On The Road
WITH THE FREE-SCORING HATTERS GIVING PSG A RUN FOR THEIR MONEY
THERE is a saying at Luton Town that nobody who joins the club goes backwards.
It comes from the manager, Nathan Jones, who took over in January 2016 and has since achieved plenty.
The Hatters have gone from 18th in League Two when Jones took charge to finish fourth in the last campaign, missing out on play- off glory when Blackpool beat them in the semis. Now they are top of the table and in pole position to win promotion to League One.
Some suggested last year that when Jones left his job as firstteam coach of Brighton, a team destined for the Premier League, he had made the wrong decision. Why leave a role that will lead you to the promised land even if that comes without the satisfaction of being the person at the centre of it all?
‘It’s a good point,’ Jones says. ‘When I was at Brighton I had a good education but always wanted to manage myself. When Luton came up it seemed like the right fit. I was able to come in and make an impression.’
Jones got recruitment right in the summer. He already had Danny Hylton, who was the division’s third top scorer last season with 22 goals. But Jones wasn’t satisfied with that.
Backed by a progressive board who are trying to push through plans for a new stadium and have already provided a Premier League- standard training ground, he was able to sign James Collins after he’d scored 20 goals for Crawley last season, and Cambridge United’s Luke Berry, who had got 17 from midfield.
Now the Hatters are the secondhighest scorers in European league football on 49 goals, just two behind billionaire-backed Paris Saint-Germain.
Jones, who has just won two successive League Two manager of the month awards, doesn’t have Neymar or Kylian Mbappe at his disposal but does possess a team with an average age of 23 and one that has broken a Football League record in scoring seven or more goals in three games this side of Christmas. On this occasion, Johnny Mullins’s header wasn’t enough to earn a three-point lead over Saturday’s opponents, veteran Shola Ameobi equalising for County. THAT
didn’t prevent the majority of a near-capacity crowd of 10,063 from singing ‘ The Town are going up’ at full-time. The mood is a far cry from when the club went into administration in 2008 and dropped into the Conference — something the fans, with their ‘Betrayed by the FA’ banner mounted close to the players’ tunnel, will never forget. Those dark days, the likes of which hi h many other th high-profile hi h fil old Division One sides have faced, are over.
For Jones, a manager with high expectations for himself and the club, it’s just the start. ‘We are a fast, attack-minded side that wants to play attractive football,’ he says.
In the last week Luton have progressed to the FA Cup third round, where they will play Newcastle, and got past West Ham in the Checkatrade Trophy. ‘With a young squad we do good work here. It’s not just about getting promoted, it’s about trying to build a football club,’ Jones says.
There is an art to the 44-yearold’s work. The lower divisions can sometimes be a place that provides journeymen with their last pay cheque. That isn’t the case at Kenilworth Road. ‘We take recruitment very seriously. Recruitment’s massive. One: you have to recruit talent. Two: you have to recruit character. And three: you have to recruit good human beings as well.
‘We don’t like to take loans so when we do develop that player, then we get the benefit, rather than a Championship or Premier League side. They are our assets. We’ve invested well and we’re in a good place.’
There is no doubt that Jones’s approach is a winning one. You feel it’s only a matter of time before they get back to England’s third tier — a place they haven’t been for nearly 10 years. No chance they are going backwards from here.