Charlton Athletic should launch ambitious swoop for ex-Premier League manager: Opinion | OneFootball

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Charlton Athletic became the first club in the EFL to sack their manager in the 2023-24 season in late August when Dean Holden lost his job after a poor start to the campaign.

The Addicks had lost four league matches on the spin and had also been knocked out of the EFL Cup by League Two opposition following an opening day of the season win over Leyton Orient, all of which led to Holden losing his job after eight months in the role.

It appears that SE7 Partners, who took over the Londoners from Thomas Sandgaard in July, are not messing about when it comes to their plans, but it was the head of the consortium Charlie Methven who recommended Holden in the first place to the club back in December when it looked as though a deal would be tied up quickly.

That took nearly seven months in the end to manifest and now Methven, along with his fellow investors and Technical Director Andy Scott, will have to find Holden's successor - in which there has been already multiple knock-backs.

An approach for Peterborough United's Darren Ferguson was accepted but the son of Sir Alex turned down the chance to speak to Charlton, whilst their move for Mumbai City's highly-rated manager Des Buckingham has recently been knocked back.

Lee Bowyer has been touted as a potential option to return to The Valley for a second stint as manager, but the new custodians of the club could aim slightly higher and try to tempt an out of work manager who has been in the Premier League recently to jump on board with their project - and that is Nathan Jones.

Who is Nathan Jones, and where is he now?

The Welshman has been out of work since he was sacked by Southampton in February, with his first ever foray into the Premier League not exactly working out as planned.

Jones left a comfortable job at Luton Town for the second time in his career for a new experience with the Saints, who were in deep trouble at the time three months into the 2022-23 season and needed a quick turnaround.

It just didn't work out for Jones though - whilst he won five matches in charge of the club out of 14, just one of those came in the Premier League, with six defeats in that period signaling the end of his brief time at St Mary's Stadium.

His work at Luton though was more impressive and a reason as to why he got the Southampton job in the first place - he'd guided the Hatters up from League Two and had the Hatters second in the League One table in January 2019 when he left for Stoke.

By the time he returned to Kenilworth Road in May 2020, they were a Championship club, and he not only saved them from relegation in the final two months of that season, but he led them to 12th position in 2020-21 and then into the play-off semi-finals in 2021-22.

Jones helped to lay the foundations of Luton's promotion to the Premier League last season, albeit it was Rob Edwards who ended up guiding them there, so there is quite clearly a very good manager in there who is waiting for the next opportunity.

What has Nathan Jones said on his next potential job?

Speaking in May to Sky Sports about his future, Jones insisted he was ready for his next challenge, which could offer a club like Charlton hope that he could be tempted to take their vacancy.

"So I've enjoyed a bit of family time, I've been away on holiday which I don't usually get to do in March and so on. I'm really looking forward to my next challenge. I'm refreshed, and I'm ready," Jones said.

"I'm a builder, I like to build. I like to be at places for a long time. Ironically, I believe that our work is deep and not just results based.

"If you look at my previous club (Luton) we built a club there that wasn't reliant on just a manager being in place, right throughout the processes, the recruitment, the structure, the culture, the philosophy, everything is in place there and has been for a long, long time.

"I left on two occasions, but the club kept doing well, so it shows that whatever had been built had been built on solid foundations. "That's what I like to do. I'm not a fly-by-night manager, I don't like to chop and change.

"If I do choose a project or a project comes for me, then it is one that I really think I'm going to be there and be able to do good work in. That's the kind of thing I'd like to do."

Would Nathan Jones drop to League One to manage Charlton?

Charlton's new ownership of course is unproven right now, but it has a number of investors among it who could make a real difference at The Valley.

And you get the sense that the 'project' at Charlton could be an exciting one for years to come - especially with a number of academy prospects coming through the ranks at the club such as striker Miles Leaburn, Nathan Asiimwe and Daniel Kanu.

There is also a good League One core though with the likes of Scott Fraser, Alfie May, Michael Hector and Panutche Camara who would give their next head coach some instant quality to work with.

Jones was linked with the vacancy at his boyhood club Cardiff City earlier in the year, but they went for Erol Bulut instead - he could of course wait for the managerial merry-go-round to begin in the second tier of English football, but it's not always a guarantee to happen.

Or, if one of the bigger clubs in League One like Charlton come calling, then it's a chance that Jones could take - it would mean dropping back into the second tier for the first time in nearly five years, but it may be needed to rebuild his reputation of-sorts.