Boss on fitness, commitment and desire
Sometimes it’s just best to let the quotes do the talking.
And at Thursday’s press conference, boss Nathan Jones spoke of:
• His wish for players to live and breathe Luton Town
• That he won’t tolerate players who will hold the club back
• And that it’s unacceptable for players not to be fit every day
“We need to get a squad of players that can play 46 games a season,” said the boss.
“I was a player that played 46 games a season, or I could, and trained every day, and I want that in my players.
“I want my players to realise the fact that they have to make sacrifices, this is a lifestyle, it’s not a job.
“So that they’re not, ‘I’ve just played three on the spin, played four on the spin, done okay,’
“No.
“If we want to do anything, we want to go forward, I need a group of players that train, eat, sleep, breathe Luton Town, and if they don’t do that, they won’t be at Luton Town.”
He continued:
“I don’t want to comment on anything that’s gone on before, it’s not my business, not anything I can affect now but we have players here that are getting stronger every day and that can only be better.
“We’re asking players – we’re demanding – from players now to put in shifts day in day out, week in week out and that won’t happen overnight.
“Because if you try to flog a horse, it’s going to break down, so what we’ll do is steadily we’ll improve players and we’ll improve hopefully most aspects of every player.
“I’m still finding out about players at the minute. I think that the squad is disjointed in what it has, we’ve got a lot of nice little individual footballers, but no real sort of structure in terms of pigeon holing a lot of players into positions, that’s what we’re trying to do at the minute.
“We’re trying to evaluate the squad, trying to find our best 11, trying to find the ones we can move forward with, find the ones that are not quite going to be for us and then see where we have to improve.
“I feel I’m getting there and feel I know a lot more about all the players now and hopefully that can take us forward.
“That might be fitness, it might be concentration, it might be the desire – that they actually want to work.
“A professional football player should be fit enough to train every day and play, some have injuries that can’t be helped, but for me it’s unacceptable if the player’s not fit enough, and doesn’t have that desire every day.
“Those players won’t be at Luton Town, because we don’t work with those players. I’m a manager that works tirelessly because I want to improve and I want to improve those around me, and I want those around me to improve and to improve those around them so that we take the club forward.
“Those who hold us back doing that won’t be at Luton Town.”
Watch the full press conference here on Hatters Player.