Jones silences critics to lead Charlton revival

Even in Narnia, winter came to an end eventually.

Given that author CS Lewis’s redemption metaphor of choice was a lion we won’t linger too long with that analogy, but there is more than a hint of long overdue spring in the air at The Valley. There is even a touch of magic about Charlton’s abrupt transformation since December.

An extraordinary acceleration has brought 15 wins and three draws in the 21 games which began when Northampton Town were shrugged aside 5-0 on their own turf four days before Christmas. That is an even faster rate of points accumulation than Chris Powell’s League One title-winning team managed in 2011/12. However, it is just as much the startling juxtaposition with the preceding four months of relegation form, with only three league wins and six draws in 16, that has left observers gasping. 

For a time, the team’s earlier trajectory had been masked by three opening August wins. By December, fans’ patience was quite reasonably running out and tempers had frayed. But manager Nathan Jones, who lashed out at some of his post-match critics, was about to be stunningly vindicated.

Everything looks better in the sunshine, but a host of players are currently performing well above their autumn-based expectation. 

Two of Jones’ more controversial judgements have been spectacularly justified. His move last summer to replace divisional top scorer Alfie May with 33-year-old veteran goal poacher Matt Godden was initially seen through the prism of the former’s unwelcome departure. It was also clouded by a lengthy and little consummated flirtation with Gassan Ahadme as first-choice striker, in the lengthy - and now renewed - fitness-related absence of the talismanic Miles Leaburn.

A sputtering and rotating midfield did not provide any of the strikers with much of a service in the early months. Godden, though, has repeatedly shown his lethal pedigree once given the chance, scoring 14 league goals so far. He is a no-nonsense predator of a kind not seen at Charlton for years.

Tyreece Campbell, meanwhile, had earlier looked bemused to find himself translated from a wide man to a more central attacking role. In this Jones defiantly persisted, even though Campbell did not score a league goal until that pre-Christmas party at Northampton.

The highly demonstrative Charlton manager had been proven air-punchingly right, even before the 21-year-old’s brace in the sumptuous demolition of promotion rivals Huddersfield Town at the end of March and his smartly struck winner at Mansfield Town three days later.  Campbell’s own tenacity is worthy of high praise.

The sense of a team that suddenly clicked into place is hard to escape, although that is harsh on the defence marshalled so capably by player of the year favourite Lloyd Jones. It had already contributed eight clean sheets to the cause in the 19 games that preceded the turnaround, having managed just two in the last six months of the previous season.

That the strength, energy and still raw talent of Thierry Small has been a significant factor in the transformation is underpinned by his ever-presence in the side since December, providing an unpredictable threat from an unexpected berth at right wingback.

Classiest performer of recent months, by some distance though, has been the man behind him. Missing through injury in the autumn, Kayne Ramsay’s calm authority and smooth ability on the ball is a treat of itself. He surely won’t linger in League One, whatever Charlton’s short-term fate.

The midfield, meanwhile, has settled into a far better balance, with consistency of selection matched by a similar quality in performance. 

Even so, the odds remain stacked against this team becoming the first Charlton side in exactly 50 years to secure promotion at The Valley when they close the regular season against Burton Albion on May 3rd. They would likely have to win all six remaining fixtures, including trips to second-place rivals Wycombe and Wrexham, and even then require both the other two to stumble further. However, a play-off place already looks secure.

Eight consecutive home wins - previously achieved, but not surpassed, in 1980 by Mike Bailey's promotion side - would lift the atmosphere at any club, yet the sense of transformation goes beyond the season’s outcome. Nathan Jones’ position is now as secure as he wants it to be and that will underpin his authority to choose his own summer signings.

The departure of technical director Andy Scott in mid-February and chief executive Charlie Methven a month later portray an ownership that is cleaning house under Gavin Carter, appointed non-executive chairman in December. 

It would be naive to take very seriously the initial narrative carefully spun around Methven’s exit, which is not to say that the official club statement about it was not appropriately professional.

While Methven’s allies in the fanbase – the more than three stooges, as they might more tartly be described – may have swallowed his version whole; the fact that his departure was abrupt and in March, after just nine months in the role, hardly supports the idea that it was planned or amicable. He did not attend the Wigan Athletic or Huddersfield Town home games after it was announced.

The solitary sentence devoted to him “standing down” in the Valley Review for Wigan was rather more telling, as were contradictory public claims from Methven and the club about whether he had relinquished his small shareholding.

Although he was, and remains, at least according to Companies House, a director of SE7 Partners, through which Charlton is owned by Global Football Partners, Methven has never been a director of the football club. Neither are board chair Carter or vice chair Paul Elliott.

He used a South London Press interview to remind people that he introduced managing director Jim Rodwell and finance director Ed Warrick to the club, which was fairly pointed given that the pair are known to have fallen out with him some months earlier.

Rodwell has taken to watching matches from the media gantry rather the directors’ box, which may or may not have been because he prefers the view. It echoes the strange online session for fans in January when the two men appeared from separate but nearby locations, with Rodwell and Scott at Sparrows Lane and Methven at The Valley.

Tales have also emerged of Methven leading lavish matchday boardroom hospitality which extended well into the evening at the club’s expense.

While it is widely acknowledged that the departed chief executive could be charming, and even insightful about the game, a much-touted growth in Charlton’s commercial revenue during his stewardship appears have been undermined by a corresponding bump in costs. The head of commercial since January 2024, Barry Higson, quickly followed him out of the door with immediate effect.

Ex-Sunderland mascot and managing director Tony Davison is another of Methven’s longstanding pals to pop up at The Valley, as a consultant. His firm Cuttlebrook Consulting was retained last year “to provide commercial advice and support". It claimed: "This is a broad appointment covering commercial projects including hospitality, retail, sponsorship and catering.”

Certainly the club has been linked with more substantial brands this season than in the recent past, although it’s the cost-benefit ratio that will be of most interest to the owners. The club is always likely to struggle commercially outside the Premier League.

Methven may have avoided replicating the level of toxicity of his relationship with Sunderland fans, but it now seems unlikely that he will be welcomed back as a guest of the club. Those who steadfastly declined to see him as a polished bluffer, which was always this writer’s view, will no doubt be baffled by his demise. 

Perhaps it hardly matters in the context of an exciting and energising end to the season, but it does illustrate the jeopardy of listening to those around the club content to amplify the succession of boardroom blowhards who have come and gone in short order.

Methven’s August 2023 interview with his former employers, the Daily Telegraph, about Charlton’s issues betrayed the reality: “The solution, he says, is getting operating losses down to £1-2 million per year and aiming to make a net profit in the medium term on player trading. ‘You will do that if you have any kind of competence at all’...”

Anyone who understands the club knew that this was a fantasy, and a not dissimilar one to that peddled by his immediate predecessors.

His appointment as chief executive in July 2024 was interpreted in some quarters as a first attempt to make him accountable for the changes he had helped introduce to the business. If that is true, his departure may indeed constitute the execution of a plan – just not his own.

Charlton have recently announced sensible season-ticket price uplifts and nobody I know has a bad word for Carter. The more substantive owners, low profile but not entirely absent, can bank significant progress from their second season in charge, after a disastrous first one, even if they are still, and will need to continue, paying through the nose for it in terms of operating losses. 

It’s early days, but just possibly the club is at last ready to move on to better things. Right now, it’s actually fun being a Charlton fan. No need to hide in the wardrobe any more, kids!