Luton players were told of the sacking of manager Graeme Jones in a Zoom video conference call with chief recruitment officer Mick Harford, Matty Pearson has revealed.
Last Friday it was announced that Jones had become the first Coronavirus-enforced managerial casualty in the EFL, with the mutual agreement to terminate his contract and those of Gary Brabin, Inigo Idiakez and Imanol Etxeberria.
Chief executive Gary Sweet had talked about all staff and players having to help the Hatters survive during football’s shutdown because of the pandemic, but it still came as something of a surprise that the former West Brom number two had left the club with yet no announcement about players’ wages.
Harford, who guided Town to the Championship last term as temporary boss in the second half of last term, has been installed as interim relationship manger between players, staff and the board.
It fell to him to deliver the news of Jones’ departure to the first team squad.
“I don’t think any of the lads were expecting it, but that’s football,” defender Pearson said. “The situation we are in is a very strange one. The club have got to do what’s right by the club, so they’ve obviously taken their decision. We’ve all got to stand by that decision now. It’s happened.
“Mick got us on a call and said what everyone knows now, that the manager and a few of the staff had left, and we’ll stick together exactly the same as when Nathan Jones left, with Mick in charge. We’ve been through it before, we know what we are doing, so we fully back Mick to take the reins and put us all into place.”
Pearson was talking to the club’s official website and he explained that, while the squad is in lockdown, they have been communicating online, with Harford keeping them all connected.
“He has set up a couple of Zoom calls to keep us all in touch with what’s going on,” the centre back said, adding: “We’ve all had a bit of a chat on there and the last one we had the full squad on, so you can imagine doing these Zoom calls with 35 players on, it does get noisy and the banter’s flying around.
“We’ve had that, we all know where we stand now and in regards to what’s happening now – I think we are in the same boat as the fans.
“It’s out of our control, it’s out of the club’s control, so we are waiting on the Government and the league to make a decision on what’s going forward. We are all on standby for whatever they want and on call to go back in and train.”
