Nathan Jones was satisfied, if not thrilled, with his side’s 0-0 draw against Stevenage on Monday, their tenth consecutive game unbeaten.
“It’s a point. I’m not ecstatic in any way,” he told local media. “But it’s another step in the right direction.”
“There’s lot of positives,” he continued. “A clean sheet, another point, another game unbeaten. They gave me everything. They’re working, putting their head on the block if they have to.”
“We were decent in terms of how we controlled the game, how we moved the ball. It’s just we needed to be better. We need to show a bit more quality, a bit more bravery. But that will come.”
Chief among the positives was the clean sheet, something Jones believes the side needs more of.
“It’s no good being a really good footballing side but then needing three just to win a game. That’s not what I believe,” he said.
“We need to keep clean sheets, because if you keep clean sheets there’s goals in this team. We very rarely fail to score in a game.”
As the match wore on, it was the other end of the pitch that Jones wanted to see more from.
“We kind of run out of ideas later on,” he said. “I would have liked to make more positive changes, but we had to make enforced [changes]. And then, because of how they finish games - with basically putting everyone in the box - we brought [Lucas] Nessy on instead of putting on someone like TC [Tyreece Campbell] or Kazenga [LuaLua], which enabled us to keep that clean sheet.”
“I would have loved to go on and win it, but I would have been devastated if they had nicked in late on from us going to sleep.”
After what has felt like a barrage of away games, the Addicks now have two more matches at the Valley to look forward to.
“We’ve got two home games coming up where we want to be right at it,” said the boss. “Two tough games, against two different sides, but an opportunity for us to pick up some more points.”
