Nathan Jones in awe of Hatters’ first-half display

Posted Sunday, February 04, 2018 by PA

Luton boss Nathan Jones was purring over his side’s first-half display in the 1-0 win over fellow promotion-chasers Exeter.

The Hatters were rewarded for their dominance through Harry Cornick’s 38th-minute goal, which proved enough.

Jones said: “I’m delighted as firstly we bounced back from the disappointment of Tuesday, when we were wonderful going forward but didn’t defend as we normally do.

“I’ll have to watch it back to get pure clarity on it, but I thought that first-half performance was as good as we’ve done here, in terms of fluency and in terms of how we moved the ball.

“We were up against a good side in Exeter. They are vying for promotion, they want the same things as us, but I thought we were in total control.

“They had the odd counter-attack when we gave it away as that’s how we play now and again, but I thought our build-up was wonderful and I thought we deserved to go in a little bit more than 1-0 up.”

Exeter manager Paul Tisdale, who saw his side’s three-match winning run ended, said: “We’re disappointed to have lost the game.

“We put a lot of effort in and it was a really tough team performance, but on the balance of play they (Luton) deserved to win it.

“It was a big challenge for us. Recovering from the Wednesday night game was difficult and we had real issues in our back four – as you could probably see from the selection.

“To defend as well as we did – we finished that game with three at the back with Kane Wilson, Jordan Storey and Dean Moxey – shows a lot about the way the squad pulled together and tried really hard.

“We thought at 1-0 we had a chance of nicking one at the end, and that’s what it was going to be, a case of nicking one. We couldn’t quite do it.”