Jones: It's been a wonderful start for the Hatters this season

Hatters boss Nathan Jones has labelled his side's start to the Championship campaign as 'wonderful'.

Ahead of tonight's trip to Rotherham United, the Hatters find themselves sitting 14th in the table, in the knowledge that a win could move to within a point of the play-off places.

They have already chalked up 13 points, with four wins, a tally that took them until their 12th game to achieve last season.

Speaking about the opening two months of the season, Jones said: "I think we’ve had a really good month.

"We evaluated the month and, to be honest with you, if we had done the job that we should have done against Nottingham Forest (1-1 draw) and taken nine points from the month, it would have been a really good month, considering the teams that we played.

"We played Wycombe, Stoke, Brentford, Forest – even Sheffield Wednesday, who are a massive club.

"But the other three, without being disrespectful to anyone, and including Millwall in that, are expected to be top six.

"The three I’ve mentioned in terms of Brentford, Stoke and Forest – anything outside the top six is not a good season for them, that’s their expectations, and Millwall are a very, very good side.

"So I think we’ve had a tough month and it’s been a realistic return.

"I’m just a little bit disappointed with the second half performance against Forest.

"Apart from that, I think we’d be in a real good place now.

"Fifteen points would be a point off second, it’s a wonderful, wonderful start considering where we are.

"I’m not going to get too down about stuff, but it’s important that we bounce back.

Although having no complaints about Saturday's defeat to an impressive Brentford outfit, who missed out on promotion to the play-offs last term with a play-off final defeat to Fulham, Jones did want to see Town become more of a goal threat themselves, with just one attempt on target all game.

He continued: "We hardly had a shot on target, we have to find a way to be better in that way.

"Now we can go a little bit gung ho, risk getting hurt, or just keep building in what we do, but these are a better side than us at this moment in time.

"They’ve had longer together, they have different athleticism to what we have, now we have to get there.

"We were structurally decent at times and when I looked at it back, I was frustrated.

"We are not massively away from them, it’s just that we had the first three chances of the game, but we didn’t take them and we weren’t clinical enough.

"They scored with a far more difficult chance than we had, for example, and that’s what they are – they are just a little bit more clinical, they have a little bit more of an edge than we do.

"But they are well, well further down the line with certain things that they are able to do, which we’re not in a position to do at the minute.

"Then they scored the third and maybe had another chance, a chance of a fourth, because we came out and we didn’t want to just go down and say ‘OK, we’ll settle for 2-0’.

"They were clinical in the early stages, and after the first 15 minutes they were the better side.

"But second half, it was a real even game, an open game actually, and then when it goes to an open game like that, they are as good as anyone because the threats they have.

"I’m a little bit down because of the goals that we conceded because they were avoidable, but it’s going to be a learning curve for us."

Although Town came up against a visiting team who had lost two of their three main strikers from last term to the Premier League, Ollie Watkins going to Aston Villa and Said Benrahma heading to West Ham, Jones didn't agree that the Bees had seen their squad ripped apart over the summer.

He added: "I don’t think they’ve been dismantled, what they do is they’ve lost two players and then just replaced them with new ones, but they’ve got a process which is very, very good.

“Bearing in mind they sell someone for 33 million and then 20 million, so they’ve got 50 million to invest and they invest it well, 10 million in their front man (Ivan Toney), who's a very good frontman by the way and they invest it in other athletic players, so they’ve got more resources than us to be able to do that.

"That’s the process they have, we’ve had that process ourselves for a number of years."