Jones wants Town to arrest their poor form on the road in new year

Luton boss Nathan Jones wants his side to arrest their poor run of form on the road in the new year.

The Hatters have now gone six matches without a victory away from Kenilworth Road following Boxing Day’s 2-1 defeat at Reading.

Town were full of confidence ahead of the fixture, on the back of an excellent performance when they drew 0-0 against title-chasing Bournemouth on home soil previously.

However, they fell 2-0 behind at the Madejski Stadium in the opening 45 minutes and despite an improved second half performance, only had Kazenga LuaLua’s 90th minute consolation strike to show for their efforts.

On why they couldn’t continue the performance levels from their draw with the Cherries and the disappointing run outside of Bedfordshire, Jones said: “They’re different games and after the first three minutes I didn’t see us having any problems.

“Then they scored from an unbelievable corner, a volley from that angle that loops over your keeper and goes in the top bin, that’s a little bit extraordinary.

“I’m disappointed with the second goal as we gave the ball away in the middle of the park, then we’re open, and we don’t set up to be open, and then we let a runner go, then they play and then they score.

“Those are the things that are avoidable and those are the things where we need to do the basics a lot better.

“If we do the basics a lot better then we give ourselves opportunities, like last year.

“We’re trying to evolve and be a better Championship football side, but last year we did the basics really well and didn’t concede many away from home.

“It’s a bit different now as we’re doing better at home than we are away, so we’ve got to make sure that we arrest that and then we become a better team.

“It is a bit disappointing not to continue that, but they’re different games, and we had enough of the game to have got something out of the game.

“We had more shots, more possession, more chances, so if we do that and suddenly show more quality in the final third then we would have got something from the game.”

One sequence that Luton did manage to end was their lack of an away goal, as LuaLua’s 90th minute blast ended a worrying sequence of over eight hours without scoring on their travels.

It was still only a fifth strike of the season from 11 away games though, with Jones insisting Town’s play had warranted a higher return, adding: “We create enough away from home.

“We created enough chances against Coventry, we created enough chances against Swansea, it’s just we have to take them.

“We do create enough chances to score, it’s just some teams score out of nothing, some teams score from 20 yards, 30 yards, and they have different kind of players.

“We have got to make sure that we are really good structurally, we’ve got to get them to be right at it confidence wise and when we do that, we tend to win games or get positives results.

“But against Bournemouth, against Swansea, we had enough opportunities to have broken the back of the net, but we didn’t and we have to find ways to do that.”