Jones believes deals to sign McAtee and Pepple show just how much the Hatters are evolving

Luton boss Nathan Jones believes the deal to sign Grimsby forward John McAtee and then loan him straight back to the Mariners is further evidence of the manner in which Town are trying evolve as a club.

The Hatters aren’t the first and certainly won’t be the last side to adopt such a model, which is popular with a number of Premier League clubs in which a player is brought in and then immediately sent out again in order to continue their development at another club.

Jones’ old side Brighton are one of the main players in such an approach among top flight teams, and the Town manager knows it’s an important way of making sure they are continually trying to keep the club moving forward, which will be no mean feat after reaching the Championship play-offs last term.

Following a week in which Luton not only added McAtee, but Canadian forward Aribim Pepple to their ranks as well, Jones said: “We’re evolving as a football club and we want to keep evolving.

"That is getting harder because the quality of player we’re bringing in and developing is really high, so they have to be on a par or better than what we’re bringing in, or they have to be able to reach those heights and that’s what’s getting really difficult.

"What we had to do with the likes of Pepple for example, we’ve taken him really early so that we get a real good two to three years development into them and then get them.

"We’ve revamped the academy, so we want to be developing players there from our own talent pool and then there’s others that are just probably short of where we are at the minute, but we feel they can get there and they’re still good ages.

"It’s just about continuing, we can’t just get to next window and think ‘who do we sign?’

"We have to think forwardly, and to be fair the club have backed that.

“The club see the value in it, so we’re in a decent place, but we’ve got to make sure as well that we take care of the present and not just the future.”

By bringing in McAtee and also Pepple while their careers are still very much in their infancy in terms of achieving their true potential, it represents a move away from Town’s more recent dealings in the market, which was very much based on first team improvement.

In previous years, they might not have gone for someone that wasn’t ready to impact at Championship level, due to results on the pitch being of paramount importance.

As they continue to cement themselves into becoming an established second tier side, that is an avenue they can now now turning their attentions to, as Jones added: “He’s (McAtee) one we identified and part of the deal was that he goes back and gets games.

"He’s a good age, a really talented boy so hopefully that one fruitions for us as well.

“We’ve looked at a lot of players in the past and thought they’re not quite ready for us so we haven’t signed them but now, there is a little bit more of a desire to get them in earlier, to loan them and then whatever happens.

"We’ve passed up on players before who might never have played for us but we would have either sold or developed and kept the club moving forward, for example.

"Those are one of the things we look at now.

"The way the club is developing, we were taking gambles on the likes of Elijah Adebayo but he was straight into the first-team environment and really had to hit the ground running sooner rather than later.

"Now we’re able with the same processes to have a little bit more patience with them because we’re in a better position.

"We’ve got Elijah Adebayo, Carlton Morris and Harry Cornick, we have Admiral Muskwe, Cameron Jerome and Cauley Woodrow.

"We have real competition in that area so we can afford to take them earlier now and give them that little bit of development, whereas we couldn’t wait a year and a half for Eli to develop.

"We needed to get him in, give him six months and then hit the ground running and that’s exactly what he did.”