Luton boss brandishes Town's opening 45 minutes during City loss as 'unacceptable'

Luton manager Nathan Jones lambasted his side for what was an ‘unacceptable’ first half performance during their 2-0 defeat at Bristol City this evening.

The Hatters headed to Ashton Gate to face a team who, like them, had yet to register a victory in the Championship this season.

However, with 28 minutes gone, the Robins had breached Town’s defence twice, punishing some weak defending with Nahki Wells and Tommy Conway both left unmarked to score.

Luton didn’t really improve after the break until Mark Sykes saw red for a lunging challenge on Luke Freeman, as although Town did at least enjoy some dominance in terms of possession, they never really appeared capable of finding a way back into the match.

Speaking afterwards, Jones said: “That was pretty much unacceptable in the first half.

“For the things that we do and how we go about our work, for me that was unacceptable and I’ve said that.

“The way we defended, the way that we wanted to take shortcuts and not do the basics well, that cost us the game and they started with real energy.

“I’ll take responsibility, I felt I picked the wrong team from the start, but it’s inexcusable anyway as after five minutes you couldn't tell that.

“But we just didn't do the basics right and we’ve done the basics right so many times here, but that was as poor a performance as we’ve had here.

“I can’t remember especially since I've come back that we've had, maybe Birmingham at home, but yes, we were second best all over and that’s something that doesn’t happen to us very often.

On why he felt Town currently look such a different side to the one that reached the play-offs last term, Jones added: “We’ve got a lot of injuries out and a lot of people bedding in and needing to learn what we do, but we just did not defend well enough.

“We weren’t aggressive enough, we didn't do the basics, for me, I thought we were poor, we were really, really poor.

“They had more energy than us, won 50-50s, everything about our body language, just everything about it wasn’t what we normally do and that's the worrying thing.

“Second half we improved, but I don't think we could have got any worse to be honest with you.”