Jones can't wait to finally welcome fans back to Kenilworth Road for Canaries visit

Luton boss Nathan Jones can’t wait to lead his team out in front of a crowd at Kenilworth Road once more on Wednesday evening.

The Welshman hasn’t managed a home game with fans present as Town boss since January 1, 2019, when his side were held to a 0-0 draw by Barnsley, 9,926 supporters in attendance that day.

All 14 of his games in Bedfordshire since the season resumed after lockdown have been in empty stadiums due to the social distancing measures enforced because of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, there will be 1,000 cheering the Hatters on against Norwich tomorrow night, with Luton put into tier two measures following lockdown ending, as Jones said: “It will be great to have fans back at the Kenny and it’s a start.

“It will be trial and error I’d imagine, but we’re delighted to have a little bit of atmosphere there, and we’ve missed them, we really have.

“We’ve been waiting for this, so it will be good, and I know we’re in a decent place, apart from Saturday’s result.

“We’ve been in and around things regularly, so what we need to do is get back on track now and if the fans are there to help us do that and to see it then brilliant, we’re looking forward to having fans back in our ground.

"Football has done a wonderful job of getting it back on, completing the season, with integrity, with a real competition and that’s been really good.

“They’ve been very cautious in terms of allowing people to come back in.

"It possibly could’ve been done earlier, but the public health is more important that anything else.

“Now we’ve started to open the doors, hopefully people will be sensible and clubs will adhere to the rules and we’ll be able to get more through the door, week by week until we’re back up to capacity, a vaccine is found, a vaccine is marketed and then we can return to some form of full-on normality.

Although Kenilworth Road holds just over 10,000 when full to the rafters, Jones thinks that even with a tenth of the capacity allowed, those present will be able to help generate a good atmosphere for his players.

He continued: “I would imagine it’s slightly better than background noise, but it’s going to be strange, everything’s going to be strange.

“It’s just about getting back to normal as soon as we can.

“Obviously it was a full house in January, February, March it was lockdown then June we were back and with no fans, so it was strange then.

“Then it was the odd noise from staff, now we’re up to 1,000, so hopefully that can double quite quickly, then double again, double again and then we’re back to full capacity.

“So it will be strange, but I think everything is readjusting to the new normal now.

“At the minute, anything is better than nothing.

“So 1,000, then hopefully up to 2,000, every little helps as the saying goes.

“We’ll start with 1,000 and hopefully if everything is safe and people adhere and people are sensible and the country is sensible, then we quickly get back up to something like a capacity.”

Jones didn’t think that the return of fans will boost his players’ outlook to the job in hand though, as he added: “I hope it doesn’t affect player's attitude as I think we’ve had a really good attitude in pretty much 99.9 per cent of our games.

"We lose the odd game and that’s understandable because of the level we’re at, but attitude wise, I’ve never really had to question my team, for a long, long time.

“So what it might do is add a little bit more adrenaline which hopefully means we can improve performances.”