Nathan Jones reveals why Alfie May was absent from Charlton Athletic starting XI v Bolton | OneFootball

Charlton Athletic manager Nathan Jones has given reasons as to why the club's top scorer, Alfie May, was left out of the starting XI for Saturday's game against promotion-chasing Bolton Wanderers.

The Addicks managed to get a vital point in their battle for survival against one of the favourites to win promotion to the Championship. Charlton find themselves in an unexpected position; they are just a point away from the drop zone, and the two teams below them - Cheltenham Town and Port Vale - have two and three games in hand on them, respectively.

Going away to third in the table, when you are in that position, can be a daunting task, but they managed to get something out of it, and they did it without having top scorer Alfie May in the starting lineup. The forward, who was signed for around £250,000 on an initial two-year deal, according to the South London Press, has found the back of the net 16 times this season - 12 more than any other Charlton player.

Despite this, the manager decided not to include him in the first XI for this match, and he has explained his reasons for doing so.

Nathan Jones left Alfie May out of Charlton XI for tactical reasons

The former Luton Town and Southampton boss said that he felt that May would be most effective later on in the game, and that was why he wasn't used from the start at the Toughsheet Community Stadium.

Jones told the South London Press: "We didn’t drop Alfie May today. What we did was try to find a way so that when the game opens up – he hasn’t scored in a certain amount of time – so same as we did with Freddie [Ladapo], sometimes you have to really toil at the start and then chances come late on when the main strikers are tired."

Ladapo came off the bench against Lincoln City in their midweek match, last week, and scored the equaliser in the 1-1 draw.

May ended up coming on in the 86th minute, but the 50-year-old added that this was not the plan they had for him in the game."We thought 'bring him on at 60'", said the Welsh manager. "The game will open up and he’ll get chances. But Dan [Kanu] was in such good form that we just brought Chuks [Aneke] on. In terms of dropping people, it’s a fact of using four strikers to win a game and that’s what we’ll do."

The decision to drop Alfie May was a smart one by Nathan Jones

There is logic behind what the 50-year-old said about leaving the former Cheltenham forward out of the starting line-up. A fresh May against the tired legs of the Bolton defence could have been deadly. But, it turned out that the reason for the success of the decision wasn't May's impact, it was what the starting strikers were able to do.

Wanderers were without captain Ricardo Santos for this game. They played a back-three of Gethin Jones, Eoin Toal, and Jack Iredale. Toal is the only out-and-out central defender of the three, and the partnership of Ladapo and Kanu had the size advantage, and that worked to their favour in their first and third goals of the afternoon.

It was a bold call from Jones and a smart one as it helped them pick up an impressive point away at Bolton.