Nathan Jones says Saturday’s showdown with Reading to decide Luton’s play-off fate is a big game – but not more important that the final day of the season Great Escape two years ago.
Then, Town’s Championship future rested on a victory against Blackburn Rovers, while defeat could’ve seen Town relegated back to League One after just one season. Instead a 3-2 triumph provided the platform for last term’s mid-table finish and this season’s shot at the Premier League.
Now, sixth-placed Luton must win against Reading to guarantee their place in the play-offs, though there are permutations that could still see them successful in that aim should they draw or lose.
Jones said: “It’s an important game, it really is. We underplay it as just another game and we treat it as just another game, but the importance of it is different. There’s no second chances, it’s a one-off game, we know what we have to do.”
Though reaching the play-offs will rightly be heralded as a massive achievement for Luton who, eight years ago, were in the National League, Jones doesn’t believe the weekend’s clash carries more importance than the do-or-die match against Blackburn at the same stage two seasons ago.
He said: “That one was probably bigger than this game in terms of, if we’d gone down then it would have been fear because of certain things.
“If we go up, all you look at is optimism and it catapults us to a different level, but we’re still on a real good journey if we don’t (go up).
“But if we’d have gone down that could have been catastrophic in a lot of ways, or could have been really problematic moving forward.
“So, we had to secure our status, that was probably more important. Now, this is the most important game, but if we had gone down then this game would never have happened, really, because you would have had to come back up and then to do it in your first season back up.
“All right, the possibility would have been there, but the probability probably wouldn’t.
“It was so important, and to continue on our evolution, we couldn’t go backwards in one season and that would have meant that, even though finishing 24th in the Championship is still higher than first in League One, it’s a different concept.”
And while the manager believes there’s less pressure this time around, his Hatters will be up to the task.
“This club’s been used to playing big games,” said Jones, adding: “Play-offs, games where we’ve had to win and get results, albeit in a different league, but still having to win games.
“Then, we’ve played in a higher pressure game than this because we played Blackburn at home two years ago and if we didn’t get the right result, we could’ve gone out of the league.
“Now, we’re trying to get out of the league at a different end. So, there’s pressure, but there’s pressure all the time.
“I demand from them every day, so it’s not like, suddenly, 10,000 fans will give them more pressure than I do on the sideline in any game we play, or training session.
“They’re used to it, but they have to handle that. Strange things happen on the final day, with early kick-offs, crowd noises when someone scores or someone doesn’t.
“If we win the game, we’re in the position we are.”
