Nathan Jones feels the frustration as late goal denies Luton victory

Posted Wednesday, April 06, 2022 by PA

Luton manager Nathan Jones was frustrated his team could not see the game out, following their 1-1 draw at Peterborough.

The Hatters were off-colour at London Road, but still led the Sky Bet Championship’s bottom club for most of the second half through Danny Hylton’s opener, only to be pegged back in the closing stages by Jonson Clarke-Harris’ header.

It meant Luton stayed fourth in the table, three points ahead of seventh-placed Blackburn, the result still arguably doing more for them than their opponents, who are 10 points adrift of fourth-bottom Reading with six games remaining.

Jones said: “We were 1-0 up on 85 minutes, so we’ve just got to see the game out, really, and we didn’t do that.

“We had a warning just before, with a delivery, and they’ve had a chance back stick and they’ve scored, and to be fair they could have won it.

“We probably should have lost the game, we haven’t been anywhere near our best tonight, but credit Peterborough: they’re grafting, they needed a win, they went for it, they were really positive.

“They had a bad result at the weekend [against Middlesbrough], so they’ve come out fighting.

“Give them credit, but we weren’t at the levels we were.

“We showed one bit of quality tonight – the one time we won a first contact, first time we got it down, first time we showed any kind of quality, we scored.

“I’m a bit frustrated; one, we didn’t see the game out and, two, the level of performance.”

Luton led four minutes into the second half when Hylton got on the end of Fred Onyedinma’s low cross to score from close range.

But Peterborough levelled in the 87th minute when Joe Ward’s cross was met by Clarke-Harris, who came within a whisker of winning the match deep into stoppage time when he hit the post from 25 yards.

Peterborough boss Grant McCann said: “I thought, for 85 minutes of the game, we were the better team.

“There was a five-minute spell in the second half when they got on top of us and scored in that spell, and that’s the Championship for you.

“Teams score in their spells and that’s what happened in that five-minute spell, but I thought we rallied, we got better.

“We kept working, we had to deal with [Elijah] Adebayo, and the long ball into him, and that’s the way they play and we did that for most of the game.

“The last 20 minutes I thought we were excellent and there was only going to be one team that was going to win it.

“If I look over the last six games, I think we’ve been really competitive in five of them. I see the team tonight fighting.”