Hatters chief talks up 'professional' display as Town ease past U's in FA Cup

Luton chief Nathan Jones hailed his side's professional display as they ensured they weren’t the victims of a cup upset when coming through their fourth round tie with Cambridge United 3-0 this evening.

After stunning Newcastle United at St James’ Park in the previous stage of the competition, hopes were high at a sold-out Abbey Stadium that the hosts could make further progress, and with the BBC televising the contest, they clearly thought so too.

But barring a lively opening by United, the Hatters wrested control to open the scoring through Reece Burke’s first goal for the club on 14 minutes, quickly doubled up by Carlos Mendes Gomes’ maiden strike too just after the midway point of the first half.

They added a third in the closing moments, Admiral Muskwe firing home, as Jones said: “It’s a tough place to come, the wind was swirling, a cup upset on the cards, but I thought we were thoroughly professional.

“Cambridge are a good slide, they’re doing really well, (Mark) Bonner’s doing a great job here, but I thought we were really professional.

“When we had opportunities we took them, if we had showed a little bit more quality we could have had more and then late on, we had a couple of opportunities to extend that.

"But to win 3-0, to come here and keep a clean sheet, make eight changes, to have a debut, a few people that needed game time have done that and we’ve come through it.

“I was able to give a lot of people game time and a lot of people rest too, so its been a good weekend.”

Jones had gone with a much-altered side, eight changes in fact from the 1-0 win at Swansea on Tuesday night, but it was still a strong side that took the field, with only debutant Elliot Thorpe and defender Dan Potts not featuring in the Championship recently.

The boss added: “When you say eight changes, I'm not making eight changes and putting in youth team players.

"That front two played against Bristol City the other day for example, Gabe’s (Osho) been doing fantastic, the back three apart from Potts have been playing week in week out, then Fred Onyedinma we paid a lot of money for and Peter’s (Kioso) a very good right back who we have good hopes for.

“So it’s a really strong side, it's probably just the midfield, we had to play Carlos out of position, and give Elliot Thorpe his debut, that was probably where we were really gambling.

"But they've shown that they can cope and we've come here, you've seen West Ham today, they've gone to a National League side earlier and really struggled, I think ours was slightly more comfortable.”