Jones: We need to win at least three to stay up

Luton boss Nathan Jones believes his side need to win at least three of their remaining four games to give themselves a realistic chance of staying in the Championship this year.

The Hatters had got off to a fine start to life under Jones when the campaign resumed last month, taking five points from their opening three matches.

They could then only follow that up with just a single point from two home fixtures though, meaning Town now trail fourth bottom Chartlon Athletic by five points after the latest round of games last night.

With a trip to fellow strugglers Huddersfield tomorrow evening and then games against QPR, Hull City and Blackburn Rovers still to come, when asked how many victories would be needed to stay in the second tier, Jones said: “I couldn't say that because I don't know, I'd need a crystal ball to tell you, but you need to win three, that’s for sure and then it depends on a lot of things.

“I don't think there can be any more pressure on the game (with Huddersfield) anyway.

“You’ve got a nine game season where you have to effectively claw back a seven point deficit, every game’s so, so important, it’s not like ‘okay, we can lose a game and move on,’ because it’s nine games.

“We’ve got five points to claw back and that’s tough in the Championship, but we keep fighting as we’ve got four games left.

“We need to win and we need to win Friday.

"It takes it to three games and then we just have to see where we are, as we know the points total and that’s gettable.”

Despite being held by Barnsley to a 1-1 draw on Tuesday night with Aapo Halme’s late goal snatching a point for the relegation-threatened visitors, Jones was remaining optimistic about the size of the task faced.

He continued: “It’s exactly the same, the points total is still exactly the same.

“We earmarked points, you want to win this one, but it’s the Championship, everyone's fighting, they're fighting for their lives Barnsley, it’s a difficult game.

“This is not a fly by night league this is a real, real difficult league and they've given me everything.

“The energy levels from the weekend (5-0 defeat to Reading) were chalk and cheese, so much better.

“We took the lead with an excellent goal, had the best chance of the game (Harry Cornick’s one-on-one), second half tactically I thought we were very good, it’s just the Championship and you get punished for these things.”

The trip to the John Smith’s Stadium is Luton’s sixth since the season restarted again on June 20.

The gruelling schedule doesn’t end there either, Hatters having another three games to complete before the campaign finishes on July 22.

Jones added: “It’s two weeks now of just relentlessness, two weeks of coming in, recovering, training and moving on.

“This is such a difficult league, every game is so, so difficult and tactically you have to be aware and you have to be prepared.

“They come so thick and fast now these games, we let ourselves down at the weekend, apart from that, we've been very good, very difficult to beat, scored in pretty much every game and created chances in every game.

“So we’re not a bad outfit, it's just a mini season now.”