Luton boss knows Town need to show a 'bit of brilliance' upfront to cure goalscoring woes

Luton chief Nathan Jones wants his side to start producing a bit of 'brilliance' in front of goal as they continue to struggle to find the net in the Championship this year.

The Hatters drew yet another blank against Cardiff City in a 2-0 defeat last night, their 13th game without finding the net so far, five of them coming at home, as opposed to eight away.

Town have scored just 23 goals in total from their 29 matches, the third lowest tally in the division behind Derby, Birmingham and Sheffield Wednesday on 21, with Wycombe netting 22.

At home, Luton have managed 16 goals from 14 fixtures, although six of them came against Norwich and Preston, when fans were briefly allowed back inside Kenilworth Road once more, meaning the other 12 games have seen Town celebrating just 10 times.

On the road it's been even more difficult for the Hatters, with just seven goals scored, and only three in their last nine matches.

Jones knows it is clearly an issue and something that must be solved, as he said: “We keep working and working and working on positions, if we get chances, people have to take chances, but quality is the difference.

“You see some of Kieffer Moore’s goals for example, they’re not clear-cut chances, he’ll run down the wing, chop inside and ping one and a bit of brilliance.

“We need a bit of that at times, but without being too disrespectful to any of my players, this is the level we’re at, so we’ve got to be careful, because we’ve got a great group that works hard, that’s right at it, we’re at our limit and we know that.

“We’ve got to sometimes take one on the chin and we’ve taken one on the chin tonight.

"But we’ve got to go again as we’ve got three more games in this month that we need to take points from and we’ll be ready for them.”

Cardiff led through Harry Wilson's excellent finish from 20-yards, the midfielder on loan from Premier League champions Liverpool, while Moore cost what now looks like a cut-price £2m from Wigan Athletic.

Starting alongside Moore was Josh Murphy, who was signed for £11m back in June 2018, while City boss Mick McCarthy even had the luxury of starting £1m transfer window addition Max Watters on the bench.

With that in mind, Jones did ask for a touch of realism from supporters when reacting to a defeat against a side like the Bluebirds, as he continued: "When you look at the two teams, they’ve spent a hell of a lot of money on their squad, on their team, we haven’t, so it’s difficult.

"You have to be realistic at times, we’re not bemoaning it, you have to be realistic, as they have spent a lot of money on their team, their front ones, they buy people.

"Harry Wilson will be costing the equivalent of a third of our budget, so we have to be realistic.

"But I want us to push boundaries, I want us to not be content with, 'all right they’ve got a bigger budget than us, they’re this', it's not the be-all and end-all.

"If we do everything right today we get something from the game, we didn't, so that’s the learning curve.”

Even though Luton played the majority of the football on display during the contest, Jones knows that doesn't count for much if they aren't doing their jobs in both penalty areas.

He added: "Away from home (at Birmingham) I thought we were excellent in loads of our play, but horrific in others.

"I’ve watched Coventry play (Cardiff) on the weekend, Coventry were brilliant between both boxes, but in both boxes they were pretty similar to us.

"Cardiff in the boxes are very good at the minute, in between, I don’t think it really worries them, but in both boxes they’ve been very good and that’s the difference at this level.

"We stood up to the physical test, that’s one thing, we didn’t do that away, but we’ve conceded six goals against these now and they haven't had to work hard for many of them and that’s the disappointing thing."