By Freddie Jennings at Vicarage Road
NATHAN Jones didn’t spare his side criticism after their 2-0 defeat to Watford at Vicarage Road extended their winless run to eight games.
Luca Kjerrumgaard and Jordan Zemura scored in the second half for the Hornets.
The South Londoners dropped to seventeenth in the Championship table as the hosts earned a first clean sheet of a turbulent season and were in the bottom three before kick-off having lost 4-0 and 5-1 to Burnley and Cardiff City in their previous two fixtures.
Hence Charlton’s failure to threaten the Hornets at all throughout the course of the 90 minutes aggravated fans who stayed behind after the final whistle to criticise the team, including manager Jones.
A late leveller in a 2-2 draw at Turf Moor in the week had given supporters a boost, yet any excitement garnered off the back of that fixture evaporated here. Given the anger directed from Watford fans to their Pozzo family ownership outside the ground, it felt as if the visitors had the perfect opportunity to capitalise.
Yet a dour display in the first half set the tone for an uninspiring defeat. This was nothing new for the travelling supporters who had made the trip to Hertfordshire. Jones’s pragmatic style appeared to be paying dividends in the opening matches this season, but results have steadily declined, and this loss represented arguably the lowest point of the campaign so far.
The Welshman applauded those that stayed behind to clap the team off, yet those claps were largely eclipsed by the sound of boos. In truth, the performance was so bad that even if they were top of the league that response would have been warranted, and Jones knew it. “I thought we were poor, I really do” he said. “I feel like we never really took the game to them.
“We looked lethargic and didn’t have enough energy. The midfield got bypassed too quickly.”
Jones had attempted to address the lack of vitality in his team by making five changes before the 75th minute, but the pattern of the game had been set and far too much time was afforded to Watford which resulted in the opener from Kjerrumgaard who finished the rebound after Edo Kayembe’s shot had been parried by Arthur Okonkwo.
“We had seven or eight players that were miles off the required level and yes it was poor,” Jones said. One of those players may have been Miles Leaburn who is yet to score this season. His replacement Charlie Kelman was similarly unable to produce any spark, suggesting that Jones’s apparent defence-first set-up is inhibiting the productivity of his forward-thinking players.
Yet the most alarming factor about this game had to be the easy concession of the goals, with Zemura dinking over Okonkwo after being sent through one-on-one by Rocco Vata.
“Teams are not having to do a hell of a lot to score against us,” Jones said. “We’re not defending our box well enough, we’re not doing the basics. We’ve broken the record at this club for clean sheets, and we’re not looking like that now.”
The clean sheet record he referred to was in the 2024-25 League One promotion campaign when his side shut out their opposition 23 times in all competitions.
However right now his team are a far cry from that, and they need to rediscover that kind of form as well as finding an additional impetus going forward. That process starts on Saturday with the visit of fellow strugglers Norwich City to The Valley. Based on the reaction from the supporters at Vicarage Road, Jones needs a win from his side.
