Jones reveals Luton reached their 'bold' points target with Blackburn triumph

Town chief had set his side the aim of 51 to stay up
Town celebrate moving 2-1 ahead against Blackburn last nightTown celebrate moving 2-1 ahead against Blackburn last night
Town celebrate moving 2-1 ahead against Blackburn last night

Luton boss Nathan Jones revealed his side hit their points target on the nose after beating Blackburn Rovers 3-2 last night to ensure Championship survival.

When Jones took over back in May, the Hatters were on 35 points and looking like they would be destined for the drop, trailing fourth bottom Hull by six points, seven with a far worse goal difference.

The boss often spoke of a realistic points target he had in mind to remain in the second tier, and they got that on a dramatic final evening, doing the double over Tony Mowbray’s side in the process.

Jones said: “That was it, you get 51 points, you don’t go down.

“We looked at all the fixtures, all the permutations, get to that and what a bold one that is.

“Five wins and a draw, now that’s unbelievable, as it was we got four wins, four draws and one defeat, that's phenomenal form.

"For a side in the bottom three, phenomenal form and fair play to Barnsley as they've picked up real good points too.

“We’ve won the games we needed and didn’t lose any points we didn't need to and couldn’t afford to lose.

“There was the supplementary one at Leeds, where we probably thought we might not and that gave us the momentum to get a huge, huge haul.

“Sixteen points of 27 in the Championship, trust me on that, is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful return.”

Although everyone else was keeping abreast of all the scores last night, with seven teams still in danger of the drop, Jones stated that they weren't of interest to him.

In the end, Luton needed the victory to make sure of staying up, with Barnsley's win at Brentford meaning Town would have had to wait until Wigan's points deduction was officially confirmed.

However, Jones added: “We didn't look at any results, we had a points target of 51, if we got to 51, we would not go down and 16 out of 27 is play-off form.

“We didn't care about anyone else, what Barnsley did, what Wigan did, what anyone else did, we don’t care, control your own destiny.

“We dropped points against Barnsley, dropped points against QPR, they brought us to this point.

"The biggest win in the club's history on Saturday set us up and now we’ve won again, back-to-back, 16 out of 27 is unreal, absolutely unreal.”