Town chief felt his side were worthy winners at Hillsborough

A thrilled Hatters boss Nathan Jones felt his side were well worth their 1-0 win at Sheffield Wednesday this afternoon.

Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu’s 74th minute goal was enough to settle proceedings at Hillsborough, the strike coming moments after Owls defender Joost van Aken had been dismissed for a high challenge on the Town match-winner.

After back-to-back defeats against Stoke City and Millwall leading up to the game, Jones was particularly happy with the performance his team produced, saying: "More than anything the result (pleased me) as that’s the be-all and end-all.

“Coming off two difficult results, especially the Stoke game was a difficult result for me to take, and for us to take, considering how well we played first half.

“So I was delighted with the overall performance and especially the win.

“What we said at half time, I said one word, ‘Stoke,’ because we were far better than Stoke first half (last weekend), we should have gone in ahead and we didn’t and then with them scoring straight after it was a real killer blow.

“But today, they didn’t, we started better second half, we got into the flow, they had little spells in the game, but I felt we were well worth the win.

“I’m disappointed we didn’t go in further ahead at half time, at least two, as we had two glorious, glorious chances that we really need to take at this level.

“But 1-0 away from home is possibly the best result and when you come to Hillsborough, you know you’re having a difficult time

“We always say about progression and we came here, my last game in my first spell, we drew 0-0, and we were excellent, so it is a progression as we were excellent today and we won the game.”

Jones swapped formations for the contest, going with a back five and handing league debuts to new signings Tom Lockyer, Joe Morrell and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.

Explaining the change in tactics, he added: “We want to try and be a bit more fluent at times.

“We want to be solid and fluent, and we've stuck so far to a formula that did well for us last year, but we want to be more fluent, we want to evolve.

“We’ve tried something and I thought we were excellent, I really did.

“We created a chance after 30-odd seconds, then it took us a bit of time to get into it, but once we did, we improved.

“They then changed shape to combat us, which is always a bonus as we’ve worked on that and I really thought we were excellent, especially considering the time we've had to work with that, but this the group we have, I’m really, really proud of them.”