Berry happy to prove he can score goals in the Championship

Midfielder Luke Berry is happy to see his reputation as a goalscoring midfielder show no signs of decreasing in the Championship.

The 28-year-old has been a regular on the scoresheet during his whole career, especially at Cambridge United when he bagged 51 league goals in his six combined seasons.

Moving to Luton in 2017, Berry had scored 12 goals in his first three seasons, hampered by a serious injury against Colchester in March 2018.

He took that tally to 14 with a second of the term and third at Championship level in the 1-1 draw with Blackburn on Saturday when stealing in to deflect James Collins’ shot into the net.

On his ability to time his run into the area, the midfielder, who completed his 100th game for the club during Tuesday night's 1-1 draw against Birmingham City, said: “I work well with Collo up there, I’ve seen he’s picked me out and I’ve just got my toe there and nicked it.

“I always like to get in there, I’d like to get a few more, not just little nicks, I’d like to get some edge of the box shots.

“I do like it though, I’ll take the scrappy ones, they’re the best ones.

“It is different (the Championship), you get less chances, so when you get that chance you’ve got to be clinical.”

Luton made a fine start to the game on Saturday, going close through Rhys Norrington-Davies and Elliot Lee, while they did the same after the break, George Moncur’s fierce attempt saved.

It was something that Berry conceded they had worked on during the international break, as he said: “We started really well, even through the whole game we performed really well.

“We worked on our attacking shape and it was end-to-end at times, it was entertaining.

“If there was a full house they would have enjoyed it, it was a good game.

“We always want to start well, second half I thought we started well too.

“We’ve had times this season where we came out like Stoke and they nicked a goal and it’s made the game flat, so we wanted to learn from our lessons.”

Berry’s goal was just Town’s 10th of the campaign, a number they moved on to 11 against the Blues in midweek, and it’s an area that he wants to improve on, saying: “We’ve had a good two weeks, the gaffer’s been working on our shape going forward.

“We’ve always look solid and if we can get a few more goals, we tried, we only got one, but we were positive.

“We’ve got a strong base, that’s why last week we’ve been working trying to be a bit more positive going forward and getting more goals.

“Because if we can get a few more goals, we’ll be a real contender pushing to go on in this league and that’s what we want to do.”

Despite not scoring a whole host of goals, the Hatters can be proud of a start to the season that has seen them in the top half for the majority, sitting 11th after their latest round of matches.

Berry added: “It took us a good season to settle and understand the league.

“We were holding on at times last season, I know we won (against Blackburn), but I thought we matched them and had a real good game.

"We’ve got a real strong squad too, so if you’re not performing well you’ll get taken out.

"You’ve just got to make sure you keep performing well and do things right off the pitch and then play as much as you can.

“We’ve got a lot of strength in depth, Kaz (Kazenga LuaLua) comes in, we’ve got a load of different players and it doesn’t really change the quality of the team.

"Anyone can come in and we all look strong."