Graeme Jones is full of admiration for Queens Park Rangers manager Mark Warburton after spending hours analysing his methods.
Luton travel to Loftus Road tomorrow to take on the Rs for the first time in 12 years, looking to claim their third Championship win on the spin.
The Hatters boss has never faced a Warburton team, but he’s well aware of a man who swapped life as a successful city trader and worked his way to becoming Brentford boss, back in 2013.
While at Griffin Park, he led the Bees to their best second-tier league finish for 80 years and he has since gone on to manage Glasgow Rangers and Nottingham Forest before being appointed by QPR in May.
Jones, who revealed that the majority of his role is spent examining his team and opponents, said of Warburton: “Analysing his work, it’s been impressive.
“(He’s) very interesting, actually. He’s got a method of work that I really, really respect and I think, tactically, it will be a very interesting game on Saturday.”
Jones and members of Town’s board have insisted that, rather than trying to compete financially with some of the big-hitters in the Championship, Luton have had to do things differently this season.
They have sold out most of their homes this season, so are maxing out their money-making potential in. 10,000-seat stadium and, when it came to the transfer market this summer, all but one of their nine new signings were free agents.
Similarly, Warburton led Brentford to the Championship five years ago with their Griffin Park home, which has a capacity of around 12,000, but he made them more than competitive.
Asked if there are any parallels, Jones said of Warburton: “His different way is very different to mine or our different way, but it’s impressive and it is different.
“I know he’s been at Rangers and Forest and big clubs. I haven’t followed his method of work all the way through but it’s still quite innovative now, so you can imagine how innovative it was then.
“This is a guy who’s got a method, who thinks about football in detail. They play different systems. He plays to the team’s strengths, so we’ll have a challenge on Saturday, 100 per cent, but we’re ready for it.”
One QPR man that Jones knows all about is Angel Rangel, who he helped pluck from Spanish football obscurity while killing time before a flight home from a Swansea scouting mission.
Rangel was plying his trade at third-tier Catalan club Terassa and the full back’s life was changed when Jones and Roberto Martinez squeezed in 45 minutes to watch the team, on the off-chance of discovering a diamond.
Jones said: “Me, Kevin Reeves and Roberto Martinez were in Spain scouting and I think we had a four hour wait before our flight. I think Terrassa played Benidorm. Pity it wasn’t in Benidorm. It was in Barcelona in the old hockey stadium that they used for the ’92 Olympics. (So we said), ‘let’s go’.
“We went to the game and, all of a sudden, we just saw this right back that was an absolute standout.
“This was 2007 so he was 24, playing in Segunda B, the third tier. He was a standout and all three off us, straight away, said, ‘we really like this guy’.”
From that game, Swansea spent €10,000 to take Rangel to South Wales, where he became a club legend over 11 years, playing more than 300 times in every level from League One to the Premier League.”
At 36 years old, Rangel is still going strong. He moved to QPR last summer and has started in five of the west Londoners’ Championship clashes this term.
Jones said: “(He’s an) outstanding professional, an outstanding guy, a really, really good guy. I think he’s married a Welsh girl and settled and his whole life changed on one decision to go and watch him play for 45 minutes.
“But, again, he’s the one who’s made the whole thing work because he’s very, very good player.”
