Clark urges Town to pick up a confidence-boosting victory at Bloomfield Road

Luton midfielder Jordan Clark has urged his side to pick up three points by whatever means necessary at Blackpool this afternoon.

The Hatters make the long trip to Bloomfield Road on the back of a run of a disappointing run of form which has seen them take just point from 12, with defeats to Stoke City, QPR and Cardiff City on Saturday.

The Tangerines looked like they might struggle on their return to the Championship this term, taking five games to get a first win of the campaign, which arrived in unexpected fashion, beating title favourites Fulham 1-0.

That led to a run of seven victories from 10 games which saw Neil Critchley’s team shoot up the table to break into the play-offs at the start of last month.

However, since a 1-0 defeat at home to Stoke, they, like the Hatters, have hit a blip, with no win in five and taking two points from 15.

Ahead of the game, Clark said: “It’s a tough place to play and they’re playing really well at the minute.

“The manager is a good young manager, and they’re playing with a lot of confidence, so it’ll be a tough game, but every game’s tough at this level.

"They’re doing well in the table, so we’ve just got to focus on ourselves and we need three points, that’s all we look for.

“No matter how we play, we’ll take a scrappy 1-0 win just to get the confidence back and go from there.”

A month ago the Hatters themselves were looking like they could push up into the play-offs this season, but they are now eight points away from the top six after losing 2-1 to the Bluebirds at the weekend.

Clark admits it has affected the confidence slightly, saying: “You get all the plaudits when you’re playing well, you’re scoring fours and fives against Coventry and then we’ve lost a couple of games and not scored for three games.

“When it goes in (Cardiff opener), you think, ‘come on, not again,’ but when I got the goal back and at 1-1 I thought, get a few chances, get two or three (goals), and run away with the game.

“It’s just not going right for us at the minute, but we’ve got to look at ourselves first and foremost and go into training and put things right, especially with a tough game, we need three points.”

Manager Nathan Jones stated a 'lack of bravery' from his players was the main reason behind their disappointing display at Kenilworth Road last weekend, and although Clark was one of four players absolved from blame, along with Kal Naismith, Simon Sluga and Elijah Adebayo, he was unhappy with his own efforts in the opening 45 minutes.

The midfielder said: "We probably lost a lot of battles first half.

"We wanted to up the tempo and get the crowd behind us and I don’t think we really did that to be honest.

"I was disappointing, the conditions were harder for us first half, but we’ve got to be brave, get on the ball, and when the wind's high you’ve got to keep it on the floor which we didn’t.

"So a disappointing first half, second half I thought we started all right, we got the goal which was a great cut back from Elijah and then I thought we were in control for 10-15 minutes.

"It ended up turning into a basketball game and we were all over the place, they were getting in behind, could have scored a couple more goals, we had a couple of chances as well, so it was just disappointing.

"We’ve just got to cut out the mistakes, start defending better and start scoring more goals which has let us down in the last few weeks."

Clark himself was back in the side after not starting the previous five games, since the 2-0 defeat at Preston, as he added: "It was nice to be back, I’ve had a few weeks out of the team which has been disappointing, but I've just got to get my head down in training and work as hard as I can.

"Then when I’m called upon I’m ready to play and put a shift in which is all I can do here."