Jones making personal sacrifices in an attempt to keep the Hatters up

Luton chief Nathan Jones has revealed the sacrifices being made by himself and the coaching staff in a bid to try and plot Town's route to Championship survival this season.

The Hatters boss has been spending almost every waking minute at the Brache as he puts in the hours of preparation for Luton's mini-campaign of nine games in just over a month.

That means spending time away from his family who are still based up north and newborn daughter as well, as Jones said: "It’s tough, because you’re literally engrossed in it.

“I’ve not been home in a week, I’ve not seen my month old daughter in a week which is extremely tough and if you’re a parent, especially a new parent, that’s unbelievable, but the games come thick and fast.

"I like to be tactically prepared, we watch lots of games, where I live at the minute, it’s been tough for my wife, it’s been tough personally, but that’s what we want to do to get the results that we need.

“We’ve gone into every game knowing what we want to do, how the opposition play and how we can affect that.

"That’s been because of the work myself and the staff here have been able to do.

"That’s a great, great personal sacrifice and that’s the tough thing when you play every two days, the sacrifice we’ve had to make is the hardest thing.”

Jones has been trying to navigate Luton to safety with a squad that he is very much accustomed to, having signed a large number of the players during his first spell at Kenilworth Road.

The fact that they find themselves battling to stay in the second tier proves to Jones they got their signings spot on, as he continued: "It’s a similar squad to what we had at League Two which shows one, the good recruitment that we did, as we knew that we'd had a competitive team in the Championship.

"It also shows how well the team has done to get there, but also how it’s going to be a difficult task because there's no other side that has come from League Two to the Championship in two years currently in the Championship.

“It’s been more like sides that are established, or have come down from the Premier League, or those that have been promoted, are the ones that have been in the Championship before.

“So we’re probably the most inexperienced Championship side here, but we've got a group that are desperate for this opportunity.

“We know it’s tough, but we’re still in the fight, that's the main thing and it’s game by game.”

After going into the midweek draw with Barnsley on the back of a humiliating 5-0 defeat at the hands of Reading on Saturday, ending what had been a six game unbeaten run in the second tier, Jones was pleased with the reaction shown on the night.

He added: “I was, but that wasn't a surprise to me as the big shock was the Reading result, because that was totally out of character as we made errors, we looked jaded.

“I've had two centre halves in Sonny (Bradley) and Matty Pearson who missed 10 days of training, so they couldn't train properly and that was a big thing.

“They lacked match sharpness, we've lacked match sharpness, so when you're going away to Swansea and to Leeds who are turning teams over and we get four points from those fixtures, that was a big shift.

"I expected there to be a little bit jaded and tiredness in the legs, and that’s what happened, so that was the shock really.

“The reaction I got at Barnsley was excellent, once we tweaked things after the first half.

"The goal probably took a bit away from our performance and once we tweaked things, I could only see one winner.

“I'm really disappointed with the last five minutes when we conceded as if we hadn't have done that, it would be a different story.”