Tom George Charlton Athletic :
Wed Sep 23, 2026 5:29 pm
Tom George Charlton Athletic :
Cardiff Thoughts
A regressive performance.
Firstly, I’ll be fair to Cardiff. This is not a team that deserves only 1 win in 8. They are so much better than that, I don’t believe that “this is the type of game we should be winning” necessarily. They played with a fluidity and movement that we either couldn’t comprehend or couldn’t track, and deserved to win by the margin they did, at least.
That said, it’s difficult to find positives from our performance. Nathan Jones made a couple of personnel change mistakes within the game and one tactical change mistake which I will get into, but I do think the brunt of the blame for that performance has to lay on the players. Cardiff were better than us, but we normally thrive when teams are obviously better than us. We started ok, and then completely crumbled after the second goal. Everyone’s head dropped, we lacked any kind of intensity in the second half and the few things that we were doing that were actually working stopped even being attempted.
The only way in which I think Jones has impacted this lack of player character and attitude is with his own attitude. I think normally his box office style, his controversial pantomime villain reputation takes the weight of expectation off the players. But there’s only so many times you can complain about fixture congestion and player fatigue before the players start believing it themselves. We looked a team who believed that they were too tired to even fight back from 3-1, and that that was ok because it’s not our fault, it’s down to the people who organise the fixtures.
Changing formation should not have happened. TC, with 5 goals in 9 games, should never play as a wing back, and I thought we had progressed beyond the desire or necessity to ever do that again. I could talk at length of how we should’ve lined up differently in that back 3 once we changed, but frankly we shouldn’t have even changed, so I won’t bother. Bindon, who to his credit played a fantastic through ball for our goal, was not winning his battles against Salech, and bringing a player like Bell on at CB, who at least has the championship nouse and experience to get the better of Salech in non-physical way, would’ve been a better move.
That’s the tactical mistake Jones made. The personnel mistake he made was bringing on Ouma. I wanted so badly to be patient with Ouma, to give him the benefit of the doubt. He plays in a position where mistakes get punished harder which makes them more visible, he’s young and I do believe there is a player in there somewhere. But I would not be surprised if we never see him play for us again. He is not the reason we lost, but he was certainly not the player to bring on as a No. 10 while Knibbs and Carey twiddled their thumbs. A smaller mistake was taking Coventry off instead of Skipp. Neither of them had bad games, but if one of your DMs is going to be the young, inexperienced and lacking in confidence Ouma, you want a player who knows the squad inside out beside him, not the one who signed on deadline day.
The worst performance did not come from Ouma. It came from Alli. I can accept a winger not being a good defender one on one, that’s not what they are in the team to do. But to not know how to position yourself when you do need to support your full back at the age of 26 is very poor. At his age, if his career was going to explode it would’ve happened by now. I don’t know why that wasn’t considered before signing him. Perhaps that’s why we looked so exposed - TC has clearly been told not to defend, and Alli just doesn’t know how to.
After the international break we get 5 arguable starters back from injury - Godden, Koumetio, Ramsey, Chalobah and Edwards. The one we have missed the most is Koumetio. When teams have a big man up top, normally Lloyd Jones makes them seem anonymous. Now that he doesn’t have an equally tall, equally dominant CB next to him like Koumetio, teams can just target Bindon, or Bell or whoever plays in his place, and have much more fruitful returns. His return is the one I anticipate the most.
Kelman has looked best when he had Campbell next to him and Carey behind him to pick up the scraps. Now that we don’t play like that, I wonder what his place is in this team. I hope he can prove me wrong, because Leaburn, who finally looked exhausted after bearing the full load of being our only centre forward option for the last 7 games, cannot do this by himself. If we genuinely believe that Kelman can learn from Godden’s game, it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
This is the first game this season where we looked like we did last season, including the Stoke game. Worse than lacking ideas, we seemed to lack confidence in the ideas we were having. No risks were taken, which was the difference between the two teams today. We can’t let this be the beginning of our regression to the way we played last year, because I genuinely do not believe we are that team any more. I hope Jones is right - that getting those injured players back will see us start winning again. 12 points from 8 games is acceptable, but this performance is not.
Cardiff Thoughts
A regressive performance.
Firstly, I’ll be fair to Cardiff. This is not a team that deserves only 1 win in 8. They are so much better than that, I don’t believe that “this is the type of game we should be winning” necessarily. They played with a fluidity and movement that we either couldn’t comprehend or couldn’t track, and deserved to win by the margin they did, at least.
That said, it’s difficult to find positives from our performance. Nathan Jones made a couple of personnel change mistakes within the game and one tactical change mistake which I will get into, but I do think the brunt of the blame for that performance has to lay on the players. Cardiff were better than us, but we normally thrive when teams are obviously better than us. We started ok, and then completely crumbled after the second goal. Everyone’s head dropped, we lacked any kind of intensity in the second half and the few things that we were doing that were actually working stopped even being attempted.
The only way in which I think Jones has impacted this lack of player character and attitude is with his own attitude. I think normally his box office style, his controversial pantomime villain reputation takes the weight of expectation off the players. But there’s only so many times you can complain about fixture congestion and player fatigue before the players start believing it themselves. We looked a team who believed that they were too tired to even fight back from 3-1, and that that was ok because it’s not our fault, it’s down to the people who organise the fixtures.
Changing formation should not have happened. TC, with 5 goals in 9 games, should never play as a wing back, and I thought we had progressed beyond the desire or necessity to ever do that again. I could talk at length of how we should’ve lined up differently in that back 3 once we changed, but frankly we shouldn’t have even changed, so I won’t bother. Bindon, who to his credit played a fantastic through ball for our goal, was not winning his battles against Salech, and bringing a player like Bell on at CB, who at least has the championship nouse and experience to get the better of Salech in non-physical way, would’ve been a better move.
That’s the tactical mistake Jones made. The personnel mistake he made was bringing on Ouma. I wanted so badly to be patient with Ouma, to give him the benefit of the doubt. He plays in a position where mistakes get punished harder which makes them more visible, he’s young and I do believe there is a player in there somewhere. But I would not be surprised if we never see him play for us again. He is not the reason we lost, but he was certainly not the player to bring on as a No. 10 while Knibbs and Carey twiddled their thumbs. A smaller mistake was taking Coventry off instead of Skipp. Neither of them had bad games, but if one of your DMs is going to be the young, inexperienced and lacking in confidence Ouma, you want a player who knows the squad inside out beside him, not the one who signed on deadline day.
The worst performance did not come from Ouma. It came from Alli. I can accept a winger not being a good defender one on one, that’s not what they are in the team to do. But to not know how to position yourself when you do need to support your full back at the age of 26 is very poor. At his age, if his career was going to explode it would’ve happened by now. I don’t know why that wasn’t considered before signing him. Perhaps that’s why we looked so exposed - TC has clearly been told not to defend, and Alli just doesn’t know how to.
After the international break we get 5 arguable starters back from injury - Godden, Koumetio, Ramsey, Chalobah and Edwards. The one we have missed the most is Koumetio. When teams have a big man up top, normally Lloyd Jones makes them seem anonymous. Now that he doesn’t have an equally tall, equally dominant CB next to him like Koumetio, teams can just target Bindon, or Bell or whoever plays in his place, and have much more fruitful returns. His return is the one I anticipate the most.
Kelman has looked best when he had Campbell next to him and Carey behind him to pick up the scraps. Now that we don’t play like that, I wonder what his place is in this team. I hope he can prove me wrong, because Leaburn, who finally looked exhausted after bearing the full load of being our only centre forward option for the last 7 games, cannot do this by himself. If we genuinely believe that Kelman can learn from Godden’s game, it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
This is the first game this season where we looked like we did last season, including the Stoke game. Worse than lacking ideas, we seemed to lack confidence in the ideas we were having. No risks were taken, which was the difference between the two teams today. We can’t let this be the beginning of our regression to the way we played last year, because I genuinely do not believe we are that team any more. I hope Jones is right - that getting those injured players back will see us start winning again. 12 points from 8 games is acceptable, but this performance is not.
Re: Tom George Charlton Athletic :
Wed Sep 23, 2026 5:39 pm
Remember that some (including the board) wanted Nathan Jones to be our manager when BBM got the job.
The board just struck lucky with BBM.
The board just struck lucky with BBM.
Re: Tom George Charlton Athletic :
Wed Sep 23, 2026 5:54 pm
worcester_ccfc wrote:Remember that some (including the board) wanted Nathan Jones to be our manager when BBM got the job.
The board just struck lucky with BBM.
Very very true.
Ned,
They were so lucky regarding BBM they said yes because he was cheap at the time and wanted virtually zero Transfer money.
Re: Tom George Charlton Athletic :
Wed Sep 23, 2026 6:27 pm
Forever Blue wrote:worcester_ccfc wrote:Remember that some (including the board) wanted Nathan Jones to be our manager when BBM got the job.
The board just struck lucky with BBM.
Very very true.
Ned,
They were so lucky regarding BBM they said yes because he was cheap at the time and wanted virtually zero Transfer money.
Maybe even ‘luckier’ not to employ Nathan Jones?
Re: Tom George Charlton Athletic :
Thu Sep 24, 2026 3:01 pm
Sven wrote:Forever Blue wrote:worcester_ccfc wrote:Remember that some (including the board) wanted Nathan Jones to be our manager when BBM got the job.
The board just struck lucky with BBM.
Very very true.
Ned,
They were so lucky regarding BBM they said yes because he was cheap at the time and wanted virtually zero Transfer money.
Maybe even ‘luckier’ not to employ Nathan Jones?
BBM is a gem and I'd take him over Nathan Jones anyday but come on nobody expected Charlton to go up and they did, nobody expected them to stay up and they did, he's hardly failed there has he