Understanding Luton boss wants a reaction from his side against Chairboys

An understanding Town manager Nathan Jones is still looking for a reaction from his players going into this afternoon’s Championship meeting with Wycombe Wanderers.

The Hatters saw their unbeaten start to the league season ended by arch rivals Watford last weekend, beaten 1-0, giving a display that Jones labelled as ‘lacklustre’ and ‘flat’.

However, the Luton chief sympathised with his players' efforts on the day, with the match coming at the end of a hectic start to the campaign.

He said: “When you look at it in the cold light of day, we’ve only lost two games here, really, since we’ve returned and those came in three game weeks after two massive games.

“Swansea away and Leeds away, massive games (last season), it came to Reading and the performance was flat, and we got punished for it (5-0 defeat).

“Reading put in their best performance, post-lockdown, so there were a lot of circumstances.

“Now, last week, Derby at home was a wonderful performance overall, first half excellent.

“Man United was absolutely outstanding for us, in terms of raising our standard, then we had to go to Watford and raise ourselves again.

“Watford had the luxury of going to Newport (in the Carabao Cup) and basically not caring about the competition, or making enough changes that it didn’t impact on their Saturday team.

“I didn’t have that luxury, so that’s why they might have been flat.

“To come up and down, three times a week, that takes a lot to do from anyone, so it’s understandable.

“We’ve got a crazy, crazy, crazy schedule.

"The EFL, in all their wisdom, not allowing us to do (five) substitutions, Rhys Norrington-Davies, Sonny Bradley, they played six 90 minutes in the space of three weeks, it’s a crazy schedule.

"(Pep) Guardioloa’s come out and said it, we’ve said it.

“It was understandable why we’ve been flat, so I am looking for a reaction, but there’s a reason

“We’ve looked on the video and we were disappointed just on certain things that we do.

"We work religiously on things, how to hurt people and combat people, and we just didn’t perform.”

Although Town have a fortnight off after today’s encounter, they then face three successive three game weeks ahead of their second international break, with Jones admitting they may have to alter things for such a congested period of fixtures.

He said: “We have to now think about moving forward, because it’s now two three-game weeks where we’ve been flat and haven’t been energetic when we really needed to.

“We could’ve had some help and I don’t want to harp on about it. You see people making changes in the cup competitions because they literally have to.

“I do understand at a certain level because of Covid and the truncated system of the league, but the decision to not allow 20 in the squad and five substitutes just has no substance, apart from sticking to tradition, but we’re not in a traditional world any more.

“People are not Santorini pit ponies where they just have to run up and down a mountain all day and the quality of things is not scrutinised.

"We’re in the Championship and we’re at our limit every game, as are Man City, Liverpool, in terms of the cup competitions they have to go through, it’s just too much.

“We know we can’t extend the season, which is fine but make sensible decisions around it to allow people to rest.”

Despite his clear frustration at the amount of games his side, and the rest of the league are being asked to play, Jones was happy to get a week to work with his squad ahead of today’s game.

He was also thrilled with a start to the season that saw Town sitting in seventh ahead of this weekend’s round of matches, adding: “We’ve had a good week, one of the blessings is this is a free week to work with them because of the crazy schedule we go through.

“It’s all about maintenance and recovery but we have had a good week to work with them so we are very pleased with that.

“We are pleased (with the start to the season), taking aside the Watford performance then very much so.

“We were excellent in four games, I thought against Man United for 80 minutes we were excellent but without being disrespectful to anyone, they were more comfortable last night (Wednesday) against a very good Brighton team because Brighton have started very well.

“I think they were far more comfortable in that game than they were against us, which shows that we put in a very good performance.

“It has been a good start and we’re very pleased but it’s about pushing the boundaries with us, we don’t just want to rest on our morals and so on.

"At the minute we’re two points a game which is promotion but we have to continue that.”