In an end-to-end encounter, the away side fought back twice after Carlton Morris scored his fourth and fifth Luton goals and the boss was disappointed his team couldn’t implement their usual style during a breathless 90 minutes, which was open from start to finish.
“We had no control in the game.” Jones said post-match. “It stemmed from our back three not being dominant enough. All four centre forwards looked a real handful tonight, ours and theirs to be fair. From our point of view, our back three weren’t dominant enough and we couldn’t really get on the front foot and press which caused us a real issue.
“Every time we turned the ball over, they looked a threat. We led twice, had a glorious chance with Elijah to have made it three, should have had a penalty at the end. It is madness, just crazy how that isn’t given but realistically second half they could have won it, or we could have won it, it was too open really.”
Harry Cornick made his second league start of the season after returning from a hamstring injury but was forced off as a precaution at half-time with the same problem.
“He just had a tight hamstring. He has just come back from a hamstring injury but we couldn’t risk him, we have to make a change and we have the squad to be able to do that. that’s all it was just precaution.
At the minute Harry is trying to get fitness but we need to find a partnership, someone who is with Carlton (Morris) scoring goals as well because he can’t share that burden on his own. He’s doing wonderfully well, his hold-up play, his link play, everything is fantastic and he is everything we brought him in for.”
A quick turnaround means the Hatters are back in action at Kenilworth Road on Saturday afternoon and the Welshman added: “We have to be better than we were tonight to be honest with you, especially defensively. We can’t keep conceding two goals at home and expect to win games, that is not the type of team we are.
“We do like to score goals, but we like to keep clean sheets. We pride ourselves on being aggressive, fit and strong, we had 19 clean sheets last year and it’s two we kept so far, which isn’t good enough at this level to improve.”
