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You could be forgiven for thinking that the long wait for Nathan Jones to wrap up his post-training game of head tennis is a manifestation of a relentless will to win. It would scan, right? The qualities that have made Charlton Athletic such an impressive force in the early weeks of the Championship season translating onto a lower stakes field. Surely this is a contest going to the wire, one that Jones will not let end until he emerges victorious? Apparently not. "We win comfortably, week in, week out," he says. And what is it that has Jones and company wiping the floor with the ex-pros and sports scientist on the other team? "We keep going. We do the right things. We try to do the basics very, very well. The others are a bit fly-by-night." Or, to put it more succinctly, Jones' team have "Charlton qualities". Those qualities have taken the fallen giant back to a level befitting their stature and in the process have restored some of the luster that followed Jones before he was "hounded out" of his previous job, an eight-game stint at Southampton, as he puts it. Charlton, a club who spent a decade being hampered by their ownership as they yo-yoed between the second and third tiers, find themselves sixth as the Championship reaches its quarter mark. On their manager's appointment in February last year even escaping the purgatory of League One seemed a long shot for a club who sat 20th, a point above the relegation zone. Now it doesn't seem unreasonable to hope they could get back to the top flight for the first time since a seven-year run ended in 2007. Don't miss all the best action from the EFL, from the Championship to League One, League Two and the Carabao Cup, all season long on Paramount+ and CBS Sports Golazo Network. "Charlton will go back up to the Premier League," says the Welshman. "How quickly? We don't know. But Charlton will go back to the Premier League. "Right now we have to be competitive day in, day out and worry about [Saturday's opponent] Swansea City and that's all. We have a timescale where we think it's realistic for us and our group and so on, but this club now is a different club. It's a different animal." An animal, it transpires, that does not hunt far from its den. Onel Hernandez, the former Norwich winger who arrived last month, was stunned to discover that his manager had been sleeping at the training ground before the 3-0 win over Ipswich. "I'd never heard of something like that before," says the Cuba international. "Someone who is really into it, passionate, just wants to absorb everything. It's phenomenal. The club has to be very grateful for that." Hernandez's observation serves as a reminder that the audience is just as significant as the message when it comes to making a top class manager. After all, in his last role, 95 disastrous days at Southampton, his colleagues were said to view him catching 40 winks in the office as a "meaningless gimmick." Perhaps with that in mind, Jones is keen to play down the hardships of spending the night in somewhere that is "as good as most flats in London," Camp beds in the corner this is not. "It's fantastic. At the end of the day, I either go home to a beautiful place in Greenwich and sit in a flat and watch TV on my own or walk around the village and do something or I come here and rest up. I talk to the security guards. There's football on at night. "It's not a hardship. It's just me managing my hours so that I can have a work-life balance." Late nights deliver early results Whether late nights in the office are a sign of genius ultimately depends on nothing more than results. In that case, the Charlton iteration of Jones is Mensa level. Since the start of the year the only team across England's top four divisions who have accrued more points than the Addicks are League One leaders Stockport County. The Birmingham City and Wrexham sides that they came up with, and who dominate Football League headlines are now well in Charlton's rearview mirror. Jones, however, rather robustly dismisses the suggestion that the expectations last season's top two brought with them to the Championship made it easier to demand more from his players. He is getting plenty, anyway. Charlton's success has been built on a robust defense that kept a club record 26 clean sheets in all competitions last season and with five from their first 12 Championship games they're tracking to be one of the division's best defenses again. That is no mean feat given both the limited possession that this team has in each match. Jones' team know how to ensure the game is played where they want. Despite having only 43% of the ball they have allowed just 281 touches in their penalty area to the 278 they take in the opponents'. When Charlton do give up shots they tend not to be very good ones. Only one team in the league has blocked more shots than them so far this season. Meanwhile the xG value of an average attempt by their opposition is 0.082, a hair below the league best tally of Middlesbrough, managed by Rob Edwards, the man who continued Jones' trajectory when he took Luton Town into the Premier League in 2023. Much of Charlton's good form at the back is credited by their manager to "people who want to defend" but he is keen to ensure that he and his players get the acclaim he believes they merit. "I'm not sure we quite get the credit we deserve sometimes," he says. "I think we're excellent out of possession. We're structural in possession. People will call us direct but we don't give too much away. "We try to test you on every level: whether that's through you, around you, over you, we don't care. That's structured. It's not off the cuff. It's structured. That's how we work. We believe in structure. We believe in freedom within that structure but for us to perform at the level that we're performing at the end of the league that we are performing at at this point in time with the resources compared to some in the team, we have to be very, very good. "We allow people to come into certain areas of the pitch, knowing that those areas are probably less dangerous than others. We go after everyone, we press aggressively, we try to win the ball as early as we can, that's our thing, but we've got people that want to defend the box and we have done that very, very well. "You do the basics well and that's what it is. Would I like teams to have less shots against us? Yes, because it shows we're dominant but if teams do craft an opportunity then we've been pretty good at blocking it." For the time being Charlton's success is a very 2025-coded one. They are ferociously effective without the ball and with it they have found ways to be efficient. No team has scored fewer open play goals in the Championship than the Addicks, but few are keeping up with Jones at set pieces, where their tally of seven puts them third in the division. Their manager would also note that they have conceded just two, again good for a top three ranking. That's not bad for a team who lost set piece coach James Brayne to Sunderland early in the season. Then again Jones has "been doing this forever." "At the end of the day, it's delivery, runs and put the ball in the back of the net." He might not win style points but Jones is focused on the ones that the table is sorted by. "Anyone who would look at my record would see where I came from. We had, I'm not sure there have been many better League Two or League One sides in recent years than the one I had at Luton. We played a diamond. We were fluid. We had high scorers. I loved watching that team. "I went to Stoke on the back of that and tried to play that way but couldn't. When I came back to Luton we'd been promoted twice so we've got to live in the Championship on a low budget trying to compete. We changed things and we thought how do we compete with Leeds United, with Fulham, the top end of the league but with a bottom three budget. "We had to do things differently. I would love to play like Man City and win, because you can play like Man City, there are a lot of teams that play like Man City and just don't win. "I prefer winning. I don't care about reputation. I don't care about what people think about me. I have a group of individuals. I have a football club. My job isn't to play my system and to worry about my philosophy. My job is to win football games for Charlton Athletic and to take this club forward." A bright future That is what Jones has done, restoring Charlton to the sort of position its supporters would say it belongs in. Historically this is not a club that would satisfy itself with just being in the second tier. There were, however, periods in the ownership of Roland Duchatelet and ESI Holdings that hope was in short supply at The Valley. Now the south east London ground hosts its biggest crowds since the first year out of the top flight with record sales at the club shop and a palpable feeling of optimism. As Charlton have been restored so has Jones. Doubtless bruised by his shot at a Premier League job rapidly turning into a disaster, he returned to familiar surroundings, the club where his coaching career began with the Under-21s. In looking back to the past, he has found somewhere where the future finally looks bright. "I knew when I came here in 2012 [that this was the right club for me]. I loved it. I loved the vibe around the place, the area, the athletes it produces, the ethos of the club and how they go about and all those things. I felt at home in the area. I love where I live -- where I abode, it's not where I live but where I abode -- and I love the football club. "I think it was the right time for both of us. I needed something I could get my teeth into. I think the club at the time needed someone to give it that injection of teeth and fire and I think the timing was perfect. "What's gone on since has been a credit to a hell of a lot of people because I get a lot of plaudits for that but I've gone into a few clubs and had some meteoric success, but been hounded out of one. I can't do this on my own and we've got so many good people in so many good areas in this football club. Everyone's bought in. We just have this club now that's doing good things and we have to continue because this is only a journey. It's not a destination. "I'll only be a custodian because I won't be here forever but what I want to do is make sure that we leave it in a considerably better place in the future."
