Jones hopes Town have learned from their mistakes

When visiting the Weston Homes Community Stadium towards the end of last season, Luton produced a woeful first half performance, as they found themselves 2-0 down after 31 minutes, as United striker Chris Porter had a field day.

Jones was forced into changes before the interval, taking off midfielder Jake Gray, and on avoiding a repeat viewing when heading east today, the Town chief said: “What we’ve tried to do is learn from all the mistakes we made last year.

“Whether that was individual mistakes, whether that was collective mistakes, whether that was managerial mistakes, whatever it was, we’ve sat down, we’ve evaluated and thought how do we learn?

“That was a bad start for us, first 20 minutes, two down, in a game that we needed to win.

“Second half, we were a lot better, we controlled the game, we just couldn’t get the early goal that would have given us the platform to maybe go on and get something from the game.

“So we want to make sure that doesn’t happen again and we impose ourselves on the game a little bit more, as that’s what we didn’t do last year, so it was a disappointing result.”

The U’s are currently 11th in the table and ended a run of five games without a win by beating Stevenage 1-0 last weekend.

They still have an outside chance of reaching the play-offs too, trailing the top seven by eight points with seven games to go, as Jones continued: “They’re an attacking side, I’m sure they’ll want to win the game, they have a lot of good individuals and an excellent manager in John McGreal.

“They’ve got plenty of attacking threats, they’ve got a good system, whichever system they play, they’ve used a few, they know what they’re doing, they’re well coached,

“So it will be a real tough game, but every game’s tough in this league, there’s no gimmes regardless of form, regardless of position in the league.

“There’s no god given right, we have to be at it, we’ll pick a side that will try and win the game and we hope we can do that.

“It’s such a difficult game and away games are difficult, they really are. But as we said, playing us is a difficult game, it’s never an easy one, so that’s what we’ve got to concentrate one.”

Town will be roared on by a magnificent 1,946 supporters in Essex this afternoon after selling out their away allocation, as Jones added: “It’s wonderful, and it’s not local, it’s not like we’re going to Cambridge or Stevenage or one down the road, it’s a few hours away.

“It’s fantastic, it’s a Championship following we have. There’s a few clubs outside the Championship who have this kind of following, but we think we’re right up there and one of the best if not the best.

“They get out in force and we’ll hear them, they’ll fill that end and it will brilliant.

“I’m looking forward to the game and that all adds to an atmosphere and a desire for us to do well.”