Hatters boss has aspirations to be 'top of the Championship'

Town chief Nathan Jones has aspirations to be top of the Championship having watched runaway leaders Norwich City up close and personal last weekend.

The Canaries eased to a 3-0 win over Luton at Carrow Road on Saturday, with Teemu Pukki grabbing a first half brace and Todd Cantwell putting the result beyond doubt with 18 minutes to go.

There was no doubting the class that Daniel Farke’s side possessed on the day, easily the best all-round team that Luton have faced this term, as they close in on an inevitable return to the top flight after just one season away.

It’s something that Jones wants to follow during his spell in charge of the Hatters though, saying: “We’ve had three games against them this season and we’ve won two and lost one.

“They were better than us the other day, but having looked back at it, they weren’t considerably better and two of the goals were really avoidable.

“The first one is class, it’s a great finish, but the second one took three ricochets to fall into Pukki’s path and he scored.

“At 1-0, it’s a slightly different game and you can be a little bit more aggressive.

“Then the third goal was very avoidable, to let Cantwell come in on his right foot, so we’re disappointed with certain things.

“But with the way they play, it’s slightly more difficult to be like that because their budget is probably 12 times ours, so we won’t be able to bridge that gap in the budget.

“But, in terms of style, in terms of what we want to do, our work won’t be much different, it’s just that they have Premier League quality right throughout.

“They have probably eight or ten international players and good ones, people like Kenny McLean, Pukki, Cantwell, Max Aarons - they’re all throughout the team, and it shows what a wonderful side they are.

“And they’ve got a very good manager, they’ve been together for three or four years now, that group.

“They’ve had real good continuity and only probably added little bits of quality, so there’s a lot to take from them.

“We aspire not to be Norwich City, we aspire to be top of the Championship, of course. And we will learn certain things from that.

“We were a little bit disappointed in terms of the weekend.

"A lot of factors led before the game, which meant that things were disrupted, having to think about certain games.

“But, on the day, they were a fantastic side and they are the best side the league and will go up.

"Barring an absolute disaster, they will go up and justifiably so because you don’t get 70-odd points after 34 games if you are not a top side.”

Emulating the success of Norwich might well take a few seasons as when asked about Town’s immediate aims for the current campaign, which has 12 games to go starting against Swansea this afternoon, Jones added: “The first thing is to get to 51 points, which is our tally last year.

"So once we get to that – and hopefully we can do that as early as possible – but once we get to that, anything then us progression.

“That’s basically what we want to do.”