'Boring' Jones not casting his thoughts elsewhere in relegation battle

Town manager Graeme Jones will happily remain ‘boring’ during the club's battle to stay in the Championship this season.

With the Hatters having given themselves a fighting chance of doing just that after winning three out of their last four matches, supporters are starting to look at the relegation battle in greater detail, working out just who the bottom sides are facing in their respective run-ins.

With Town at home to Stoke City this afternoon, of the other teams around them, Huddersfield host Charlton and Barnsley go to Reading, with Wigan at leaders West Bromwich Albion.

However, Jones wasn’t about to get drawn into matters elsewhere, saying: "I’m aware of what’s happening, but again it’s about us.

“It’s irrelevant what happens now unless we don’t get points.

"We’ve spoken for a while now about picking up points and we’re doing that, so Saturday is another opportunity.

“I know it sounds so boring to everybody, but how can I think about anybody else?

“It’s just all my attention needs to go to Stoke City who have got some really, really good individuals and they’re a very, very good team who have spent a lot of money in the last two, three years.

“They’re down there, but it’s just about the next team turning up.

"We’ve got to forget about individuals and just concentrate on our standards and reproducing levels again.”

Although fans are now starting to fully believe that Town can achieve safety, especially after witnessing a heroic 2-1 win over promotion-chasing Brentford in midweek, Jones felt that attitude has been with the squad all term.

He said: “I think it’s (recent form) given everybody belief, but we’ve had that belief when we haven’t been getting those results.

"We’ve had the belief in here, staff and players, through performances, but obviously it’s helped having everyone fit as well now.

"You’ve got a full choice squad to choose from, that helps for every manager.

"We had a long period from Brentford to maybe West Brom away or Derby at home, where for two months we didn't have that choice.

"This week we've been rocked a little bit, but thankfully towards the end we've got a little bit of choice again.

"So it’s given everybody belief but in this football club with the players and staff, it's always been there.”

Meanwhile, Jones now feels that after a tough baptism to life in the second tier of English football, particularly on their travel, he now was a squad brimming with Championship footballers, who are desperate to stay in the division next term.

He added: “What they’ve done is developed and improved.

"We’ve got a lot of Championship players now in our team, but it’s taken the difficult times we’ve been through.

"It's taken a lot of lessons, some big disappointments, they've had to be handled the right way because if you’re a blaming type of club or a blaming type of staff then you’re just going to have fractions and divide.

"We've managed to be very level-headed about it, managed to see it as a learning curve when everyone else was trying to cause division from the outside about 'bottom of the league' and 'they’re not competitive' and this and that.

"But the players to man have turned up every day, presented themselves for training, presented themselves for Saturday, lead a clean lifestyle, train hard, sleep eight hours and when you do that and you train as hard as you can, you get improvement.

"Now we've got a group of players, I could reel off a lot of players now who for me have proven themselves as Championship players.

“You have to earn that (staying up), because the process has taken us to this point.

"I'd have loved to have learned earlier, a lot of our lads, I’d have loved them to have learned earlier, but I’m sure they don’t want to drop Championship status, and that’s the biggest motivation.

"But we have to earn that, there’s 11 games, there’s no messing about, we have to be ruthless and made sure we look after ourselves.”