No extra pressure for Hatters boss Jones as he agrees with CEO's 'realistic' Premier League ambitions for Luton

Hatters boss Nathan Jones doesn't think that Luton chief executive Gary Sweet's claims that the club will be playing Premier League football in the near future adds any pressure to his job, in fact he agrees with him.

Since Jones has been manager during his two spells at Kenilworth Road, the club have improved their league position every time, finishing as high as 12th in the second tier last term.

This term, after 14 games, a 1-0 victory over Hull City on Saturday saw Town jump into the play-off places, sitting in fifth ahead of this weekend’s trip to Preston North End.

At last night’s Luton Borough Council development management committee meeting, CEO Gary Sweet said that top flight football will happen with 2020 in charge, whether that be this season or not, and on whether that added any weight on his shoulders, Jones said: “We’re not here to now suddenly stagnate or plateau as a Championship club and remain in the Championship for the next ten years, we don’t want to do that.

“We have ambitions of being a Premier League side, we've always said that.

"How we go about that - we have to be bold, brave, play well and everything has to come together.

“But that doesn’t add any pressure to the pressure we put on ourselves anyway, we believe we will be.

"How long that takes, you can’t say because it's such a tough league.

"There are so many big clubs, big budgets, but how we bridged that gap is with work, recruitment, good people, continuity and everything.

"Then, with a belief in what we do and that’s how we bridge the gap.”

Although some fans might think that a return to the top flight for the first time since the 1991-92 campaign is some way off, Jones felt they were ambitions that could be realised, possibly even this term.

He continued: “Of course it’s realistic.

"If you put a run together and you believe in what you do then you have to finish top six and then you’re in a three game tournament.

"We don’t believe we’re going to finish top two as there’s some big sides with huge budgets and fantastic squads, but we believe that we're in the mix for anything else, and of course it’s attainable.

"We have to strive to do that, we’ve never strove this club to just consolidate and be happy with where we are.

"We want to evolve and we want to push boundaries and we want to get better year in year out.

"So getting better than we did last year, that could be top 10, a year later, that could be top six, it could be anything.

"What we’re saying is we have ambitions here that we believe we can attain, and that could mean that we are not a Championship club but one step higher.

“We know what our ambitions are, and it’s not a 14 game season, it’s 46.

"We know where we believe we can be, we know what we think we can achieve and even if we fall short of that, we won’t be in a bad place.

"We have realistic ambitions but ones that are bold, ones that we feel we can attain, but it's only 14 games into a crazy season and a crazy league."