Town chief frustrated by manner of Boro defeat after deciding to rest players for Chelsea cup clash

Town boss Nathan Jones was left frustrated by the manner of his side’s performance during their 2-1 defeat at Middlesbrough this afternoon, considering the number of changes he had made for the midweek FA Cup clash with Chelsea.

The Hatters chief chose to rest a number of players for their fifth round tie against the Blues in midweek, which saw Luton go out 3-2, bringing back the likes of Elijah Adebayo, James Bree and Kal Naismith to start at the Riverside Stadium.

However, the visitors were never at their best, falling behind in the first period to Paddy McNair’s penalty on 17 minutes, while they got the second with three minutes to go, Duncan Watmore finding the bottom corner.

Although Harry Cornick pulled one back in stoppage time, it wasn’t enough, Luton’s three game winning run ended, as Jones said: “I’m really disappointed with the first half performance, because we should have come out of the traps.

“I might as well have gone as strong as I possibly could against Chelsea and then see what happened today, as we've lost both games.

"Maybe if we'd have gone as strong as we like against Chelsea, maybe we have had a different result and this one would take care of itself, so maybe that's my fault.

“We got overrun a bit first half, we weren’t us first half and that’s a bit puzzling because I made six changes and kept them fresh for this game, but they didn’t respond first half.

“Second half we did, we came out of the traps and were better, we had enough chances to have got back in the game, but we didn’t.

“Then we defend poorly for the one half opportunity they got and then we concede, so a really frustrating afternoon.

“The only time we did really go into front and Elijah does what Elijah normally does, we score, but it’s too late.

"But really frustrating, frustrating with the decisions, frustrated with the flow, frustrated with how we played.

“There was no flow in the game, a lot of balls kicked away, I understand why people do it, the more time the ball spends out of play the less chance the opposition have got of scoring.

"It's one of those things, I was more disappointed with our first half performance, as to have gone in at 0-0 would have been fine, but to conceded in the manner that we did, after the work and the prep we did was really disappointing.”

With it being Town’s third reverse in five away games, when asked if he felt the Hatters had an issue on the road against the bigger teams in division, with defeats at Sheffield United and Birmingham, Jones added: "I don't know as we beat Stoke and I’d say Stoke are better than Birmingham, Stoke's on a par with Sheffield United and Middlesbrough.

"We went to Swansea and won, every time you go away from home you go to a reasonably big club, so unless you're losing every week like that, but we've just come off the back of a 15-point month.

"This is the first one, a difficult place to come to, it's been a tight game, they don't give up chance like we had.

"We had opportunities today to make something from the game and then we haven't defended well enough, because they've had the information for the first goal and then the second goal should just be defended better, so really disappointed."