Sonny Bradley says players’ individual conversations with Nathan Jones about the manager’s exit last year need to wait so they can focus on their nine-game Championship survival bid.
The Welshman returned last month for a second spell in charge and is eight days away from stepping back into the Kenilworth Road dugout, when Preston North End come visiting.
Jones left under a cloud 17 months ago, to join Stoke City, but was brought back in a shock reappointment, as chief executive Gary Sweet says, ‘to hit the ground sprinting’.
A congested one-month period awaits after three months in lockdown, due to Coronavirus, with Town second from bottom and six points from safety. So, there is little time for reflection on the end of Jones’ first tilt at the manager’s job.
“We need to have 100 per cent focus on this and this is why I talk about individual conversations with Nathan need to be put on hold, because we need to focus all our energy on playing their games. We need to put all our attention on that.
“I know how Nathan works and he doesn’t want to carry anybody, he won’t carry anybody. We don’t have time for that, we don’t have room for that.
“If somebody is not onboard with what we’re doing, simply, they won’t be a part of what we want to do.”
Bradley admitted that, though fans felt bitter about Jones’ departure in January last year, that players were more detached from the emotion of it.
He said: “Probably we are because at the end of the day, football doesn’t stop, the fixtures are still going to be there and we still needed a manager.
“At the time when Nathan left, we as a group of players had something really good going on and we knew that potentially we could go on and win a league title.
“We reminded ourselves that everyday despite Nathan leaving, all the players were still there, we knew all the drills to do and we knew how to prepare for games.
“Luckily, we had Mick Harford, it has been spoken about a lot but I think it should be. He was outstanding, he came in and, to be honest, we still did a lot of the sessions Nathan did, but Mick gave us that lift which was exactly what we needed at the time, and we went on an amazing and luckily we won the league title.
“Maybe if we didn’t promoted and win a league title the conversation might not have gone like this but we did and this is the conversation we’re having.”
And the Hatters skipper agreed with chief executive Gary Sweet’s assessment and one of the main reasons why Jones was the man best equipped to try to steer Town to safety.
“It’s important that we do ‘hit the ground sprinting’, Gary’s right, and Nathan can provide that for us,” Bradley said.
“It would be a lot more difficult if we brought in a manager that we didn’t know, who all of a sudden wanted to impose his own style. That would be extremely difficult, almost impossible, I believe, to pick that up in two or three weeks.
To come in and do that would be near enough impossible, so, I think if Nathan wasn’t available we would have gone ahead with Mick (Harford), that’s my belief, because Mick’s been there since I came to the club and Mick would certainly know what to do with these boys.
“With Nathan coming in there are 15 or 16 boys who already know the way he wants to work. It’s up to the rest of the boys that have been signed this season, who needs to understand the way that Nathan wants to play. I think all the time that Nathan is showing them, and we have senior boys also helping them out as well, it shouldn’t take long at all.”
Jones steered Town to promotion from League Two in 2018, with an effective diamond formation and Bradley believes the Hatters can quickly slip back into the old routine.
He said: “It’s no secret that Nathan likes to play a four diamond, two system, there’s no secret in that, I don’t feel like I’m letting the cat out of the bag with that one. We have played that a little bit this season.
“We haven’t played it in the same structure that Nathan likes to play it. He likes to play it slightly different, but we have young, intelligent boys at this football club, who I think, will pick it up relatively quickly.”
