Jones demands a reaction against Hartlepool

Luton go into the League Two clash on the back of a heavy 4-1 defeat against AFC Wimbledon last weekend, the biggest of Jones’ short reign thus far.

Speaking to the press this afternoon, the Town chief, who is yet to taste victory at home, said: We’ve worked on things this week, so we’re looking to not have any kind of repeat of that this week.

“It’s part and parcel of the team’s development and my development as manager of the team that you’re going to have setbacks but its how you react to those setbacks and that’s what we’re going to have to do this week.

“We have to have a reaction and hopefully it’s a positive one. We have to put to bed what happened on Saturday and have to make sure that’s long forgotten.

“I’ll be looking for an improved performance, I’m looking for more of a Luton performance, to get back to what we’d been doing and we want to win the game.”

Hatters had been sound at the back up until their trip to the Dons, conceding just three goals in five games, before shipping four inside 50 minutes.

Jones hopes the manner of the defeat was just a blip, as he continued: “We had been defensively excellent and conceded three goals in five games prior to that.

“Then to concede four in four minutes effectively was a little bit out of character for us and out of the blue and maybe that was my naivety or maybe just a blip on the day.

“But realistically they scored from every chance they had and I was disappointed because I felt we took a little bit of a step forward in possession and then two steps back out of it, so that’s disappointing.”

Jones admitted it was vital lessons were learnt from the weekend’s drubbing too, but that the squad moved on quickly from it when back in training.

He added: “Anyone who thought that they played well on that day would have been a little bit disillusioned. We’ve spoken about it, put it to bed early on Monday and we’ve moved forward on it, we needed to do that.

“It’s important they learn from certain things, because I don’t want that kind of inconsistent performance, I don’t want the inconsistencies of winning one, losing one and so on.

“We’re going to lose football matches but if we do lose, I want it to be in a way where it will be small margins, rather than as we saw at the weekend.

“We have to get to a level of performance where we know what we’re going to get from players, it can’t be a massive difference in the level of performance, we can’t have that.

“We need an equilibrium in what we do and then the small margins will mean we win a game or we narrowly lose a game or draw a game.

“We can’t have what we had last week, that can’t happen at this football club.”