Hatters boss not totally surprised to see Rea net a screamer during City victory

Although not many Town supporters would have expected to see Glen Rea net his second goal of the season with a magnificent volley against Bristol City at Kenilworth Road last night, the quality of the strike didn't come as complete surprise to boss Nathan Jones.

With 17 minutes gone of the contest, the 26-year-old was left unmarked inside the area from Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s high hanging corner some eight yards from goal.

There was still plenty to do though, and as the ball dropped out of the night sky, Rea displayed the perfect technique to thunder home a side-footed volley on his right foot past keeper Dan Bentley and open the scoring, netting easily the best goal of his now seven in total for the Hatters.

When asked if he had expected such a terrific effort from the midfielder, who has played 172 times for the club since joining from Brighton in March 2016, Jones said: “Not really, because he’s a very good technician.

"It was a training ground routine but not for him to volley it, but to head it in that area.

"He has scored goals here and he will have you know that he’s very good technically.

"But we’re just delighted as it’s a big three points, it takes us on to a decent tally, sets us up for the weekend (against QPR) and every point is so hard-fought in this league.

"We haven’t got what we’ve deserved in some games, you go away to Middlesbrough and I think their manager (Neil Warnock) was complaining about time-wasting, people do what they do to get points at this level.

"We’ve gone away and on the weekend, at Reading, when teams are leading, teams just make sure that they see games out and that’s what we did today.”

There was a degree of surprise surrounding the opener for Dewsbury-Hall though, who was thrilled to add another assist to his name, before going on to bag the second half winner himself.

He said: “It was going in as soon as if left his boot, fair play to him, it’s a great strike.

"I’ve just put it in an area hoping someone would get on the end of it, but I wasn’t expecting Glen to hit it with his foot, I was expecting more from his head.

"It was a fantastic strike and it put us on the front foot, so decent.”

Dewsbury-Hall has taken over as Town’s main set-piece taker since arriving on loan from Leicester City, as the Hatters are becoming experts from deadball situations now, a high percentage of their goals coming from free kicks or corners.

He added: “We do set-pieces a lot in training as we see them as a massive part of the game.

"They are a big part of football now, a lot of teams use set-pieces as their main threat.

"It’s something that I will continue to work on and we go into every game thinking we can exploit the weaknesses in the other team’s defences from set-plays and I’m happy again tonight it’s paid off.

"It’s got me another assist and the team another goal.”