‘I said there’ll be difficult times this season and we need to stick together,’ says Jones

Graeme Jones says that now is the moment for Luton fans and players need to stick together if they are to pull off a relegation great escape like his Wigan Athletic side did twice in the Premier League. 

For the second time in three home games on Saturday, Town fans turned on the manager after a defeat to Cardiff City, with some sections of the fans booing him off. It was the Hatters 21st Championship defeat and leaves them nine points adrift at the foot of the table.  

“I said there’ll be difficult times this season and we need to stick together. I’ll reiterate that. These are the moments. There are 15 games left and 45 points left to play for,” said the manager ahead of tomorrow night’s visit of Sheffield Wednesday to Kenilworth Road. 

“At the minute it looks difficult and the atmosphere needs to help the players, nobody else. It needs to help the players to perform, to get a win, the way we did against Derby County. 

“I know it cuts both ways, but the players are giving everything and that won’t change.”

Luton were the better side in the first half against Cardiff, but failed to take two golden opportunities to score, whereas Lee Tomlin took his and City’s only real chance, for the game’s only goal. 

Asked how difficult it is to react after playing well but coming away without any rewards, Jones said: “What do you do? Accept that? Or do you work to try to find out why, as we’ve been doing all year, and try to do something about it because that’s what fighters do. 

“That’s what we’ve been doing. It’s not easy, because it’s very easy to be negative, but I wonder how people will be if we come through it, because I’ve seen it before at Wigan. Roberto (Martinez) they wanted out, he won an FA Cup with them.”

As Martinez’s assistant manager with the Latics, Jones has experience of surviving against the odds in Premier League dogfights as they fought back from the brink in 2011 and 2012, on the final day of the season and with six games to go, respectively. He now sees similarities in his Hatters squad. 

“We were down and out twice,” he said of his experiences with Wigan, adding: “You needed to be in the dressing room after the (Cardiff) game, it wasn’t fractioning, there wasn’t blame. The performance was good enough to win a football match, statistically proven, but we didn’t.

“That’s what’s difficult and what comes along with it is just a variable. Supporters being disgruntled, media saying this and saying that, but we need to keep level headed about it. 

“We need to have it in context. The performance was good enough to win the game. What we need to do is take our chances when they come our way and be a little bit better from the 60-minute period onwards. We need to understand how to be better and, if we are, we’ll win the game.”

As he prepares to stand in opposite dugouts to his old friend Gary Monk when Sheffield Wednesday come to town, and the Luton manager added: “One thing I’ll guarantee our supporters is that our lads will be fighting like crazy tomorrow night, within their limitations. And if we fight like crazy and we perform the way we did on Saturday, it’ll be enough.”