Hatters chief Jones wants a reaction from his players against Baggies following disappointing Blues defeat

Luton boss Nathan Jones is hoping his side show a reaction to their biggest away reverse of the season last weekend when hosting West Bromwich Albion tomorrow.

The Hatters lost out 3-0 at Birmingham on Saturday, the Blues now having inflicted the heaviest defeats on Town this term, both at home and on the road, having triumphed 5-0 at Kenilworth Road back in August.

After the hammering by Lee Bowyer's side earlier in the campaign, Luton then went and kept a clean sheet in a goalless draw in their following match at home to Sheffield United, before also grabbing a point in a 2-2 draw at Blackburn Rovers.

Only once have Town suffered back-to-back defeats this campaign as well, that back in November when they lost to Stoke and QPR, as Jones said of his players' defensive efforts so far: “They’ve been really sound in terms of what they’ve done.

“You take the Birmingham games out of it, our record is absolutely fantastic, it’s right up there with the best of the league.

"It’s just that we’ve capitulated against Birmingham, inexplicably really, as they came totally out of nowhere, both results came totally out of nowhere.

"That’s really strange as I don’t want to be disrespectful in any way, but it’s really strange how we’ve lost 8-0 to Birmingham.

"If we’d done that to Fulham for example you might have held your hands up, but we really did forget our defensive duties on both occasions.

"We got a reaction last time and hopefully we get a reaction this time.

“We’re going to have to as we’ve got big games coming up, so we hope that’s a trend that we continue to set.”

Since the defeat at St Andrew’s, Jones has been able to get his first free week with the players at the Brache since mid-January, with Luton having a congested fixture schedule due to their enforced break over Christmas.

On getting the time with his squad and reflecting on the weekend’s performance, he added: “It has been the first week we’ve had in a while where we’ve actually been able to do some work.

"We’ve had a lot of games, a real good run and it culminated in a really disappointing performance on Saturday where we weren’t ourselves, regardless of anything else.

"I looked back at it and for 20 minutes they didn’t get near our goal, we were camped in their half and we didn’t take advantage of that.

"We didn’t do a few basic things right, we conceded, again nothing in the game, then we come out at half-time and shoot ourselves in the foot and the game is effectively dead after that.

“That was disappointing because we felt it was a real good opportunity to go and be in the top six.

"It is a learning curve for us and if we do forget what we do very well, regardless of who we play, we get punished.”