Jones eager not to dwell on Fulham thrashing ahead of 'massive' play-off decider with Reading

Luton boss Nathan Jones was eager not to dwell on this evening’s hammering at the hands of Championship winners Fulham ahead of Saturday’s ‘mammoth’ game with Reading which could secure Town a play-off place.

The Hatters were handed their biggest defeat of the season by a rampant Cottagers side who were easily a class above the level, securing the title in a dazzling display of attacking football, as Luton were handed a heaviest defeat at this level since November 2019, thrashed by Brentford.

It doesn’t change the stakes for Jones and his men though, who know a win against the Royals this weekend will secure their top six berth, with a draw possibly enough should results go their way.

With that in mind, Jones, who saw his side suffer yet another two injuries, one before kick-off with Allan Campbell forced to withdraw from the side, and then in the first half, Fred Onyedinma appearing to pull his hamstring, said: “It’s a real tough day, real tough game to watch.

"I haven’t felt like that in my career before if I’m honest, but they’re the best team in the league, congratulations to them.

"They’re a fantastic side and the only thing I can say is we’ve got nine injuries, if they had nine first team injuries and went to Man City, that’s the equivalent of the game, that’s all I can say.

"We’ve been magnificent, every single thing is going against us in terms of injuries, so what we have to do is make sure we dust ourselves off and we’re ready to go at the weekend.

“We’ve got people on the bench who we can’t really bring on, we couldn’t really bring Harry Cornick on today really so we’ve lost some big players, but it boils down to one giant, mammoth, unbelievable game and we’d have all taken that at the beginning of the season.

"So let’s look forward to that rather than dwell on a performance that was a poor performance, as they were good, but we weren’t as aggressive as we are, we didn’t defend our box as well, and in the end we felt a bit sorry for ourselves.

"Even the final goal summed it up, a square ball when we’re 90 plus three, we don’t need to do that, keep it there and see it out.”