With 48 victories from 99 games, the gaffer is just shy of a 50 per cent win ratio, but he is more than happy to have exceeded the average time a manager gets at a club across the top four tiers – the gaffer bettering the average by around six months.

He said: "I am very proud of that, the shelf life of managers at this level or any level are shorter than my reign so far, so I have managed to up the average slightly. I am delighted to get 100 games at this fantastic football club.

"The bigger thing for me is the work we have done in between my first and my 100th game. We have made great strides on and off the pitch, we have implemented a lot. We have had great backing from the board, my staff, the chief executive, the players and especially the fans.

"It's been a wonderful time and I am very proud of that. I would like to thank everyone for helping me get to this level."

The club has progressed significantly under the Welshman in those 100 games, taking them from 18th after his first game against Cambridge in January 2016 to fourth spot in his first full season, whilst we now sit top of the tree in Sky Bet League Two after 15 games.

"We are in a good position in terms of now and this year," Jones continued. "We haven't lost many games which has been one thing, we have had to implement that we had to be hard to beat – we implement certain things that make us hard to beat and then we had to improve ourselves going forward so that we won more games and I think we have made that progression.

"First year I was here we had some good wins, especially some away wins. We struggled a little bit at home, but we stopped the rot – we weren't losing consecutive games. We got ourselves out of the little bit of a slump we were in.

"Second year we really did establish ourselves as one of the top sides in the league I think, although we drew with quite a few side. We lost fewer games than anyone else in the league – only nine games which is fantastic for a 46-game season – but we probably drew too many and it cost us an automatic promotion spot.

"Now this year we think we have improved slightly because we haven't lost many, we're drawing less and winning more. There's been a constant progression which is nice. Whilst improving the squad we have lowered the average age, we have improved the quality of player that we have had here and the surroundings have been fantastic as well."