Charlton Athletic manager Nathan Jones has admitted his decision to rotate the side, including handing Kenyan midfielder Timothy Ouma his full league debut, may have contributed to his team’s 4-0 defeat to Stoke City on Saturday.
Ouma, who joined the Addicks on a season-long loan from Slavia Prague, was handed his first Championship start alongside Oliver Skipp as Jones made four changes to the team that drew with West Bromwich Albion.
Charlton started brightly but their afternoon quickly unravelled in the 14th minute when Ouma was adjudged to have fouled a Stoke player inside the box, with the resulting penalty giving the hosts the lead.
Stoke then capitalised on Charlton’s lack of cohesion to score three more goals before half-time, ending the Addicks’ unbeaten start to the season in emphatic fashion.While Jones felt the penalty was a poor decision, he acknowledged that the changes he made could have played a part in Charlton’s collapse and accepted responsibility for the gamble.
Asked whether the unfamiliarity of the starting lineup had affected his team, Jones said: “It probably did, and I take full responsibility for that.”“We felt we needed to freshen everyone up. They’ve had a big shift at home; they’ve had a big shift on Wednesday night. We’ve got no time to prepare, we’re on the road, it’s an early kick-off, all those things were contributing factors as to why we felt we needed to freshen it up,” he told the club’s official website.Jones was particularly disappointed by Charlton’s reaction after conceding the penalty. “I’m bitterly disappointed,” he said. “After that first goal, the penalty, the gift we felt it was, then we went under, and that’s not what we’re built on. We’re built on being much more solid than that.“We were poor; our reaction was really poor, how we went under.
Stoke sensed that and were able to score four goals in the first half.” Ouma, the match was a difficult introduction to Championship football, with the Kenyan youngster finding himself at the centre of the incident that handed Stoke the lead.Jones, however, insisted that the defeat could not be attributed solely to the midfielder, pointing to a combination of poor decisions from his players and refereeing calls.“It’s a gift; it gives them a start that they really needed.
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We’d started fantastically well, silenced the crowd, the crowd was starting to get on top, and they got a gift which changed the game,” Jones said.“The goals we conceded were poor. There were so many bad decisions. When you send a team out across the white line, you are at the mercy of players’ decisions and referees’ decisions, and that’s what I was today.”Despite the heavy defeat, Jones does not want the result to derail what had been an encouraging start to the campaign.“We’ve got two points a game so far, it’s not a bad start. What we can’t do is let the good start drift away. We’ve got two home games now which we have to maximise and get back,” he added.
Charlton will look to respond when they return to The Valley on Wednesday to host Queens Park Rangers, with Jones hoping to put the Stoke setback behind them.