Nathan Jones has warned against thinking Queens Park Rangers are already “on the beach” but says Luton have to be ready to take advantage if the Londoners aren’t at full tilt tonight.
Rangers are all but safe in the Championship on 53 points, but they have only won once since the restart and, significantly, have lost to Luton’s relegation rivals Charlton, Barnsley and Wigan.
It’s a run of results that saw a The QPR Podcast release a completely blank 45-minute episode, posting on Twitter yesterday, ‘The players haven’t been turning up lately, so we thought: Why should we?’
Jones targeted at least three wins from Town’s final four games, to give his side a chance to avoid relegation and he got one of those at Huddersfield on Friday.
Another triumph tonight would lift Luton out of the bottom three at least for 24 hours, but Jones isn’t expecting any favour from Rangers.
“If I’m honest, I’ve had a career in playing and coaching where I was either at one end of the table or the other, we were either struggling to say at Championship level or we were flying in League One, so I haven’t had too many mid-table finishes,” said Jones.
“individually, it’s different, some might be on the beach, some might do that, but I don’t envisage that’s going to happen tomorrow.
“If it does then we’ve got to make sure we’re in the position to take advantage of that. If they’re not and they are not fully committed then we have to make sure we’re the best version of us as they have real threats who can hurt you.
“All we know is we can’t afford to take our foot off the pedal, if we are one or two per cent off then we know we’ll get punished.
“We can only concentrate on what Luton Town do and then other people’s motivation is up to them, we just have to make sure that we prepare well, we are motivated because the stakes are so high for us.”
