Former footballer turned pundit Ashley Williams blasts ‘INSECURE’ Nathan Jones who ‘clearly’ didn’t learn from the sacking at Stoke City.
Ashley Williams revealed that Nathan Jones’ struggles as Southampton manager were not a surprise to him, with the Welsh manager axed by the club on Sunday, after only 14 games in charge.
Williams was a loanee at Stoke during Jones’s tenure in 2019, and judging by this week’s interview, he hasn’t taken too fondly of him.
Williams claims that Jones was unable to force his philosophy on Stoke and seemed afraid to give instructions to senior players.
Ashley Williams speaking to @FIVEUK on working under Nathan Jones at Stoke City.
🗣️ ‘He straight away came across as a little bit insecure. He kept talking about what he did at Luton!’#scfc #safc #luton pic.twitter.com/Y5KFwMpWWt
— Scott Richards (@ScottRichardss) February 13, 2023
Williams adds that the Stoke squad were left confused with Jones not telling them how to play and described him as ‘insecure’.
Speaking on Rio Ferdinand’s Vibe with Five YouTube channel, Williams begins: ‘It hasn’t surprised me what’s happened because he came from Luton where he did well. I got the feeling on the first day. We had a Stoke team in the Championship that on paper should have walked it, but we weren’t doing very well.
‘We had some Champions League winners in there, Bojan, Darren Fletcher, x amount of Premier League appearances in there, Ryan Shawcross, myself, Charlie Adam, you could go from top to bottom, Jack Butland.
‘I felt like when he came in, the first speech that he gave was along the “lines of ‘I’m not going to teach you lot how to play”. We all came out of the meeting straight away going that doesn’t make sense. He already had an inferior attitude to what he was seeing in front of him instead of taking control.
‘All the lads were great lads at Stoke but he straight away came across as a little bit insecure and now I’m looking at all these faces I’ve seen in the Prem for so long. It was like one of the rants that he had – I’m going to bend to what you guys want. We didn’t want anything, we just want you to tell us what to do and we’ll get it done or try our best to get it done.’
Williams stressed that Jones should have been clearer in his instructions, particularly since he and Ryan Shawcross, his central-defensive partner, had seen different ways to play the game.
Williams went on: ‘He was like “I can’t tell you how to play because you’re all good players”. It’s a situation where you’ve got Ryan Shawcross centre back and me centre back. I grew up my whole Swansea career completely opposite to him. No one’s right or wrong. They played long ball, we played a passing game. We’re both good friends.
‘Tell us what we’re doing. That’s all we wanted to know off Nathan Jones is, what are we doing? It would be something different all the time and he never really wanted to tell anyone anything.’
Jones was not able to succeed at the Potters but he was praised by his work at Luton where he had a specific philosophy.
Williams claims Jones often referred to his time at Luton, but didn’t take a similar tactical approach at Stoke.
Williams said: ‘Then he goes back to Luton and he has his own philosophy, which is like a 4-4-2 diamond. He kept saying at Luton we played a 4-4-2 diamond. Do it then, make it happen here. You keep talking about what you did at Luton, it doesn’t make any sense. Do it or shut up about Luton because we don’t care. What are we doing?’.
Jones’ tenure at Southampton was shortlived and included some bizarre press conferences, while his team often appeared devoid of ideas tactically.
The lack of a clear philosophy certainly didn’t help matters, and Southampton now find themselves in a difficult situation as they are bottom of the Premier League with just 15 points from 22 games.
See Ashley Williams’ verdict on Nathan Jones in full in the video below…
This is what Twitter users said as Ashley Williams blasts ‘INSECURE’ Nathan Jones who ‘clearly’ didn’t learn from his sacking at Stoke…
@salter_sam: Almost word for word what happened here. Players need to take ownership of performances but Rasmus has a lot to answer for if and when we go down. Jones should of been nowhere near a Premier league team #SaintsFC
@markdeaville2: To be honest Ashley Williams did absolutely nothing at Stoke. Bit rich of him to pile in! He was on a meal ticket. Don’t necessarily blame him as though – he was gifted a contract from upstairs.
@NoMoreLaughs: Ashley Williams and the rest of that Stoke side we’re absolutely fucking useless. Mercenaries picking up a big wage.
@Saints0132: Very interesting watch this. It’s clear Jones isn’t up to premier league standard or maybe even championship seems he can only cut it at Luton. Jesse marsh will be miles ahead of him as a likeable guy and tactically better #SaintsFC
@rhysgorry: 🤣 Sounds all too familiar
@ZakLFC7: How do people like this make it into management? Let alone football
@HoldTightJac: I get the feeling that Ashley Williams took to Nathan Jones quite well.👀😆😆
@Martin_Ryan23: Nailed on if Jones would have come in all guns blazing those same “premier league players” would have questioned who this little bloke from Luton was who was trying to tell us how to play.
@JoshSFC13578: Very much sounds like Jones tries to be a freedom a manager and let the players play however you still have to have a philosophy an attacking system defensive system pressing structure etc because if you don’t the players become lost and some players end up doing 2 things at once
@potterlytics: This is really interesting to see. My instinct is that the player reaction isn’t great, but that there’s a clear wish from Jones to not be seen as Billy-Big-Balls and thinking little old Luton’s manager can tell big names what to do. His gamble to placate big egos was misjudged.
@jennybeann12: Nathan Jones is still less embarrassing than Ashley Williams. Man has absolutely zero place commenting on other peoples behaviours. 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
@StokeJames_: This is an extremely interesting listen, and explains a lot about our time under NJ #scfc
@joshlscfc: Explains quite a lot tbf.
@JChatfield94: Jones is the worst Stoke City manager of my lifetime* and nearly ruined us. But if the absolute wasters who played for us in that period had any sense, they wouldn’t be reminding the media of how shit they were at Stoke. Williams once of the biggest culprits too. *(so far)
@lmfzep: Finding this pile-on on Nathan Jones a bit tiresome now. Players should take more responsibility. Also, if we’re going down this road, can we have some clips of what players think of Steve Bruce? That I’d find interesting
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