It’s three years this month since Southampton handed Jones a
crack at the Premier League, an appointment that unravelled painfully quickly,
ended with caustic chants inside St Mary’s and one young fan trying to hand the
former Luton Town manager a giant, homemade P45, shortly before the real thing
arrived.
Jones’s 95-day tenure is the eighth-shortest by a permanent
manager in Premier League history, yet when he meets his previous
employers for the first time in Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off he does so with a
spring in his step once again, five points and eight places better off than
managerless Southampton.
Since Charlton appointed Jones in February 2024, his work at
the Valley has been nothing short of remarkable. Jones inherited a side who had
not won for 14 games and sat three points above the League One relegation zone.
After steering them to safety, last season Jones returned the club to the
Championship via the play-offs.
Only Stockport County and Birmingham City have collected
more points in England’s top four tiers since the start of the year. A 1-0
defeat against Wrexham before the international break was only a second loss
since August. Charlton, the least fancied of the three promoted clubs, are two
points outside the play-offs, above big-spending Birmingham and Wrexham. Southampton,
meanwhile, are searching for a fifth manager since Jones’s departure in
February 2023.
Jones has lost none of the zeal and intensity that, over two
spells, dragged Luton from the depths of League Two to the brink of the Premier
League and made him one of the most coveted coaches in the EFL. Charlton — like
Luton, but not Stoke or Southampton — were ready to buy into the Welshman’s
idiosyncratic ways after painful ownership fiascos and eight of the past nine
seasons spent in the third tier.
Like him or loathe him, those frenzied touchline
celebrations are box-office viewing and there is no denying that, with total
buy-in, the 52-year-old will make his club a force to be reckoned with. “I’m a
passionate person,” says Jones, whose side are drawing in the largest crowds
seen at The Valley since relegation from the Premier League 17 years ago.
“As a player, I tried to glean everything out of my playing
career. I was energetic, I was front-footed, I was super fit and my teams, I
think, are a reflection of that.
“I’m animated in those 90 minutes, and I have a certain
persona, a bit Batman and Bruce Wayne. Sometimes I get carried away. Sometimes
I do stuff that I look back on and think, ‘Ooh, that was touch and go there,’
or, ‘That was very close to the wire.’ But they’re authentic, they’re not fabricated.
Jones, a devout Christian, has a strong relationship with
Charlton’s club chaplain, Matt Baker, who leads a dozen-strong prayer group
before each game at the Valley. “We’re very proud of our faith at this football
club and I’m convinced that’s why we’re in a good place,” Jones says.
While his Luton team romped League Two and League One
playing a diamond midfield and expansive football, and by scoring a bucketload
of goals, Jones has been on something of a tactical journey. Charlton’s
approach this season rather captures the zeitgeist: they average the league’s
second-lowest share of possession (43 per cent), have its second-meanest
defence, have won 100 more aerial duels than any other team and have scored
more goals from set plays (eight) than anyone but league leaders Coventry City.
“Now I’m at a club I love. I love the journey we’re on. I
love the people I work with. I love my group. And yes, there are more talented
groups. There are bigger budgets. There are shinier training grounds. But this
is a proper football club. And we are nowhere near our ceiling yet. That’s the
exciting thing.
“I feel at home in the fact that the people here have
embraced me, the fans have embraced me, and in the work and the autonomy I get
to do my job.
“God willing, that takes us back to the Premier League. Not
me, us. Then I’ll be in a different starting point to where I was at
Southampton.”
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