Jones laments a lack of quality on display from the Hatters during yet another Potters defeat

Sonny Bradley saw this header saved by Stoke keeper Josek Bursik

Town boss Nathan Jones felt his side lacked the quality needed to break down a resolute Stoke City in their 1-0 defeat at Kenilworth Road, as their long wait for a victory against the Potters continued.

The Hatters have now not beaten their opponents in 11 matches, a run stretching back to December 2000, and it didn’t ever look like they would end that record in a game that was expertly managed by the visitors from near enough the first whistle.

Trailing to Jacob Brown’s 34th minute goal, Luton only managed two shots on target throughout, although should have left with a point when Admiral Muskwe headed against the bar from close range in the second period.

Jones said: “It was a bit of a war of attrition first half, not much happening and then they showed one bit of quality.

“We went to sleep and it's a poor goal to give away from our point of view.

“Then second half we came out, thought we were much more front-footed second half, we had enough situations to have done more, we just lacked the quality in the final third today to put a cross on the money or we did put a cross on the money and then we hit the bar from it.

“That was the story of it today, there was one bit of quality in the game, they showed it and they won the game.

“You take any win you can in the Championship and if they’ve got the experience enough to do that (time-waste), I can’t comment on them.

"With us, we just needed to demonstrate a little bit more quality to have done that, which if we had done that earlier enough, it might have been a different story but we just lacked a bit of quality today and that was it.

“Stoke have got a good squad, a big squad, an expensive squad, they've got good experience, but we showed once again that we’re more than competing in the upper echelons of this league.

“Middlesbrough, Stoke are promotion chasing sides that will expect to be in the top six.

"So we’ve beaten Middlesbrough here and to be honest should have got something out of the Stoke game.”