Luton defender insists improving Town's Premier League campaign is a 'marathon' and not a sprint

​Town defender Mads Andersen insists Luton's Premier League campaign is a ‘marathon’ and not a sprint despite suffering a third successive defeat when beaten 2-1 by West Ham on Friday night.

The narrow reverse at Kenilworth Road, which was hosting a first top flight game in over 30 years, saw the Hatters go into the international break sitting second bottom of the division, and without a point to their name from the opening three matches.

However, it wasn’t a major cause of concern to Andersen, who felt his side had gone close to getting themselves on the board against the Hammers, saying: “There’s loads of positives I think, we kept them away from many chances, they were just very clinical on the ones they had.

"We created a lot of chances to score, we did the basics better than we had done in the previous games, so loads of positives.

"This is not a sprint, it's a marathon and I'm sure you can see we're improving every game.

"The lads are going to keep on going, we’re going to keep working hard in training and learning from the games.”

After a positive opening half hour in which Luton went close through Ross Barkley twice, the former Everton and Chelsea midfielder dragging both efforts wide, David Moyes’ side then started to make their extra quality show.

Jarrod Bowen and Said Benrahma threatened, before the former opened the scoring on 37 minutes, when left unmarked by Ryan Giles and Amari’i Bell, his header having enough on it to beat Thomas Kaminski.

Towering centre half Kurt Zouma made it 2-0 with five minutes to go from James Ward-Prowse’s corner, as the manner of both goals certainly annoyed Andersen, who continued: “It’s so frustrating and that’s something we’ve got to learn from.

"We shouldn't concede from a corner, we’d been dealing with the corners so well the whole game.

“You have to really be ready and in this league they’re going to punish you, so that’s a little bit disappointing.

"But we have to look at the positives also, there’s so many good things, so we have to keep working hard, that’s it.”

Meanwhile, on having to wait over a week before Luton’s next game, a trip to Craven Cottage to face Fulham, Andersen added: "I want to keep going, but it’s good, we can take a look at all the games and everything we've got to improve on.

"We’ll work hard on the training pitch and then be ready for the next game.”