Luton Town manager Nathan Jones critical after Millwall defeat

Luton Town manager Nathan Jones admitted his side deserved nothing from last night’s match at Millwall.

The Lions ran out 2-0 winners at The Den thanks to a Martin Cranie own goal and an impressive finish by Connor Mahoney.

Jones said: “We were pretty passive first half. We got outmuscled. We knew you can’t come here and have a fight with Millwall because they’re probably better than you at doing that. We wanted to be aggressive and to play the ball quickly – but we didn’t.

“Every time they pressed us we went from back to front and their two centre-halves ate it up. We couldn’t get a foothold in the first half and then they put the ball in the box – ultimately they did it that much first half that eventually we cracked.

“Second half was much better, controlled the game – they scored against the run of play. But we never really looked like scoring, we had a lot of possession and moved the ball well but lacked penetration. We are missing four or five players which would’ve given us more impetus. We didn’t look like we’d get anything from the game.

“You can’t go direct into these – because that’s exactly what they want. You need to move the ball quickly and penetrate. We had overloads in certain areas that we didn’t move.

“We weren’t brave enough tonight. We conceded on half-time – we thought it was well over [the allotted stoppage] but it’s a poor goal. It’s a terrible goal to give away. Our biggest six-foot seven centre-half doesn’t go and head it in the third, fourth, fifth minute of injury time and we’re on the back foot. You’ve just got to head it and we didn’t do it well enough.

“We changed at half-time, if we’d gone in at 0-0 it could’ve been a different game. They would have had to come out and leave more gaps. We controlled the second half but they sat in, soaked it up and we couldn’t penetrate them. That’s sometimes the lack of quality that we have.

“They are an established Championship side with good players, good defenders. The second goal is a really poor one to give away. We’re in possession in the middle of the park and I don’t know how he scored from there, I’ll need to look at it.

“We’re conceding too easily – Saturday was exactly the same.”

PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD