Jones: Stoke was a wonderful experience for me, honestly!
NATHAN Jones is adamant that managing Stoke City wasn’t just a useful experience in his managerial career but a wonderful one. Jones is going head to head with successor at Stoke, Michael O’neill, this afternoon having returned to take the helm at Luton Town.
He had left Luton for the Potteries under a cloud in early 2019, having guided the club from the bottom half of League Two to the cusp of the Championship - but he has rebuilt bridges at Kenilworth Road.
In the re-start after lockdown he pulled Luton to safety against the odds and he has started this season with a bang too. He’s won seven in 13 Championship matches in all, compared to five in 34 games as Stoke boss.
But he said: “It was a wonderful experience. Honestly. It wasn’t a successful time for me, but I learned a vast amount about what it takes to manage a big football club, about different types of players and all of the things I’d do differently.
“It’s a bigger thing than players not wanting to run through brick walls. There were a lot of things wrong, so I can’t point the finger at that. At the end of the day, I had some very talented players who’d lost a bit of confidence and I couldn’t turn them around.
“But I have a great relationship with people at Stoke. I wish them all the best. And I’m very grateful to them because I feel better equipped for life and management as a result of what happened there.”
Stoke were bottom when Jones was sacked almost exactly a year ago and had won only two of their opening 15 matches when O’neill was appointed.
Form markedly improved but it was a long season playing catch-up and safety was only assured by winning the penultimate game, at home to promotion-chasing Brentford.
Luton celebrated safety that week too and Jones is adamant that his second appointment was no gamble.
“From day one, it felt like I’d come home,” he said.
“It’s a club that’s been close to my heart, and I know it’s slightly more difficult to say that after the events of 2019. But it is.
“It’s a club I’ve always loved. I’ve got a
great relationship with the board and the players especially. They welcomed me back.
“Once you get past what happened during the exit, you think ‘Can I do a good job with this group of players? Yes. Can I get the most out of them? Yes. Will they work hard for me and understand what I want to do? Yes. Have we got results in the past? Yes’.
“These are lads I loved and cared for. That I’d signed and invested a lot of my time and energy into. They had done exactly the same for me.
“So it wasn’t a risky appointment for the club, it was a logical one. And it was a logical decision for me to come back.”