Jones might reconsider tinkering with side again after Hatters' abject first half display at Reading

Luton boss Nathan Jones conceded he might not tinker with his side too much again following their 2-1 defeat at Reading on Boxing Day.

The Hatters chief opted to drop both Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Rhys Norrington-Davies to the bench from the team who had drawn 0-0 with title challengers Bournemouth before Christmas, plus striker Danny Hylton.

The alterations didn’t work, with Town producing a woeful opening 45 minutes, not managing a single shot on target and conceding twice to trail 2-0 at the break.

Jones then introduced the on-loan duo at half time along with Hylton, a switch that saw Luton immediately improve and dominate the second period in terms of possession, although they couldn’t manage a goal until another second half replacement Kazenga LuaLua’s late strike from distance beat Royals keeper Rafael.

Luton's chief explained the decisions were tactical ahead of two upcoming home games with Bristol City and QPR in the next few days, but might reconsider his thinking going forward, saying: “Maybe that’s my fault as we can’t second guess anything, we’ve just got to literally take each game as it comes and go from game to game.

“We tried to plan and think ‘okay, what do we need for the next game and so on,’ and maybe I tinkered a little bit as the ones that I kind of looked after probably were the ones that really impacted when they came on.

“We realised we’ve got three games this week and we want to make the most of the home games, so we've had to make sure we mixed the side up.

“At half time we weren’t getting any impact, so I had to make changes really and we brought on some quality really, especially Kiernan and Rhys I thought were excellent second half.

"Danny toiled, but needs to find a bit of rhythm and I thought the subs made a good impact, Kazenga when he came on as well.

"We just need to be a little bit more fluent in what we do, show a little bit more quality and if we had done that then we would have got something from the game."

Glen Rea, Martin Cranie and George Moncur were the three who made way at the break and Jones didn’t expect there would be too many issues from the trio, with the whole side struggling to impose themselves on proceedings.

He added: “You’re 2-0 down in a Championship game, if you can justify yourself and say ‘I’m doing enough to stay on then fine’ so I don’t think there will be too many complaints.

“Whether people are playing badly or not impacting, at 2-0, we weren’t, we weren’t doing enough.

“But in the second half with a different shape, with different personnel, we were considerably better, so we have to be considerably better, and if we can do that then we’ll pick up more points.

“I was just disappointed with the first half performance, I was disappointed with a lot of things first half, and we felt we needed to make those changes.

“We can’t chase a game at 2-0, we’re not that team yet at this level.

"We did it at League Two and League One, but we can’t do that at this level, so we’ve got to be structurally good and make sure we do the basics well and we didn’t do that.”