No dwelling on QPR defeat for Lockyer as he backs Town to bounce back against Preston

Luton defender Tom Lockyer has backed his side to quickly bounce back from the disappointment of Sunday’s defeat to QPR when they host Preston North End at Kenilworth Road this evening.

The Hatters saw their seven game unbeaten run on home soil ended at the weekend when despite leading at half time through Cameron Jerome’s fifth goal of the season, ended up empty-handed, beaten by Andre Gray’s penalty and Rob Dickie’s controversial late strike, with Luke Amos clearly standing in an offside position.

However, when the Town have lost this term, they have got it out of their system quickly, with seven wins, two draws and just one defeat in their following matches.

Lockyer wants another response tonight, saying: “We played well, didn’t get anything from the game, but if there’s one thing we know about this team is we bounce back really well, so that’s all we can do.

“The game’s done, put it to bed, analyse it, put it right and go again on Wednesday.

“That’s the good thing about the hectic schedule, you don’t have to dwell too long on a defeat and we won’t be, so all eyes on Wednesday now.”

Although Town wasted a glorious chance to move up to fourth, falling down a place to seventh, Lockyer believes his side should still focus on the teams ahead of them, as he continued: “You’ve got to look up, there’s no point looking over your shoulder and say ‘I hope we sneak in the play-offs, who’s behind us?’

“You want to look forward, ‘who can we get next?’

“It’s all so tight at the minute, every weekend is going to be teams chopping and changing.

"You’re going to go up or down a few, so we can’t get too carried away but we definitely look up.”

With the Hatters in the final straight now, they have five matches at home and five away, as after tonight’s clash, they head to Hull City on Saturday.

Lockyer said: “It’s 10 games to go, 10 massive games coming up.

“It would be amazing if we could win them all, obviously it’s not going to be the case, so we’ve just got to keep going, keep plugging away and see where we end up at the end.”

The Welsh international is in a rich vein of form as well, as finally free of injury, he has now started the last eight league and cup games for the Hatters, forming a solid undert

He added: "It’s nice to get a little run going.

"Ever since I’ve come to Luton I feel like I’ve been hampered as whenever I’ve got going, I'd pick up some sort of injury, so I don’t want to jinx it now.

"I had a little niggle after Tuesday night, so I'm just trying to stay on top of it and hopefully I can stay out there with the boys."