Hatters chief not overly concerned by Luton's lack of goals on the road

Luton boss Nathan Jones has no major concerns about his side’s goalscoring record on the road this season ahead of tonight’s trip to Middlesbrough.

The Hatters have gone three games without finding the net away from Kenilworth Road, George Moncur’s strike at Huddersfield on November 7, some five and a half hours of playing time ago, the last occasion they breached a home side’s defences.

Although they have only managed four goals in nine matches on their travels this term, Jones has seen his team create and squander some glorious opportunities, particularly Luke Berry’s open goal miss at Swansea recently.

With Town bagging six in their last two home fixtures against Norwich and Preston, Jones isn’t too worried though, saying: “It doesn’t concern me.

“The Cardiff performance concerned me (4-0 defeat), if I’m honest, because of the level of performance.

“Against Swansea, we were excellent and should’ve scored a clear-cut chance.

“I thought we were excellent at Coventry (0-0 draw).

“It wasn’t a swashbuckling, fluent performance, but it was a real good Championship solid performance, where you go away from home and pick up something.

“Then, coupled with a home win, it makes it a good week. We want to score goals, but we don’t play any more defensively away from home than we do at home.

“Last year, we probably had a better away record than we did at home, so it’s just strange times.

“What you have to do is keep that performance level high and then, ultimately, you get what you deserve.

“We want to be in the mould of our Swansea or Coventry performance, rather than our Cardiff one, because at Cardiff we didn’t turn up and didn’t compete and that’s not us, because we are a very competitive side.”

Luton won’t have it easy this evening though against a Boro side who have the joint second best home record in the division, conceding just four goals, keeping five clean sheets at the Riverside Stadium.

They have won six, drawn two and lost just one of their nine outings, but after comprehensively defeating a Preston team on Saturday, who had the joint top away record, Jones wasn’t too fazed when it came to the stats, adding: “It’s the Championship, you have no idea what’s going to happen from game to game, as it’s so difficult.

“Preston had a poor home record, beat Middlesbrough, then with the best away record and we happened to beat them.

“It’s only early in the season, so it’s not like we’re 35/36 games into season, it’s just one of those things.

“It will be a difficult game, whatever their record, wherever they are.

"Even if they were going through a terrible time at home, it would be such a difficult game, so the fact that they’ve got a good home record, just makes it harder.

“We’re in good form ourselves, we believe we should have a greater haul and some of those would’ve been away performances.

"So it will be a very interesting game and we look forward to the challenge.”