Hatters chief believes rivals are playing 'Football Manager' to compete in the Championship

A 5 Live investigation discovered that teams in the second tier of English football ran up a record-high total of £307m in pre-tax losses in 2017-18.

It also found that despite the league bringing in its highest-ever revenue of £749m, overall spending on player and staff wages exceeded clubs' revenue by 11%, with the gap expected to widen to an all-time high for 2018-19 as over half of the clubs are spending more on wages than they make in income.

That means that clubs can afford to lose up to £39m over three years without being punished, leading chief executive Gary Sweet to declare Hatters won’t join in with the 'mad house.’

When asked for his take on the situation, Jones said: “I’ve not read the article, somebody showed it to me, it’s reality, but I don’t want to (look at it).

“It would be great to go out and spend 10 million tomorrow on someone who’s going to improve your team and that’s Football Manager, you play on the computer, a lot of teams are playing that, we’re not.

“It makes the challenge even harder, but even more pleasurable to find a way, and that’s what we intend to do.

“We don’t want to use that as an excuse, although it doesn’t help when you’re playing against that kind of budget.

"We just need to get on with being as competitive as we can for Luton Town.”