Bradley puts clean sheets down to a less expansive approach by the Hatters

Town skipper Sonny Bradley believes that a less expansive style of play has been the blueprint for Luton’s new-found solidity in the Championship this season.

The Hatters struggled for long periods with life in the second tier last term, particularly on the road, recording just one win from their first 16 matches.

That included a 13-game losing run in the Championship, where they conceded 41 goals, including seven at Brentford, until keeping a clean sheet at the 17th time of asking when winning 1-0 at Middlesbrough.

Since that Riverside victory, Luton have shored up dramatically, breached just four times in their last eight games on the road, at the back end of last term and the start of the current campaign, with six clean sheets collected.

Following Nathan Jones' appointment in May, Town have conceded only once in their last six away outings, that coming at Championship title-winners Leeds United, and when asked how the turnaround has occurred, Bradley said: “We’ve started where we left off at the end of last season, just being really solid, and that’s the difference from the start of last season.

"We started being a little bit expansive early on in games, and I think we created our own problems at times last season.

“It's probably a little switch up in mentality, we got caught out a little bit and we got punished.

"It did take us too long to recognise that it wasn’t quite working and we were conceding chances.

"When we were in League One, when the quality wasn’t as good and teams aren’t as good, we went long early, we got the ball up to Collo (James Collins), we built a platform to go and win games.

"I feel like we’ve just gone back to that, we switched up the mentality.

"We don’t need to go and score straight away, it's not all about creating chances, sometimes it's about not conceding, staying in the game.

"If you look back at the last 15, 16 games, these tight games, 0-0 at half time, if there’s only going to be a couple of goals in it, we normally come out on top.

"So from that point of view, why would you change that? You've just got to maintain standards and keep doing what’s right and winning games.

“Now we’ve found a way to win, we’ve started doing the basics better from the start of the game which ultimately gives us a good platform to go and win games, and that’s the difference for me.

“We’ve got a way of winning and we just need to continue doing that.

“It’s easier said than done in the Championship, it’s a tough division, but it’s all about maintaining standards now.

“We’ve set the bar pretty high, there’s a lot of fixtures coming up and each game we need to reach those levels if we want to keep on winning.”

Hatters boss Nathan Jones agreed with his skipper that making Town far harder to break down was one of his sole objectives when returning to the club.

He has managed it too, with Luton conceding a mere 12 goals in 12 games since he came back, five of those coming in one fixture against QPR.

He added: "When we came back I felt to be fair to the previous manager they’d started to have that solid edge before I came in.

"But prior to that, they needed two, maybe three goals to win a game, two to get a draw, that’s very difficult to do at Championship level.

"We might have been able to get away with that at League One level, but not Championship, so we’ve showed that solid edge.

"We’ve worked tirelessly, they’re a great group to work with, so as long as my work’s good, then we’re looking a decent side.

"What people tend to forget about us during the promotion years, even during the play-offs, we had a fantastic defensive record.

"We were always in the top three or four and then in the top two in the promotion years, and that’s very difficult to do, especially with the way we played.

"We were always top scorers in those leagues, so to couple that with a good defensive record, we always did.

"When we came back, there was nothing we could do about the goal difference, because it was too big to get back.

"But we’ve tweaked certain things to make sure we were always in games and most of the time we only needed one goal to improve our points tally, whether that’s one or three.

"I you can do that you’re in a good place, because I do believe we’ve always got a goal in us.

"We’ve got people that can score goals, with the way we play and the work we do all around.

"Yes, we’d like to score even more, while remaining as solid as we are, but that’s a work in progress."