CHARLTON Athletic are on their longest unbeaten run in almost ten years – but Nathan Jones was far from happy after his side let another lead slip in their 1-1 draw at Cambridge United at the weekend.
The Addicks made it thirteen games unbeaten to match their sequence in the Championship in October 2014.
Connor Wickham bagged his first goal for Charlton in the 23rd minute before Macauley Bonne scored against his former club five minutes after half-time.
“We’ve got to keep a clean sheet,” Jones said on Charlton TV. “We’ve led at Fleetwood – comfortable. We’ve led at Northampton – comfortable. We’ve lead here – relatively comfortable apart from the wind. Yet we’ve dropped two points.
“We could be the highest points-takers in the league in the last thirteen, fourteen games but something keeps happening. When we don’t score chances at the other end and put the game to bed, then that’s what happens.
“It’s a poor goal [to concede]. He shouldn’t score from there with that type of shot. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”
Jones added: “The positives are it’s another point, undefeated, away from home, very difficult conditions – the wind is swirling, the pitch is rustic at best. And we created enough chances to have won the game. So those are the positives.
“The pitch didn’t allow too much good, fluent football. We went to Fleetwood the other day and it was just brutal. [Saturday] was brutal. The pitch is dry – they probably haven’t watered it in eight, ten years.”
The result means Charlton are mathematically safe from relegation after they were only three points above the bottom four with no wins in twelve games when Jones took over in January.
Jones said: “That was the goal, but I never had any doubt in my mind that we wouldn’t [beat the drop], with the squad and how we work and how we do stuff.
“What I would really like us to do is really get some momentum pushing into next season.”
Meanwhile, Bonne said the boos from the Charlton supporters spurred him. The Addicks manager at the time, Dean Holden, said Bonne had had “ups and downs” after the club confirmed the forward would leave on a free transfer last summer.
Bonne moved to Gillingham before joining the U’s in the last transfer window.
“It’s always going to be there now,” Bonne said in the Cambridge Independent after this first goal for the club. “They said some things, I said some things but that’s football and things happen.
“There’s some Charlton fans I really get on with, but there’s some that came today to boo me.
“One hundred per cent [it motivated him]. I got it in the warm-up and it was ‘boo, boo, boo’. I just thought, ‘you know what? Keep doing it because any minute it’s going to come back and bite you.’”
Charlton host Shrewsbury Town on Saturday.
