Nathan Jones has had a fun few weeks. It started off against Stoke, one of his former clubs of course and one whose fanbase thinks he is a complete and utter prick. The Jones boy had the last laugh though with a 1-0 win. Following that he had a home game against Portsmouth, whose fans think he’s a complete an utter prick because he used to manage Saints above any other reason. This time Nathan didn’t have such a good day and they got beat, conceding three goals at home to quite possibly the worst attack in the Championship outside of Sheffield Wednesday. Today, he travels to the scene of possibly his greatest debacle, St Mary’s to play Southampton.

In their win against Stoke, it was refreshing to see the Jones is still, as he ever was, a prick, giving it fucking over exaggerated loads, after the game. It should be one of the main motivating factors for Saints today, to not let their fans be subjected to that level of shit. There was the possibility of that happening earlier on in the season of course as our very green manager, in charge of his fourth game took his side to The Valley and absolutely blew Jones’ Charlton away by five goals to one. Whilst the repeat of that would be unexpected, it would certainly be most welcome.

Saints have improved massively of late of course, since signing a proper goalkeeper and playing with a proper back four but unfortunately, that back four is going to be disrupted today with Welington being injured. His replacement will no doubt be Ryan Manning who will not be able to shirk his defensive responsibilities as he does when he plays as at wing back, tackles and headers are going to have to be made and crosses are going to have to be blocked. Jumping out of everything and relying on being a shithouse is really not going to cut it as he stands in for one of our stand-out performers over the last few weeks.

There are other interesting questions in a couple of areas with Shea Charles surely having done enough to start the game with his heroics against Leicester. Kuryu Matsuki doesn’t have as strong a case to start, but has certainly put his hand up over the last couple of weeks. I would anticipate Ross Stewart starting with Canada Cyle making an appearance for the last half an hour off the bench.

If you want to achieve anything in this division, then home games against the likes of Charlton, absolutely have to be three points and Nathan Jones can have another fucking miserable day at St Mary’s and hopefully be giving an interview after the game talking about underlying stats and metrics as some sort of justification as to why his team got smashed.

Other news this week saw the 50th anniversary of our FA Cup win roll on and as we were drawn against Fulham at Craven Cottage. As draws against Premier League clubs go in the last 16, this is not too bad and we should be just under 5000 strong at Fulham when that game rolls around. I do feel that we have done justice to the FA Cup this season already by getting through to the last 16, so we can go at this one as almost a free hit in the ludicrously expensive yellow kit.

The team news is pretty much what I was hoping for with Shea Charles coming in for Casper Jander and Ryan Manning replacing Welington at left back. Ross Stewart is unsurprisingly given the nod up front.

Saints make a fast start with Fellows beating in the full back on the outside and putting in a great ball to the back post where Scienza meets it superbly on the volley and it’s past the keeper but kicked off the line by a bloody defender who is behind him. Fantastic and very annoying defending.

Scienza has started the game very positively, up against the similarly named Sichenje, who is making his debut for Charlton and the debutant duly chops Leo down right on the edge of the penalty area. It’s so close to the edge, with the player being inside the box when he makes the challenge and it’s one of those ones that if it was in the Premier League, they would be back-and-forth all over the place trying to work out what was going on and whether to give a penalty or not. In the event James Bree, against the team he never wanted to leave, according to the representative from the Welsh Mining Village, fires in the free-kick straight at the goalkeeper, who punches it away.

Saints totally dominant but struggling to break down the masked ranks of Charlton defenders. Five across the back and four in midfield. Flynn Downes slots a great ball through to his midfield partner Charles coming in from the left-hand side and his low effort is kicked away by Kaminsky in goal.

Another foul by Sichenje on the left, which is about his fourth, and the referee is still not doing anything about it apart from give us free kicks. This time, Breezy’s effort is headed away for a corner which we work at short and out to Manning on the edge of the box and he takes it first time left footed and it’s over the keeper and pings off the crossbar.

A great chance as a low ball into the box by Scienza causes carnage and it comes out to Azaz on the bounce and he launches it into the Chapel Stand. It reminds me that when we played Charlton away from home, Azaz was fully in the zone and looked like the best player in the Championship. Today so far, he has not.

Half time and to be honest there hasn’t been much wrong, we just haven’t scored yet. Charlton are offering absolutely nothing going forward as Jones is clearly determined to learn the lessons from the home game against us. I really can’t see Charlton deviating in too much from what they have been doing so far and this game is going to be all about who gets the first goal. If we get it then we should win comfortably but if somehow they break habits of the first half and actually come forward and nick goal, it could be a bit of a nightmare.

Saints come out with a bity more pace about the attack and two minutes in, we take a quick free kick and work it out to Scienza on the left-hand side and he switches onto his right foot before quickly putting over across into the middle and Stewart reads it brilliantly, gets away from his marker and flicks a header back over his shoulder and into the far top corner of the net, giving Kaminsky no chance at all. Get in, brilliant header.

Charlton’s response is to send a cross into the box which is easily caught by Peretz and he launches a fantastic throw over everybody to release Scienza on the left and he knocks it across to Fellows and Tom‘s natural inability to do anything when he has the white posts in front of him comes to the surface again as he takes a touch and falls over a defender.

The training game of attack v defence continues as another corner comes in from Scienza on the left and it’s flicked on at the near post, but unfortunately it’s a little bit too high for James Bree to repeat his heroics against Leicester in the FA Cup last weekend and he gets under it and over the bar it goes.

We have a minor scare as a long ball forward is on top of Stephens, who tries to nod it back to the keeper but instead guides it straight to Lyndon Dykes who luckily for us, controls it with his arm before smashing it in the net. It’s a clear handball, but we’re grateful to the referee for spotting it because the linesman who has the clearest view, does fuck all.

It seems to be enough to spook Tonda though as he takes off Shea Charles who has been excellent and replaces him with Casper Jander. I’m immediately irritated by this because it’s clearly come off of a predetermined spreadsheet. Charlton attack down our left and the ball goes across to Carey at the top of the penalty area and he shoots low across goal and though Peretz gets a touch, it ends up in the corner of the net. For fuck‘s sake. Question marks on the goalkeeper because he possibly should’ve saved it but the bottom line is, it’s an unmarked player with a free shot. The guy who scored comes from exactly the area of the pitch where Charles would’ve been.

Three more substitutions incoming and it’s the whole forward line with Stewart, Scienza and Fellows being replaced by Larin, Edozie and Matsuki. Again, aside from the Stewart one, the other two substitutions seem unnecessary and Scienza is clearly not happy about being saved for Tuesday.

Saints look a bit rattled now and THB steams into a challenge which brings the first yellow card of the afternoon as the ref finally remember he has cards. A high free kick into our box and a flick on and it looks like they’re going to score again but somehow we smuggle it away. We build up the right hand side through Bree and Matsuki before the Japanese fires in a lovely cross with his left foot and Ryan Manning comes ghosting in but gets the header all wrong and just plops it down to the goalkeeper.

And just like that, it all kicks off out of nowhere as Downes and Conor Coady get in a bit of a scuffle. Flynn leans in and Coady hits the deck in embarrassing fashion. No one is particularly happy and clearly the referee has no fucking idea what’s going on so it ends up booking both the players on vibes and nothing to do with what he’s actually seen.

Charlton are in full timewasting mode now as they’ve got what they came for and so we arrive at the point where the fourth official sticks the board up and there are ten minutes to go. Tonda celebrates and makes his first sensible substitution of the day by taking off Flynn Downes and replacing him with Cameron Bragg,

We are now playing with the intensity that we should’ve been playing with for the whole of the second half,. Edozie and Jander combine on the left to find Larin and the ball gets fired across to Matsuki who slips as he hits it which takes all the pace off it and the goalkeeper gathers easily.

99, 100 and Manning’s cross in hits a defender who goes down as you would expect, but we have another corner. Bree swings it in and it’s headed out as far as Edozie who hammers it back in but it’s deflected wide for another corner but the refs had enough and blows for full-time. Shit.

Well what a shit result that is. Absolutely two points dropped and we completely mugged ourselves off there. Once we went ahead, it should’ve been relatively straight forward against such a limited opponents to keep a clean sheet and see the game out butt the unnecessary substitution of Shea Charles can be seen as the self-sabotage turning point in disrupting the team, allowing Charlton a rare attack and a free shot from the edge of the box. It’s Jander’s man who scores as he got attracted to the ball and lost him. I’m not blaming Jander as he just shouldn’t have been thrown on at that stage. The centre of midfield had been working well, along with the defence, keeping Charlton restricted to nothing but Tonda chose to disrupt it when we had just taken the lead. not only that, he brought the wrong player on as Bragg had a great game last week and Jander’s last game was the first half against Leicester when we went 3-0 down and he contributed to two of the goals and should have been dragged after half an hour. I don’t feel though that Charles had to be substituted – it was all pre-planned and therefore was not a substitution made with the situation of the game in mind. The substitution of Scienza was down to another game being on the horizon in three days time, which is another reason why you get the predetermined substitutions from Tonda as he worries about the next game and doesn’t look after the one that we’re currently playing. We took off our best attacking player to rest him when we need a goal in the next half an hour. Tonda’s quote afterwards was “we need to manage games better”. That would be you then mate. Tow points dropped on you.

Saints were a bit flat today and it wasn’t until the ten minutes of injury time that we started putting the ball in the box with any regularity. It seems that we forget at times that we’ve got centre forwards in there who can actually score from crosses now. Ryan Manning in particular was guilty of not putting the ball in the box on a few occasions and where did our goal come from? Scienza puts the ball in with a bit of quality and a brilliant header by Ross Stewart.

To be fair to Nathan Jones, he was the manager who had the better game. He set up his team to frustrate the hell out of us and that’s what they did with nine defensive players for the majority of the game, they limited us to very a few efforts that caused the keeper any problems. He what he came for which was a point. He set up for a 0-0 draw and once 0-0 was off the table, that should’ve been the end of that but it’s one of those games where our inexperienced manager cost us and it’s a fact of life that there are always going to be game management situations that he gets wrong because he is learning on the job. Today was one of those. Jones was feisty in his post-match interviews, talking shit about his time at Saints and about the Carabao Cup win against City and us reaching the demi-final. Didn’t mention that we lost the semi up at Newcastle in two minutes with his ludicrous selection of course. He talks shit, he always talks shit but I think we have to just smile about it and move on. He got a result today.

As for our players, Finn Azaz bugged to the shit out of me today. I know he’s the sort of player that you need to look at what he can do rather than what he can’t do, and we all know that he’s a streaky player, but I think it’s safe to assume that if he has got to 60-65 minutes without doing anything then it’s pretty safe to assume that he’s not going to do anything for the rest of the game and we probably need an option with more energy. We’ve got Matsuki sat on the bench who is absolutely ideal as an alternative for that position but at the moment we’re bringing him on for Tom Fellows. A better substitution today would’ve been to have brought Matsuki on for Azaz and either leaving Fellows on the pitch or bringing on Edozie on the right..

So a disappointing result, but not terminal to our ambitions of sneaking into the playoffs. Promotion campaigns always have quite a few results like these, but you take a point and you move on . It does put more pressure on the next game, however, which is QPR at home and a reunion with Ronnie Edwards. Win that an this game is forgotten and hopefully, with Sheffield Wednesday to follow on Saturday, Tonda won’t be tempted to piss about too much and we can make sure we win on Tuesday without worrying about Saturday.