There is no extra pressure for Luton’s out of contract players to secure Championship survival tonight, says manager Nathan Jones, who insists all his squad are hungry for success.
The Hatters must beat Blackburn Rovers in the final game of the season tonight to preserve their second tier status, having clawed back an effective seven-point gap to safety that existed before the restart.
Town have taken an impressive 13 points from an available 24 to put their fate in their own hands and they’ve been helped by a host of Hatters whose deals expired at the end of last month.
Danny Hylton, Glen Rea, Elliot Lee, Luke Berry and Callum McManaman have all penned short-term extension to see the Hatters to the culmination of the Coronavirus-hit season tonight.
According to Luton chief executive Gary Sweet, the price of relegation would be in the region of £6million and that would vastly affect the club’s spending power.
Jones said: “Financially, it might impact on who we can keep. We pretty much know who we’d like to keep next season. We’re probably in that position now, it’s just that finances could dictate that.
“I’m not going to say stuff here that puts more pressure on the players. I don’t think this group need any more motivation. It’s not like you’re not going to put food on your table if you don’t win. It’s not the thing. It’s a big game.
“These are a motivated group. They’re hungry, they want to stay at this level. They’ve fought so hard. With the exception of a few, this 85 or 88 per cent the group that I had a League Two level.
“We said to them, ‘you will be Championship players and they’ve fought so hard, worked so hard with togetherness, discipline and enthusiasm and professionalism to get to the level.
“They ain’t going to give that up easily. We want to stay at this level because we believe we’re a good enough group to be at this level.”
Victory will guarantee that and Jones is solely focused on that outcome, rather than the myriad of permutations should Luton draw.
“It’s a one-off game where we want to win the game,” he said, adding: “If we win the game, pretty much it guarantees where we’re going to be next year, and that’s what we prefer to do and that’s how we’re going to treat it.
“We never go into a game looking to draw it. That can become tricky.
“I imagine there will be lots of twists and turns throughout the evening, with results, but all we have to do is focus on us.
“If we get our job done then that’s all we can ask for.”
Asked if he’ll have someone relaying scores from Leeds v Charlton, Birmingham v Derby, Sheffield Wednesday v Middlesbrough or Wigan v Fulham, Jones said: “Unless someone says to me, ‘look, a point is enough here’, I don’t envisage that.
“That won’t happen until late. If we win the game, there’s nothing more we can do. Let’s just take everything out of it and focus on the one thing we can affect. If we do that then we’ll be fine.”
