Jones doesn't feel Luton got the credit they deserved for Cherries win

Luton boss Nathan Jones didn’t think his side got the credit they deserved for the manner in which they beat Championship title-hopefuls Bournemouth 1-0 on Saturday.

The Cherries, who were relegated from the Premier League last term, were forced to play for over an hour with 10 men after Colombian international midfielder Jefferson Lerma was sent off midway through the first half.

Bournemouth boss Jason Tindall was livid with the decision, which since been overturned on appeal, and stated that he felt his side would have won the game 'comfortably' had it been 11 v 11 on the field.

Despite being a man light, the Cherries still had a side on the field that dwarfed Town's in terms of transfer fees, but they were sent tumbling to just a second home defeat of the campaign, courtesy of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall's winning strike on 67 minutes

Jones said: “I wish I had Jason’s crystal ball, I’d love that, but they are a good side and there’s not many sides who will go to the Vitality Stadium and beat those, they will win more games than they lose, so the probability was in his favour.

"Ironically the 10-men rocked us a little bit more than it did them and I don’t want to comment on what another manager said, but that’s fine.

"We’ve been in a position where we’ve been comfortably the best side in the league and we’ve had stuff happen to us, but we don’t get credit for our performance as our performance was a wonderfully dogged performance against a top side, as they are a top side, with a great structure, with players that have been recruited for the Premier League.

"We’ve played them, both games now, over 90 minutes and a lot was said about the sending off, but I didn’t harp on about Steve Cook who should have got sent off in our game.

"(Sam) Nombe was clean through, so if I’m honest, there’s a tinge of disappointment that we didn’t take six out of six, as he was clean through, got pulled back, Steve Cook openly suggested that he took one for the team, so these things even themselves out.

"I can’t second guess another manager, I’m just proud of my team as we know what we have to do to win a game like that and I thought we were excellent in what we did.

“It was a wonderful performance for us to compete with those as we knew we had to defend well, we knew we had to play well and we did.

"We had our opportunities where we could have scored, but in the space of a month, we’ve played Bournemouth twice, kept two clean sheets and taken four points, I think pretty much everyone in the league would be happy with that."

The result took Luton up to 33 points from 24 games so far this term, as they are already 12 points better off than they were at the same stage last term.

When Jones took over during lockdown from Graeme Jones, the Hatters had advanced to 35 points from their opening 37 clashes, two more than they have now, leaving them teetering perilously close to relegation.

Although Jones eventually navigated them to safety, he believes real progress has now been made this term, with Luton on a run of three wins out of four in all competitions and ending a sequence of six matches on the road without victory.

He added: “Suddenly the numbers start turning around, people start talking about, ‘you have not won away for a little while,’ and then you’ve lost in midweek.

"We know what we are, we’re a side that last year had to consolidate our position, now we want to push a few more boundaries and want to punch a few on the chin metaphorically and that’s what we’re doing.

“We’ve got 33 points, if I’m honest, we probably should have about 37 because we haven’t won a game that we didn’t deserve, but we have drawn games that we should have comfortably won, so we’re in a reasonably good position.

“We’re in a fair position we feel, but we want to keep striving as we remember where we were last year when I took over and Graeme (Jones) had really started to turn the corner before I came in.

“I then continued that on, but we were on 35 points when I came in after 37 games, so for us to be sitting here after 24 on 33, shows we’re in a much, much better position, so we’re adapting to life here.”