Jones: We're still making inroads into deficit to stay up

Town boss Nathan Jones believes his side are still making inroads into the deficit between themselves and the gap to safety after an ultimately frustrating 1-1 draw with QPR at Kenilworth Road last night.

The Hatters missed a glorious chance to actually lift themselves out of the bottom three ahead of Charlton’s trip to Birmingham this evening, as despite taking the lead through James Collins' penalty, they were pegged back by Dominic Ball's second half strike.

Although disappointed, Jones, who took over with the club six points from safety, seven with their woeful goal difference, just seven games ago, wasn't getting too downhearted.

He said: "We’d like to have been a little bit more fluent, a bit more dominant, but we’re on a knife edge every game as games are running out and we can’t afford to lose one really.

"There’s going to come a time where we might have to think, 'okay, we might not be able to afford one, but okay, we definitely need to win it,' at the minute, that's not quite there.

"We are making inroads into that deficit every single week and we've got to make sure that when games finally do run out, we're out of that bottom three, so every point is vital.

"t's another game, we’ve only lost one in seven, too many draws, we've had four draws and two wins, so we would have liked to have at least one more win, but that's not to be.

"We can't cry over that, we’ve just got to make sure were ready for a massive game on the weekend (against Hull) and we do keep picking up points.”

One thing that did annoy Jones was the manner of the Rangers equaliser, as it came from a Town break on the left, the hosts being quickly countered by their opponents.

After James Bree lost out to a header, Bright Osayi-Samuel then set off and outpaced Cameron Carter-Vickers, before pulling his cross back to Ball who found the bottom corner.

Jones added: "It was a counter attack, we’ve got to first of all stop that.

"We’ve got good numbers back but we’ve lost a header.

"He’s (Osayi-Samuel) made a run, he’s gone past Cameron, which not many people do, and then they’ve arrived in more numbers than us at the edge of the box.

"So I will have to have a look at it, but it’s disappointing from our side.

"We try to be too eager, we’ve just got to make sure we don’t get run there as it’s come from a counter attack.

"We identified they had pace and real, real athleticism on the counter attack and that’s what cost us in the end."

Although the R's went into the game in poor form, with five defeats from six, they shrugged of their disappointing displays to dominate large parts of the second period.

Jones always knew they would present a difficult challenge, adding: "We've shown that we are resolute, we're disciplined, we can be adaptable and these are a good side.

"They're not in brilliant form at the minute, but they've got some Premier League players, they've got some players who could be in top Championship sides or Premier League players.

"When they play with the freedom they did as they didn't play with a centre forward, they allowed themselves to rotate and that's a nice luxury to have, to be able to do that.

"We’re probably not able to do that at the minute because of the importance of the games.

"It’s probably a fair result in terms of chances because we had some good chances right at the end, had a goal disallowed which we are really disappointed about as well."