Yates believes Red Devils were deserving of Hatters win

The post match stats had the visitors’ possession as low as 31 per cent, but once Matt Harrold scored for the third game running against Luton in the 12th minute, they withstood everything Luton could throw at them to hold on.

Afterwards, Yates said: “I thought we were great. How many shots has Jonah (Paul Jones) saved? Maybe two or three in the game.

“They’re a good side, they’ve got a big squad, high expectations here, won the last four and we’ve done the double over them.

“I think we worked that hard that we deserved that little bit of luck, the one that crashed on to the bar.

“Balls have flashed across our box, but we defended it, had the desire to not let ball in the back of our net, the desire to win the first ball.

“Yes they overloaded us in the wide areas at times, but we were superb, stood really strong and but for a couple of chances, balls across the box, we defended well.

“We always carried a threat and I thought we actually had, apart from the one that hit the bar, we had the three best chances of the game, so I thought we were well worth our deserved win.”

Town boss Nathan Jones was of a completely different view to his Crawley counterpart, as he believed his side were dominant in all areas, although knew full well the goal when it came, should have been avoided.

He said: “I’m bitterly disappointed because we earmarked that as a threat in what they do. The other day they had a chance from that, we just didn’t clear it well and then didn’t react for the seconds well enough.

“It’s a poor goal to give away, it’s a good finish, a real good technical sweet finish.

Ideally our performance all round, Paddy McCourt saw plenty of the ball, Olly Lee is developing in there, the centre halves looked secure, it was just one punt, drop and a great finish from Matt Harrold.

“That’s the way this league is, that’s the way any league is. But we dust ourselves off and we go again, we want to build another run.”

At the end, Jones had a heated discussion with referee Michael Bull over what he felt was not enough time played for Town to try and salvage a draw.

The boss added: “I was flabbergasted by the referee playing four minutes added time, I thought there was at least six in terms of how the game went.

“It’s five subs which they tell us is 30 seconds a sub, now if you’re telling me there was a minute and a half in the rest of it, where they slowed it down then that’s delusional, that shouldn’t happen.

“I thought the referee had a good game in all, but just at the end, it’s a minor thing so I don’t want to make a big issue of that because we should have scored, an extra two minutes would have probably just meant an extra two minutes of frustration.”