been going on for weeks, the fans were leaving and we were heading downwards.
We started the season with the exact same formation we ended with. I feel like this is a lot less black and white than you remember it being.
We started the season set up with Ramsay right and Edwards/Small left providing width as the wing backs - it was producing results until we lost three on the bounce against Blackpool, Stevenage and Bristol Rovers.
Off the back of that, Jones adjusted and went to a much narrower formation against Birmingham (4-4-2 diamond) which actually got us an unexpected win against the soon-to-be run away champions, followed by going unbeaten against Wrexham, Barnsley and Stockport using the same narrow diamond midfield, relying on Edwards and Edmonds-Green as full backs to give us any width (which wasn't much).
After those results, the limitations of the narrow formation became apparent with losses to Exeter and Crawley so Jones reverted back to the wing backs formation he started with - he tweaked some of the players positions, like playing TC up front and Small RWB and it fell into place from there.
There was definitely "a road to Damascus" moment last season for Nathan Jones when he realised what many of us stated: Use the width of the pitch as we were making it impossible for any cafc attacking players to have any space to operate in. Sometimes it made sense if it was Birmingham at home but to shackle your own side when your playing Crawley etc at home was depressing.
Can anyone who goes home and away remember which game, Small(on the right !) and Edwards became wing backs and we had the Ramsay, Jones and born again Gillesphey as 3 CB's ? TC going out left to receive the ball and suddenly we went from a lame duck to a white swan.
Playing 3 central strikers in a 3 up front was the nadir with Ahadme, Godden and Leaburn tried not once but twice with whoever went wide looking lost.
Seeing Edwards 'fouled' in the box against Watford as the most advanced player shows how much the team has manifested in a more coherent unit with out losing any defensive stability.
Nathan did say it was a learning process and the first 20 odd games were testament to that in 24/25.
Northampton away was the game we put Small on the right and won 5-0. It was still Mitchell in the back 3 that game and for 6 games after that before Ramsay came in for Bristol Rovers and couldn't be shifted afterwards
Yes, that three game stretch post-Crawley of:
Lincoln when we got Jones back in the middle of defence after injury,
Mansfield when we had Godden, TC and Small all starting together for the first time and then
Northampton when we cracked it with Small on the right instead of the left
was IMO the pivotal point in our season.
The Mansfield one was interesting. We had Small at LWB and TC and RWB with Godden and Kanu up front. I think that was the game that Jones realised having a very attacking inverted RWB was the way to go, but Kanu and Godden were too narrow for us to make the most of it. Next match he had TC pulling wide but balanced it with Edwards as a more defensive LWB and we never looked back.
It's interesting looking back at the Mansfield match threads as well. Lots of comments about how poor our summer recruitment was, lots of Jones out comments and even one or two about the possibility of relegation if we lost to Northampton. I'd forgotten just how negative things had got before the Northampton game. A comment from Jones after the game really upset people: 'Us and Birmingham are the best two pressers in the league so we are front-footed and going after teams. We're just not taking chances at the minute. I'm sure that will change. We're not capitalising on the clean sheets at the minute'. Following that match we capitalised on 13 clean sheets on the way to promotion. All managers ask for time and Jones is one of the few who actually got it in spite of poor results, goes to show what can happen.
I was get him out cos we were utter ponage for a bit but he’d earned some time due to the way he stopped the sinking ship when he came in . That crap at Bristol rovers was beyond pathetic but he’s massively proved me wrong since and has earned a go at getting us back up even if we get relegated at some point but I know I’d be wanting him out by then cos there’s something about him I really dislike . Callum is so positive it’s almost madness, which means I’m so scared of him not being 100% keen on Kelman ,I’ve not watched him live yet (kelman not Callum) I’m just getting a Ronnie Schwartz /Nathan Ajose vibe from him
I think Callum's positivity last season was mostly based on the same sort of thing a lot of people felt but were more quiet about, which is that the materials were in place for things to be better, they just hadn't fallen into place yet. We were a long way from Russell Slade managing a team of Andrew Crofts, Kevin Foley and the corpse of Roger Johnson. Last season I just wasn't having that the players we'd signed were rubbish again, we'd signed some really decent players with good experience, things just hadn't come together yet.
Jones kept saying we were really close to being a good team and it understandably drove people insane because we'd seen some incredibly bad performances but in the end all it took was one small tweak - putting pace out wide on the right and allowing TC to push further left - and we were suddenly almost unbeatable. I don't think anyone could be faulted for getting frustrated with Jones making those kinds of comments after losing at home to Crawley but it turned out he and Callum were right. Let's hope he's not right about Kelman because I had similar doubts when he emerged as our main target and they're still there
"One small tweak". Well, superficially yes it was, a tweak so simple one wonders why it took him 4 months to come up with it. With hindsight perhaps it is easy to conclude that things were incrementally improving and that tweak was the final piece of the jigsaw. What we were witnessing on the pitch was 4 months of stubbornly persisting with Plan A to the point where it turned around and smacked him in the mouth. I do think injuries to key players were a factor but they did not affect the attacking plan, whatever the fcuk that actually was. In this instance I think small tweak actually equates to complete volte face. Such that our attacking lynchpin and, so we are told, our most expensive signing of the window was summarily consigned to the dustbin. For the record, I was not calling for NJ to be sacked. He had clearly come in and sorted us defensively and one had hoped that we would build on that. I think those of us that go to games week in and week out were by December having our patience tested to the very limit. Anybody who retained any optimism at that point was operating from desperate blind faith at best.
Exactly, no way were we successful after a tweak, talk about rewriting history. We let CBT go and last summer recruited no wingers. Our remaining winger Tyreece we played further inside.
Many fans on CL including me were crying out for some width a long time before Nathan Jones finally realised his plan would never work and started to put Tyreece wider and brought Small in on the right after trying a number of prior combinations.
Jones got it right eventually and I credit him for that and since then he has worked wonders, but it was a complete change of tactics/volte face as said above.
I think that after that Crawley defeat, Jones was hearing so much criticism from the fans that he himself must have started to fear for his job. Many clubs I think would have pulled the trigger. The changes he eventually made with Small and Campbell were I think forced upon him out of fear and perhaps desperation. Absolutely credit for that but I agree I don’t think that his overall strategy suddenly started to work.
It's all a bit stupid really, however it happened with 2 games to go we could of of gone up automatically! Think that means we have a pretty good manager, probably the best since Curbs, so let's enjoy that we really have our Charlton back
I was get him out cos we were utter ponage for a bit but he’d earned some time due to the way he stopped the sinking ship when he came in . That crap at Bristol rovers was beyond pathetic but he’s massively proved me wrong since and has earned a go at getting us back up even if we get relegated at some point but I know I’d be wanting him out by then cos there’s something about him I really dislike . Callum is so positive it’s almost madness, which means I’m so scared of him not being 100% keen on Kelman ,I’ve not watched him live yet (kelman not Callum) I’m just getting a Ronnie Schwartz /Nathan Ajose vibe from him
I think Callum's positivity last season was mostly based on the same sort of thing a lot of people felt but were more quiet about, which is that the materials were in place for things to be better, they just hadn't fallen into place yet. We were a long way from Russell Slade managing a team of Andrew Crofts, Kevin Foley and the corpse of Roger Johnson. Last season I just wasn't having that the players we'd signed were rubbish again, we'd signed some really decent players with good experience, things just hadn't come together yet.
Jones kept saying we were really close to being a good team and it understandably drove people insane because we'd seen some incredibly bad performances but in the end all it took was one small tweak - putting pace out wide on the right and allowing TC to push further left - and we were suddenly almost unbeatable. I don't think anyone could be faulted for getting frustrated with Jones making those kinds of comments after losing at home to Crawley but it turned out he and Callum were right. Let's hope he's not right about Kelman because I had similar doubts when he emerged as our main target and they're still there
"One small tweak". Well, superficially yes it was, a tweak so simple one wonders why it took him 4 months to come up with it. With hindsight perhaps it is easy to conclude that things were incrementally improving and that tweak was the final piece of the jigsaw. What we were witnessing on the pitch was 4 months of stubbornly persisting with Plan A to the point where it turned around and smacked him in the mouth. I do think injuries to key players were a factor but they did not affect the attacking plan, whatever the fcuk that actually was. In this instance I think small tweak actually equates to complete volte face. Such that our attacking lynchpin and, so we are told, our most expensive signing of the window was summarily consigned to the dustbin. For the record, I was not calling for NJ to be sacked. He had clearly come in and sorted us defensively and one had hoped that we would build on that. I think those of us that go to games week in and week out were by December having our patience tested to the very limit. Anybody who retained any optimism at that point was operating from desperate blind faith at best.
Exactly, no way were we successful after a tweak, talk about rewriting history. We let CBT go and last summer recruited no wingers. Our remaining winger Tyreece we played further inside.
Many fans on CL including me were crying out for some width a long time before Nathan Jones finally realised his plan would never work and started to put Tyreece wider and brought Small in on the right after trying a number of prior combinations.
Jones got it right eventually and I credit him for that and since then he has worked wonders, but it was a complete change of tactics/volte face as said above.
But the thing is ultimately we kept the basis of our way of playing exactly the same, with one change to its delivery in the form of more width. That's the definition of a tweak. One thing Jones kept saying after games was that he wasn't telling the players to play the way they were. He wasn't telling them to spank aimless long balls up the pitch but they were doing it themselves because they couldn't find the space to play. Adding width improved the performances of all our midfielders, allowed us to control games better which took the pressure off the defence and made us more threatening in attack. It wasn't a complete change of tactics though, we remained a team who aimed to keep things very tight in defence, push the ball up the pitch quickly, win second balls off long passes and press very aggressively high up the pitch. The addition of width unlocked the tactics that were already in place, which is why we were able to suddenly go from god awful to unplayable in the space between two games and then maintain it for the rest of the season. We didn't tear everything up and start over.
This is where I am too.
The team that started the playoff final only had three changes from the team that played up at Wigan in early August. Otherwise, the eight other players remained exactly the same, in exactly the same positions.
A. Mitchell -> Small (with Ramsay moving to his best position of RCB) Anderson -> Gilbert Ahadme -> Godden
In each of those you can see three key realisations Jones must’ve had: - Ahadme isn’t as good as we thought but Godden is better than others thought - We needed more creativity from the role Anderson was playing - Getting Ramsay into his best position, next to Jones, probably worked better than anyone expected it to
The plan we finished the season with was roughly the same as the plan we started the season with.
Looked back at my comments from the time, happy to see I can claim some moral high ground here because I stopped short of actually saying he should be sacked! That being said, I was definitely close to end of my patience with him because the football was dire (even when we won), he was stubbornly sticking to approaches that showed little to no sign of bearing fruit, and his demeanor and attitude was a bit too "eff you" for my liking. I definitely didn't fancy letting him loose on another transfer window as so many of the signings we'd made (but not all, admittedly) on his watch hadn't really settled and looked barely any better than what we'd seen in recent previous seasons from the like of Holden, Appleton etc.
After the Crawley game everything felt just like it felt when Adkins, Appleton, Holden etc. etc. finally met their demise and were sacked. The results were bad. The performances were bad. The atmosphere at the Valley was turning toxic. The manager seemed to have lost all but the last vestiges of any good faith he had with the crowd and players.
In those circumstances I think it was far easier to build a case for sacking him than retaining him. Wanting to retain him required a certain amount of blind faith that it would just somehow get better, at least based on what we could see looking in from outside of the internal operations of the club and the training ground.
Fortunately, the Board held their nerve and showed that faith and, for once, blind faith paid off and it actually got better. Better in such a dramatic way that the turnaround is completely unmatched in my 35+ years of memories avidly following this club.
Now we all understand Nathan and his methods a bit better. Now we can see where things can go once he builds momentum. Now we can all see why and how that could take so long to happen. Now we can all see that "him against the world" and "eff you I'm right" mentality is what drives him. Back then the only evidence of those was from Luton (and I doubt many of us followed his approach there that closely) and he'd only had unsuccessful spells at other clubs. It was easy to think it would fail here as well.
I'm delighted he's proved me and so many of us wrong. Fair play to the guy and now I understand him better I like him a lot. However, I don't feel stupid for having a different opinion at the end of November last year.
I was get him out cos we were utter ponage for a bit but he’d earned some time due to the way he stopped the sinking ship when he came in . That crap at Bristol rovers was beyond pathetic but he’s massively proved me wrong since and has earned a go at getting us back up even if we get relegated at some point but I know I’d be wanting him out by then cos there’s something about him I really dislike . Callum is so positive it’s almost madness, which means I’m so scared of him not being 100% keen on Kelman ,I’ve not watched him live yet (kelman not Callum) I’m just getting a Ronnie Schwartz /Nathan Ajose vibe from him
I think Callum's positivity last season was mostly based on the same sort of thing a lot of people felt but were more quiet about, which is that the materials were in place for things to be better, they just hadn't fallen into place yet. We were a long way from Russell Slade managing a team of Andrew Crofts, Kevin Foley and the corpse of Roger Johnson. Last season I just wasn't having that the players we'd signed were rubbish again, we'd signed some really decent players with good experience, things just hadn't come together yet.
Jones kept saying we were really close to being a good team and it understandably drove people insane because we'd seen some incredibly bad performances but in the end all it took was one small tweak - putting pace out wide on the right and allowing TC to push further left - and we were suddenly almost unbeatable. I don't think anyone could be faulted for getting frustrated with Jones making those kinds of comments after losing at home to Crawley but it turned out he and Callum were right. Let's hope he's not right about Kelman because I had similar doubts when he emerged as our main target and they're still there
"One small tweak". Well, superficially yes it was, a tweak so simple one wonders why it took him 4 months to come up with it. With hindsight perhaps it is easy to conclude that things were incrementally improving and that tweak was the final piece of the jigsaw. What we were witnessing on the pitch was 4 months of stubbornly persisting with Plan A to the point where it turned around and smacked him in the mouth. I do think injuries to key players were a factor but they did not affect the attacking plan, whatever the fcuk that actually was. In this instance I think small tweak actually equates to complete volte face. Such that our attacking lynchpin and, so we are told, our most expensive signing of the window was summarily consigned to the dustbin. For the record, I was not calling for NJ to be sacked. He had clearly come in and sorted us defensively and one had hoped that we would build on that. I think those of us that go to games week in and week out were by December having our patience tested to the very limit. Anybody who retained any optimism at that point was operating from desperate blind faith at best.
Exactly, no way were we successful after a tweak, talk about rewriting history. We let CBT go and last summer recruited no wingers. Our remaining winger Tyreece we played further inside.
Many fans on CL including me were crying out for some width a long time before Nathan Jones finally realised his plan would never work and started to put Tyreece wider and brought Small in on the right after trying a number of prior combinations.
Jones got it right eventually and I credit him for that and since then he has worked wonders, but it was a complete change of tactics/volte face as said above.
But the thing is ultimately we kept the basis of our way of playing exactly the same, with one change to its delivery in the form of more width. That's the definition of a tweak. One thing Jones kept saying after games was that he wasn't telling the players to play the way they were. He wasn't telling them to spank aimless long balls up the pitch but they were doing it themselves because they couldn't find the space to play. Adding width improved the performances of all our midfielders, allowed us to control games better which took the pressure off the defence and made us more threatening in attack. It wasn't a complete change of tactics though, we remained a team who aimed to keep things very tight in defence, push the ball up the pitch quickly, win second balls off long passes and press very aggressively high up the pitch. The addition of width unlocked the tactics that were already in place, which is why we were able to suddenly go from god awful to unplayable in the space between two games and then maintain it for the rest of the season. We didn't tear everything up and start over.
This is where I am too.
The team that started the playoff final only had three changes from the team that played up at Wigan in early August. Otherwise, the eight other players remained exactly the same, in exactly the same positions.
A. Mitchell -> Small (with Ramsay moving to his best position of RCB) Anderson -> Gilbert Ahadme -> Godden
In each of those you can see three key realisations Jones must’ve had: - Ahadme isn’t as good as we thought but Godden is better than others thought - We needed more creativity from the role Anderson was playing - Getting Ramsay into his best position, next to Jones, probably worked better than anyone expected it to
The plan we finished the season with was roughly the same as the plan we started the season with.
The middle one is a bit of a Red Herring, though, because, had it not been for an untimely injury, it would most likely have been Berry starting the play-off final. Berry offered less physicality than Anderson and less creativity than Gilbert but did carry more goal threat.
Comments
He wasn't using width, the attacking play was guileless, clueless, ineffective, frustrating and was driving fans away in droves.
The change to using width was pivotal, fundamental, the very definition of a volte face.
I think the reason I am irritated by the term 'small tweak', even if it really was that, is the reductive way it almost absolves Jones of any responsibility for what went before, like the insufferable dogshit was "almost there" and the change was so inconsequential he could have done it anytime if he wanted.
It had been going on for weeks, the fans were leaving and we were heading downwards.
We started the season set up with Ramsay right and Edwards/Small left providing width as the wing backs - it was producing results until we lost three on the bounce against Blackpool, Stevenage and Bristol Rovers.
Off the back of that, Jones adjusted and went to a much narrower formation against Birmingham (4-4-2 diamond) which actually got us an unexpected win against the soon-to-be run away champions, followed by going unbeaten against Wrexham, Barnsley and Stockport using the same narrow diamond midfield, relying on Edwards and Edmonds-Green as full backs to give us any width (which wasn't much).
After those results, the limitations of the narrow formation became apparent with losses to Exeter and Crawley so Jones reverted back to the wing backs formation he started with - he tweaked some of the players positions, like playing TC up front and Small RWB and it fell into place from there.
It's interesting looking back at the Mansfield match threads as well. Lots of comments about how poor our summer recruitment was, lots of Jones out comments and even one or two about the possibility of relegation if we lost to Northampton. I'd forgotten just how negative things had got before the Northampton game. A comment from Jones after the game really upset people: 'Us and Birmingham are the best two pressers in the league so we are front-footed and going after teams. We're just not taking chances at the minute. I'm sure that will change. We're not capitalising on the clean sheets at the minute'. Following that match we capitalised on 13 clean sheets on the way to promotion. All managers ask for time and Jones is one of the few who actually got it in spite of poor results, goes to show what can happen.
The team that started the playoff final only had three changes from the team that played up at Wigan in early August. Otherwise, the eight other players remained exactly the same, in exactly the same positions.
A. Mitchell -> Small (with Ramsay moving to his best position of RCB)
Anderson -> Gilbert
Ahadme -> Godden
In each of those you can see three key realisations Jones must’ve had:
- Ahadme isn’t as good as we thought but Godden is better than others thought
- We needed more creativity from the role Anderson was playing
- Getting Ramsay into his best position, next to Jones, probably worked better than anyone expected it to
The plan we finished the season with was roughly the same as the plan we started the season with.
After the Crawley game everything felt just like it felt when Adkins, Appleton, Holden etc. etc. finally met their demise and were sacked. The results were bad. The performances were bad. The atmosphere at the Valley was turning toxic. The manager seemed to have lost all but the last vestiges of any good faith he had with the crowd and players.
In those circumstances I think it was far easier to build a case for sacking him than retaining him. Wanting to retain him required a certain amount of blind faith that it would just somehow get better, at least based on what we could see looking in from outside of the internal operations of the club and the training ground.
Fortunately, the Board held their nerve and showed that faith and, for once, blind faith paid off and it actually got better. Better in such a dramatic way that the turnaround is completely unmatched in my 35+ years of memories avidly following this club.
Now we all understand Nathan and his methods a bit better. Now we can see where things can go once he builds momentum. Now we can all see why and how that could take so long to happen. Now we can all see that "him against the world" and "eff you I'm right" mentality is what drives him. Back then the only evidence of those was from Luton (and I doubt many of us followed his approach there that closely) and he'd only had unsuccessful spells at other clubs. It was easy to think it would fail here as well.
I'm delighted he's proved me and so many of us wrong. Fair play to the guy and now I understand him better I like him a lot. However, I don't feel stupid for having a different opinion at the end of November last year.