NATHAN Jones welcomed the international break after a hectic start to life as Charlton Athletic manager and hopes that key players will return for the League One run-in.
Jones oversaw nine games in 35 days after succeeding Michael Appleton, going unbeaten since his first, a 2-0 defeat at Reading.
The Addicks have a relatively comfortable nine-point gap over the bottom-four places and are now only five points off the top half after being in relegation danger when Jones arrived.
Charlton travel to Exeter City on Good Friday.
“What we’ve been able to do is rest up a few, get one or two back and then put some real good work into the players which was essential, especially in the early stages,” Jones said on Charlton’s website. “We’ve been here for seven weeks so to be able to have two free weeks to work with them – hopefully we see the fruition of that.
Charlton would go above Exeter into fifteenth with a win at St James Park.
“We take every game on its merits and we know that every game’s a different challenge,” Jones said. “They’re well-drilled, well-coached and it’s always a tough place to go. All we want to do is make sure that we keep this run going and get to the level of performance that we want to because we dipped slightly below it at Fleetwood, albeit in horrific conditions.
“We now want to get back to the levels that we were showing pre-Fleetwood.”
Jones said that Kayne Ramsay, Lloyd Jones and Chuks Aneke are “much closer than what they were before the break, so the squad’s in a much healthier position”.
