Relegation threatened Luton would already have achieved survival in previous seasons – a fact which manager Nathan Jones says is “hard to swallow” even though he expected a bigger points tally would be required this season.
In five of the last six seasons, Luton’s current points tally of 45 would have been enough to keep Luton in the league.
Tuesday’s 1-1 draw with Reading saw Luton accumulate that, but they’re still in the relegation zone, one point from safety with two games left to play, ahead of the battle with fellow basement boys Hull City tomorrow.
“It’s a wonderful league but it’s been so difficult, 44 points would’ve kept you in and we haven’t finished yet, so that’s hard to swallow,” said the Town manager.
“But we knew it was going to be more because of how things were. I looked at it a long, long time ago and you could see with people winning games that it was going to be more (points) than that, so it’s just one of those things. Irony, I think they call that.”
Jones returned to Luton having to effectively overturn a seven-point gap in the final nine games of the season after the restart. However, survival is now in Luton’s hands and if they win their final two games, they will be a Championship team next season.
Victory at Hull will lift the Hatters out of the bottom three for the first time in seven months and asked how motivating a factor that will be, Jones said: “It wasn’t the be all and end all to get out when there were still games to go, but now we want to be closer to that thing.
“There’s only two games to go, lots can and will happen in these games, what we’ve got to make sure is we come out of the weekend in good shape, leading us into a game where, if someone told you we’ve got to try and beat Blackburn (on Wednesday) to stay in the league, I think there’d be a lot of people who would’ve taken that, especially six or five games ago.
We’ve given ourselves a chance and what we’ve got to do is make sure that chance becomes a real tangible reality.”
