Nathan Jones has said Luton have to take their stunning survival form into next season and ensure they don’t have a final day decider to stay in the Championship again.
The Hatters beat Blackburn 3-2 last night to do the double over them and pull of the Great Escape by finishing in 19th place, two points above the drop zone.
When Jones returned to the club in May, Town were effectively seven points adrift and had been in the bottom three since Boxing Day.
But since the restart they’ve claimed four wins, four draws and just one defeat to take 16 points out of a possible 27.
At 1.77 points per game, their restart run alone would have seen them finish just outside the play-offs.
Jones said: “When I got interviewed for the job, I said, ‘by 2020 you will have a side and you will be in the Championship’.
“We got there a year early, so we had to stay up, otherwise we had to go back a year to go forward.
“Now, we have to make sure we’re not in this position next year. In a year’s time, we have to be not going into the last game needing survival.
“The points we’ve had, 16 out of 27, that’s play-off form. It’s nearly two points a game. It’s promotion form.
“We have to make sure we carry that forward.”
Since returning for a second spell in charge, Jones has repeated frequently that his men were aiming for a points total, but kept it closely guarded.
Last season, 44 points would have been enough to survive in the Championship, but this term Barnsley, who also pulled off a miraculous escape, needed 49 and for Wigan to be deducted 12 points for going into administration.
Asked to reveal if Luton’s final haul was the magic milestone, he’d earmarked, Jones said: “That was it. You get 51 points, you don’t go down.
“We looked at all the fixtures, all the permutations, get to that and what a bold one that is.
“Five wins and a draw, now that’s unbelievable, as it was we got four wins, four draws and one defeat, that’s phenomenal form.
“For a side in the bottom three, phenomenal form and fair play to Barnsley as they’ve picked up real good points too.
“We’ve won the games we needed and didn’t lose any points we didn’t need to and couldn’t afford to lose.
“There was the supplementary one at Leeds, where we probably thought we might not (get anything) and that gave us the momentum to get a huge, huge haul.
“Sixteen points of 27 in the Championship, trust me on that, is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful return.”
