Luton boss admits he was about to take Morris off before striker popped up with Canaries winner

Hatters boss Nathan Jones admitted he had been about to take striker Carlton Morris off just moments before he scored the match-winner at former side Norwich City last night.

With just over an hour gone, Town substitutes Elijah Adebayo and Cameron Jerome were stripped and ready to go on the touchline, before Harry Cornick and Allan Campbell combined to win the ball back from their hosts on the halfway line.

That saw Morris set off on a burst into the area and after beating Grant Hanley with his trickery, clinically slotted past Angus Gunn and into the bottom corner.

It meant that rather than Morris coming off, Jones replaced Harry Cornick and Fred Onyedinma with Cameron Jerome and Sonny Bradley, Morris afforded an extra 13 minutes until eventually making way for Adebayo, with Luke Freeman on for Alfie Doughty too.

Speaking afterwards, Jones said: “We were going to do a double and then we thought he might have been geed up a little bit more by the goal, so we gave him extra.

“Elijah felt stiff over the last few days, so we didn’t want to risk him massively, Cameron’s been excellent as an impact and we just felt we did that.

“The subs again gave us an impact, saw the game out well, eight minutes of injury time, I thought it probably should have been six, but I really did think we saw out the game really well.

“To play 100 minutes against Norwich and not to concede shows you’ve done something really well.”

Morris himself revealed he had been oblivious to any goings on in the dug-out, as when asked if knew his number was about to be shown, he said: “I didn’t, but that’s obviously very good timing for me that I didn’t get taken off.

“That’s a bit of fortune for me and the gaffer is making the right decisions.”

Adebayo and Bradley had been two of the three changes made by Jones on the night from the weekend win over QPR, with ex-Norwich loanee Henri Lansbury also on the bench, as Luton have the small matter of a trip to Watford looming this Sunday.

It meant Doughty came in for a first start, while Onyedinma went to right wingback, with Cornick in attack, as on why he made the changes, Jones added: “It’s with games in mind, not that they’re going to play Sunday.

“Coming off the back of Henri had two big shifts and he’s still recovering his fitness, it’s a big ask and then Sonny just come back from injury himself, to play two games, we felt we needed to be fluid defensively.

“(James) Bree is a real good defender in that three quarter position where he can step in, up against (Josh) Sargent, we felt it was a good match-up, so we’re really, really happy with that because tactically I thought we were really good again tonight.

“We started with 3-4-3, three ones to really counter, we weren’t getting to grips with it, so then we reverted back to what we did and they were seamless in what they did.

"I’m really proud of the performance as it’s a tough, tough place to come and these score goals here, they always score goals here.

"So for us to keep a clean sheet shows we defended fantastically well.”