CHARLTON Athletic manager Nathan Jones was far from “ecstatic” despite a tenth game unbeaten – as he demanded more from his players after their 0-0 draw against Stevenage at The Valley on Easter Monday.
The Addicks are on their joint-longest unbeaten league run in three years, a sequence that straddled the tenures of Lee Bowyer, Johnnie Jackson and Nigel Adkins.
Charlton are not yet safe from relegation but it would take an unusual set of results between now and the end of the season for them to go down. They are sixteenth, eight points above the bottom four with five games left, though there are three teams below them with games in hand.
“It’s a point. I’m not ecstatic in any way,” Jones said. “But it’s another step in the right direction.
“There’s lot of positives: a clean sheet, another point, another game unbeaten. They gave me everything. They’re working, putting their head on the block if they have to.
“We were decent in terms of how we controlled the game, how we moved the ball. It’s just we needed to be better. We need to show a bit more quality, a bit more bravery. But that will come.”
It was Charlton’s second clean sheet in eleven games under Jones, after none in their previous eighteen league matches.
“It’s no good being a really good footballing side but then needing three just to win a game. That’s not what I believe,” Jones said.
“We need to keep clean sheets, because if you keep clean sheets there’s goals in this team. We very rarely fail to score in a game.”
Charlton have won only once at home since November 28 and they struggled to create much of note. Substitute Tyreeq Bakinson knocked Thierry Small’s cross wide from ten yards out with 20 minutes left.
Jones said: “We kind of run out of ideas later on. I would have liked to make more positive changes, but we had to make enforced [substitutions]. And then, because of how they finish games, with basically putting everyone in the box, we brought [Lucas] Nessy on instead of putting on someone like TC [Tyreece Campbell] or Kazenga [LuaLua], which enabled us to keep that clean sheet.
“I would have loved to go on and win it, but I would have been devastated if they had nicked in late on from us going to sleep.”
After seven away games in his opening eleven in charge, Jones has the novelty of three back-to-back fixtures at The Valley, with play-off contenders Barnsley on Saturday followed by Wigan Athletic next Tuesday.
“We’ve got two home games coming up where we want to be right at it,” Jones said. “Two tough games, against two different sides, but an opportunity for us to pick up some more points.”
