Luton boss relieved to see Town score a rare first half goal on their travels

Town boss Nathan Jones was happy to see his side end their long wait for a first half goal on their travels in the Championship when scoring before half time at Birmingham City on Saturday.

So far this term, the Hatters had managed just one goal in the opening 45 minutes away from Kenilworth Road in their league campaign, that coming when George Moncur volleyed home in the 21st minute at Huddersfield some eight games and just over three months ago.

Although they had to wait another 10 minutes at St Andrew’s, once Harry Cornick’s long throw had caused panic in the Blues area and Neil Etheridge had saved well from James Collins, there was Dan Potts to nod into the empty net with what proved to be enough for an excellent 1-0 win.

Jones said: “There’s a lot of stats and we can put to bed a few things like that now.

“We don’t prepare any differently to when we were in League Two and League One when we scored plenty.

“We want to get off to fast starts, we want to be on the front foot and we’ve been a bit unfortunate not to have done that.

“At Blackburn we could have scored an early goal, and so on, but you have to take the points where you can get them.

“They’ve had a bit of a tough time lately as we haven’t got quite the results we believe we deserve, so then it's where’s confidence at?

“We’ve had a real good week, a spiky week, we’ve been about each other and it’s proved today and I thought we were excellent.

“The thing about today is they had to do the basics right, it wasn’t free-flowing, it wasn’t who’s got the most quality, we had to make sure that we did all the basics right and they did that.

"I’m proud of the group as that’s always part and parcel at this level.”

Potts’ strike was just Luton’s seventh on their travels this season, but despite having the worst scoring record on the road, Town have still mustered an impressive five wins from their 15 encounters, conceding a mere 15 times.

They had chances to add to the tally, Collins lofting wide and Jordan Clark denied by Etheridge, as Jones said: “At Brentford we had four or five clear-cut chances that we could have doubled our tally really, but at times, our group are adjusting to Championship football.

“Most of them, pretty much 85, 90 per cent of them have not played Championship football before, so it's about them adjusting, but we have to show a little bit more quality as we would be in a far better position.

“If we just took 10 per cent of our chances we’d be in a far, far better position, but that’s a learning curve for us.

“We’d like to score more away goals, but we’re very difficult to beat, we’re not free scoring at this level, not yet, but we’re a side that’s establishing themselves as a Championship side.”