Berry felt late Forest point was absolutely key for Luton after 'horrible' Cherries defeat

​Luton midfielder Luke Berry felt it was key that the Hatters picked up something to bolster their chance of staying in the Premier League when drawing 1-1 with Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

​Town looked like they were going to suffer a sixth defeat in their last eight league games once Chris Wood had put the visitors in front during the first half, volleying Morgan Gibbs-White’s cross beyond Thomas Kaminski. However, Berry came off the bench in the closing stages to rescue a point for the hosts when swivelling to turn home his first ever Premier League goal once Ross Barkley’s corner was knocked down by Reece Burke. Speaking afterwards, he was quick to highlight the value of the result, saying: “It’s quite simple for us, we want to stay up, there’s no sugar-coating that really.

"We want to stay in this division, it’s massive for this club, massive for all our players and we’re all in together to try and achieve that goal. I think we can. It’s just like we did today, staying in games, not being silly, taking every point when it comes. Sometimes you can get sucked into, let’s go for the win and then in these leagues, they can sucker punch you and you go away with nothing. I don’t think we’re anywhere near evens there though, I think we’ve been sucker-punched a lot more than we’ve done to people, so it’s about time.

"The key is to just pick up the points where we can, not be too greedy and then the wins will come. We just need to keep doing well at home, keep getting points at home, that’s crucial to us. When the fans get us going, we’re quite some force, so hopefully we can just keep picking up a point here, and then we need to be getting wins, so hopefully we can get a few three points as well.”

Having let a 3-0 half time lead slip to lose 4-3 at AFC Bournemouth on Wednesday evening, Berry felt the character shown by the squad to bounce back a few days later from what was one of the lowest points of the season, was even more impressive, as he continued: “It was horrible, we played really well, we just didn’t do those scrappy things at times. In any league if you’re three-nil up you expect to win. Unfortunately they just had a bit of momentum, they carried it and we couldn't live with it.

"Thankfully today, there were times it was one-nil and we could have gone two-nil, three-nil, but we stayed in the game and came away with a point, even if we probably weren’t at our best. We were down the other day at Bournemouth and that felt bad, so to just get a point in the circumstances was massive.”

That point was made even more important after Forest were deducted four of them on Monday afternoon to put the Hatters above the Reds once more, now a point above the dotted line with nine games to go. Berry added: “To be fair, the manager put it to bed early doors. He was saying let’s get above them without this points deduction, let’s put that out of our thoughts and just focus on us.”​