NATHAN Jones said he felt sorry for Charlton Athletic fans who paid to watch their side’s 1-0 defeat at Wycombe Wanderers – and repeated that the result emphasised the rebuilding job he has ahead of him this summer.
Luke Leahy scored the only goal from the penalty spot in the seventh minute after Terell Thomas had fouled Richard Kone.
Jones saw his side’s fourteen-game unbeaten run ended on the final day as he suffered just a second defeat in sixteen since taking over in February.
Jones guided Charlton away from the relegation zone to a sixteenth-place finish, but he was unhappy with his team’s display against mid-table Wycombe.
“That wasn’t good watching today,” Jones told CharltonTV. “I feel for [the fans] today, I really do, because I didn’t like watching that and they’ve had to pay to watch it.
“I actually got paid to watch that today and I didn’t like watching it. So I really feel for them today because you can’t pull the wool over football fans’ eyes. That wasn’t good enough.
“It’s a rubber stamp of what I’ve got to do in the summer. Four clean sheets in 46 – it shows where the frailties are.
“This club’s had three managers this year, and none of us have kept clean sheets. Three managers can’t be bad, so it’s personnel.
“We made changes at half time because they weren’t contributing to the game. And if they weren’t contributing to the game, how long do we leave it?”
Jones added: “I don’t want to speak too much now, but it’s a big summer ahead. We can’t be sentimental. We’ve got to be bold in what we want to do next year. I think we’ve got as far as we possibly can with the group.
“There will be a categorically different squad from the one we have right now next year. There has to be, otherwise it’s going to be a tough season again.
“We’ll make big changes over the summer and then come back and hopefully hit the ground running and give [supporters] a side that [they] can look at and really want to get behind.”
