Jones could take 'masses of positives' from Luton's defeat to Blackburn

Luton boss Nathan Jones insisted there were huge pluses his side could take from the manner of their performance when beaten 1-0 at Blackburn Rovers on Saturday.

With the Hatters defeated by Adam Armstrong's late winner at Ewood Park, it meant Town went home empty-handed, as the hosts took advantage of a swift drop ball, Sam Gallagher setting up an unmarked Armstrong to beat Simon Sluga from close range.

Speaking after the game, he said: “There’s masses of positives, but it’s really difficult at the minute as I literally feel sick because our levels of performance have been very good.

“We’re showing now that we’re more than a match, we’re in every game, we can win every game, we believe we can win every game, but we have to do that.

"Because now ironically the end of the season we sat off, we made sure that we were solid and we picked up a load of points.

"Now we’re a different side, we’re a more aggressive side and I think we’re a decent side, we’re a good side at this level, it’s just we've got to start showing that.

"We’ve got to start being a bit more clinical as we created chances, against Bournemouth, against Brentford, we created a host of chances.

"Today we’ve created moments, not clear-cut chances, but moments, real moments where we could create chances and that’s where we’ve got to show more quality.

"These create a lot of chances against a lot of teams, I watched them play Norwich, watched them play Bournemouth, they create chances, they didn’t create any chances today as I thought we defended excellent.

"Our work-rate, our structure, our pressing, our organisation was superb and then on another day with a little bit more cutting edge, a little bit more quality, we could nick it.

"For 20 minutes leading into half time, I thought we were brilliant, and as the game was petering out a little bit, they were going to commit and I felt we were going to really counter.

"We did, we had a great opportunity and didn’t take it and that’s the thing that frustrates me, but the goal actually makes me physically sick, that’s all I can say."

Although Town ended up with just three points from their trio of away games, along with an FA Cup exit as well, Jones was left enthused by his side's efforts in what was an incredibly difficult quartet of fixtures.

The boss added: "They’re learning exercises, but we’re actually in a decent place as we're missing opportunities.

"We've had the toughest 10 days probably any Championship side could have.

"We’ve gone away to Bournemouth, gone away to Brentford, gone away to Chelsea and gone away to Blackburn.

"We’ve had four away games on the spin and you won’t get a much tougher 10 days being a Championship side.,

"Chuck Norwich in there, that’s probably the only one we could have gone away to that would have been more difficult to what we did.

"The levels of performance have been excellent but we’ve only got one win to show for that, so that’s the learning curve.

"If we want to compete at this level as we’re not content just to be here, if we want to compete, we have to learn and learn quickly."